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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > General
African American Communist B.D. Amis was a major figure in the black freedom struggle during the two decades between the world wars. At that time, the American Communist Party (CPUSA) played a significant role in fighting for the rights of African Americans. Amis was part of the small circle of black radicals leading the struggle for workers' rights and racial justice. This anthology of his key writings and speeches reveals the deep commitment to the working class by his generation of African American Marxists. His classics, such as 'Lynch Justice at Work' and 'They Shall Not Die!,' as well as his speech nominating William Z. Foster for president at the 1936 CPUSA Convention in Chicago, are included. This work also features important documents penned by Amis and found in the former Soviet archives and in the private holdings of the Amis Family. It also includes many of Amis' theoretical works found in international documents, such as the CPUSA's International Press Correspondence, and a selected bibliography on the research scholarship pertaining to African Americans and communism.
This book does not question Rawlsian principles, but it does reject the liberal institutions he advocates.Since the publication of John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice" (1971) - followed up by "Political Liberalism" (1993) and "Justice as Fairness: A Restatement" (2001) - discussions on social justice and redistributive liberalism have taken center stage in contemporary political theory. This book adds to an enormous body of literature. It does not question Rawlsian principles, but it does reject the liberal institutions he advocates. A debate is constructed in which his liberalism is contrasted with a libertarian socialism informed by the English theorist of guild socialism G.D.H. Cole (1889-1959).These two authors visualize alternative macro socio-economic schemes. Although they are set within modern liberal and libertarian socialist frameworks respectively, they share a commitment to reducing vast inequalities in wealth. Central to the Rawlsian scheme is the difference principle - that inequalities are only permitted if they benefit the least well off. Rawls proposes that citizens deliberating without awareness of subjective talents - a collective lack of knowledge captured by the Rawlsian term the veil of ignorance - will be compelled to prioritize a society structured to accommodate this principle to other systems in which inequalities are allowed to concentrate with lesser degrees of regulation. This assertion will not be challenged. However, it is shown how the difference principle will be more easily realized in the left libertarian scheme, in which the author defends. The argument is that Rawlsian premises point to a more radical conclusion that Rawls acknowledges.
Both eco-authoritarian and democratic scholars have claimed that a liberal democracy cannot pay due attention to the environment. However, such claims call for profound analysis. Jagers argues that much in the debate on liberal democracy and environmental concern can be more stringently elaborated. For instance, there has been a tendency to compound philosophical and institutional objections against liberal democracy. Often it is unclear what the critical voices actually mean when they speak of liberal democracy. In addition, the compatibility between specific forms of liberal democracy and sustainable development has not been thoroughly investigated. Most studies have been limited to comparing liberal and ecological values, or ecological values and liberal institutions. To avoid many of these shortcomings, this study analyzes the compatibility between sustainable development policies and liberal democracy by combining political theory and resource scenarios based on environmental science.
An in-depth look at the political landscape of Saskatchewan from its leftist roots to its shift in recent years to the right of centre. One of the most underreported stories in Canadian politics has been the political and economic transformation of Saskatchewan. The province that was the birthplace of the CCF-NDP and democratic socialism in North America has, over the last fifty years, undergone fundamental change that has altered its identity. It is now seen as the bastion of the centre-right Saskatchewan Party, which has become one of the most dominant provincial political parties in Canada. The story of that transformation, in which the once powerful NDP has been relegated to the political margins, reaches far beyond the province itself and reflects national and global events that have shaped the province over the course of the last half century. Modern Saskatchewan politics have been less about ideology and more about the influence of issues and events since the late 1960s and the lure of populist leaders who speak to an identity rooted in the province's history. Consistent with Saskatchewan's history, From Left to Right presents a blend of populism, a deeply embedded spirit of independence and personal initiative, coupled with communitarian values and the constant search for a better future.
The first cross-national survey of its kind, this pioneering volume examines the condition of Middle East studies in nine major countries across three continents. Designed as a state of the art assessment of the field, the book also explores the institutional bases of Middle East studies across cultural and ideological boundaries. The contributors identify a number of emerging trends in Middle East studies, particularly a new emphasis on relevance which has shifted research approaches away from the exotic peoples and places perspectives of the colonial and postcolonial world view to the problem-oriented perspectives that characterize current efforts to conduct policy relevant research. Scholars of Middle East studies will find this volume the definitive source for information about the current status of the discipline. The book is divided into three major sections covering North America, Europe, and Asia. The first two chapters address Middle Eastern studies in the United States and Canada. Part II contains chapters on the state of the art in British, French, German, Dutch, and Soviet Middle Eastern studies, while the concluding chapters survey the field as it is studied in Japan and China. Each chapter describes the organization, scope, and focus of Middle East studies in that country, assesses the state of the field there, and examines the factors that help to explain the condition of the field in that country. Throughout the volume, the contributors address both research and scholarship about the Middle East and curriculum and institutional resources available to pursue and disseminate knowledge about the region in different states.
