The dose of reality that E.H. Carr dealt to interwar idealists was significant & timely. It was obvious to Carr that the League was failing and the march to war was underway.

Marxism has not, since its original formulation, considered IR and its concepts worthy as an object of study in its own right. Therefore, over 150 years after the publication of his major treatises, there is a sense that Marx’s project needs to be revised to account for this world of states.

The state is understood to constitute the primary institutions holding sovereign authority. States, however, are no longer standing alone on the hill of sovereignty, which other actors have come to the climb, claiming their own sovereignty vis-à-vis the state.

The propagation of liberal economic policies by states, particularly the US, paved the way for the globalisation of finance and production which enabled Transnational Corporations (TNCs) to share power with states and other actors. States are no longer the only important actors domestically or internationally.

I want to draw attention to a key point that is frequently overlooked—that, in the context of modern pluralism, we must now regard secularism as one of those worldviews that plays a quite significant role in the direction and nature of the modern state. And, further, once we do this, our whole understanding of the role of religion in the modern state is transformed as well.