Alex Callinicos's intervention in the debate on the geopolitics of the states system and capitalist modernity provides a crucial wake-up call to International Relations theory and practice. Yet, within the contending positions he outlines disputing the political economy of geopolitical conflict, inter-state rivalry and capitalist imperialism, the insights of Antonio Gramsci are notably absent. This article contributes to the debate by elaborating how the theory of passive revolution reveals the political rule of capital, thereby internally relating the states system to capitalist modernity within a focus on uneven development. This concern is evident in Gramsci's analysis of the labour process of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and the geopolitics of the states system contained within his survey of 'Americanism and Fordism'. Theorization on the passive revolution of capital might then provide a fruitful basis from which an empirical research agenda on social development could be advanced with reference to post-col...