This book offers new insights into the mechanisms of state control, systematic repression and mass violence focused on ethnic, political, class, and religious minorities in the recent past. The geographical and temporal scope of the volume breaks new ground as international scholars foreground how contemporary archaeology can be used to enhance the documentation and interpretation of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, to advance theoretical approaches to atrocities, and to broaden public understandings of how such regimes use violence and repression to hold on to power.
Violent Islamic extremism is affecting a growing number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some, jihadi Salafi organizations have established home bases and turned into permanent security challengers. However, other countries have managed to prevent the formation or curb the spread of homegrown jihadi Salafi organizations. In this book, Sebastian Elischer provides a comparative analysis of how different West and East African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today. In doing so, he establishes a causal link between state-imposed organizational gatekeepers in the Islamic sphere and the absence of homegrown jihadi Salafism. Illustrating that the contemporary manifestation of violent Islamic extremism in sub-Saharan Africa is an outcome of strategic political decisions that are deeply embedded in countries' autocratic pasts, he challenges conventional notions of statehood on the African continent, and provides new insight into the evolving relationships between secular and religious authority.
Introducing the main theories of distributional justice the book covers utilitarianism and welfare economics, moving on to Rawls's social contract and the Sen/Nussbaum capability approach with a refreshingly readable style. There is a chapter covering the position of mothers and children in theories of justice. The book then studies empirical methods used in analysing the distribution of economic goods, covering Lorenz curves and inequality measures. The concepts of income, wealth and economic goods are comprehensively discussed, with a particular view to their role in theories of justice. This book is an important read for economists and other social scientists, as well as philosophers who want to quantify social and economic justice.
The definition of ideology continues to occupy scholars across a wide range of disciplines. In this book, Teun A van Dijk sketches a challenging new multidisciplinary framework for theorizing ideology. He defines ideology as the basis of the social representations of a group, its functions in terms of social relations between groups, and its reproduction as enacted by discourse. Contemporary racist discourse is examined to illustrate these ideological relations between cognition, society and discourse.
Bakhtin, Stalin, and Modern Russian Fiction presents an advanced introduction to the work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, focusing on the concepts of carnival, dialogism, and historicism. The discussion of Bakhtin pays particular attention to the impact of his historical context in the Soviet Union and to the importance of his own dialogic mode of discourse. Bakhtin's ideas are then placed in dialogic relation to the works of several important writers of modern Russian fiction, including Vassily Aksyonov, Ilf and Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Andrei Bitov, and Sasha Sokolov.
The book aims to give, via a collection of representative papers
from the journal Environmental Politics, an overview of both the
evolution and the diverse themes found in contemporary green
political thought, especially as found in the industrialized
nations. Accordingly, it charts the key research papers from the
leading European journal of environmental politics since the early
1990s, a period in which environmental politics developed from a
marginal status in society and the academy through to its current
place as a mainstream intellectual consideration; in doing so the
book will both trace a development of ideas and give an overview of
the diverse vital considerations in the field today. Subdivided
into sections on political theory, social movements, political
economy and policy questions, and assisted by a contextualizing
introduction, the collection deals with a set of themes that
include the following:
Foundations of American Political Thought: Readings and Commentary explains American historical concepts and key political ideas from 1620 to 1910. In this primer for democracy, all verbatim passages and original documents point to their original intentions and ideological movements. Key terms and basic terminology are incisive and essential for a thorough understanding of democracy. This book represents the setting and trends that produced sound progress in American political growth.
New York, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt/M., Paris, Wien. This book contains a concise presentation of the major political theories underlying the Western tradition and contemporary ideological debates in America and the world. From the Ancients, Plato and Aristotle, to contemporary Americans, Rawls, Nozick and Barber, the book examines each thinker's conception of Human Nature, Political Society and Social Ethics. Extensive excerpts from the original writings and their relation to American political principles distinguish this valuable text.
Sayyid Qutb is widely considered an ideologue of the radical
Islamist movements in the present world. His writings and, in
particular, his theory of jahiliyyah was viewed as a threat to the
nationalistic regimes in the Muslim world from Egypt to Tashkent
and is now viewed as a threat to the West and America. It is
through the prism of jahiliyyah that the radical Islamist movements
divide the world to Islamic and jahili camps.
The Power of Sovereignty explores the religio-political and philosophical concepts of Sayyid Qutb, one of the most influential political thinkers for contemporary Islamists and who has greatly influenced the likes of Osama Bin Laden. Executed by the Egyptian state in 1966, his books continue to be read and his theory of jahiliyya 'ignorance' is still of prime importance for radical Islamic groups. Providing a detailed perspective of Sayyid Qutb's writings, this book examines:
Shedding light on Islamic radicalism and its intellectual origins The Power of Sovereignty presents new analysis on the intellectual legacy of one of the most important thinkers of modern Islamic revival.
First published in 1984. Revisionism or reformism has long been recognised as one of the main intellectual ancestors of democratic socialism, the last survivor of the tradition of Enlightenment progressivism and the only viable alternative to conservatism on the one hand and Marxist-Leninism on the other. Both as a movement and as an ideology, revisionism, like Marxism, had its origins in Germany, but has not received anything like the same attention. This study is concerned with two relatively neglected aspects of German revisionism - its diversity and its international relations theorising - while focusing on those revisionists who were associated with Joseph Bloch's journal, the Sozialistische Monatshefte. Roger Fletcher demonstrates that the revisionist movement consisted of neo-Kantians, 'pragmatists' and reformists of several kinds as well as theoretical revisionists like Edward Bernstein, the alleged 'father of revisionism', and that the political importance of Bernstein, who was primarily a transplanted British Radical, has been widely misunderstood and exaggerated. He shows that the most influential figure in pre-1914 German revisionism was not Bernstein but Bloch, the leader of a small band of socialist imperialists who hoped to use nationalist ideology as a means of integrating the German working class into the Wilhelmine state and society. He argues that despite the limited success enjoyed by this grey eminence of Wilhelmine Social Democracy, Bloch and Bernstein both came to grief on the masses' rock-like indifference to all theory. This is the first serious study of revisionism as a movement and one of the only studies of right-wing German socialist foreign policy views in the Wilhelmine era. While revealing the central importance of the previously neglected Bloch, and his journal in Wilhelmine Social Democracy, it also sheds fresh light on the thought of Bernstein and his role in classical German Social Democracy. The result of extensive research in Germany and Austria, it is based on a solid grasp of the secondary literature as well as thorough mastery of all the relevant primary sources.
Taking the revival of civic republicanism as his point of departure, Erik Olsen examines the relationship between property, civic virtue, and democracy in post-socialist political thought. Olsen's "post-socialism" refers to virtue-centered forms of political theory that continue the socialist tradition of being critical of liberal capitalism while remaining critical of the materialist vision of progressive liberation that informs most modern expressions of left-socialist thought. With civic republicans, these concerns are expressed in the framework of a traditional problem of how to sustain the public liberty of self-governing citizens in the face of the corruptive power of commerce. Olsen argues that civic republicans have failed to develop a viable, virtue-centered alternative to the property arrangements of contemporary commercial republics. Olsen also shows that the outlines for such an alternative can be found in the civic republicans' hermeneutic perspective on the "situated self." By recasting the "situated self" as a concept pertaining to the relationship of the self to property arrangements, Olsen uncovers a "locational" dimension of property, a dimension of "placeness," alongside the more familiar dimension of rightful possession and ownership of things. The vision of democracy that emerges from Civic Republicanism and the Properties of Democracy is informed by liberal commitments to pluralism, equal rights, and oppositionist modes of civic agency. With this book, Olsen seeks to account for the paradox that civic virtue simultaneously supports and threatens democracy. However, he maintains that civic republicans give us reasons to be cautiously hopeful, not just by reminding us that self-government has a nobility of purpose, but also by providing conceptual tools with which to open up new spaces of property and citizenship, thereby providing a measure of pluralism with which to counter an rampant commercialism. A salient intervention into political theory, political science, and social and
Taking the revival of civic republicanism as his point of departure, Erik Olsen examines the relationship between property, civic virtue, and democracy in post-socialist political thought. Olsen's 'post-socialism' refers to virtue-centered forms of political theory that continue the socialist tradition of being critical of liberal capitalism while remaining critical of the materialist vision of progressive liberation that informs most modern expressions of left-socialist thought. With civic republicans, these concerns are expressed in the framework of a traditional problem of how to sustain the public liberty of self-governing citizens in the face of the corruptive power of commerce. Olsen argues that civic republicans have failed to develop a viable, virtue-centered alternative to the property arrangements of contemporary commercial republics. Olsen also shows that the outlines for such an alternative can be found in the civic republicans' hermeneutic perspective on the 'situated self.' By recasting the 'situated self' as a concept pertaining to the relationship of the self to property arrangements, Olsen uncovers a 'locational' dimension of property, a dimension of 'placeness, ' alongside the more familiar dimension of rightful possession and ownership of things. The vision of democracy that emerges from Civic Republicanism and the Properties of Democracy is informed by liberal commitments to pluralism, equal rights, and oppositionist modes of civic agency. With this book, Olsen seeks to account for the paradox that civic virtue simultaneously supports and threatens democracy. However, he maintains that civic republicans give us reasons to be cautiously hopeful, not just by reminding us that self-government has a nobility of purpose, but also by providing conceptual tools with which to open up new spaces of property and citizenship, thereby providing a measure of pluralism with which to counter an rampant commercialism. A salient intervention into political theory, political science, and social and cultural theory
Fifteen years after the fall of communism, we are able to appraise the results of the multi-faceted postcommunist transition in Central and Eastern Europe with authority. This volume specifically addresses the fascinating area of Civil-Military relations throughout this transitional period. The countries of the region inherited a onerous legacy in this area: their armed forces were part of the communist party-state system and most were oriented towards Cold War missions; they were large in size and supported by high levels of defence spending; and they were based on universal male conscription. Central and eastern European states have thus faced a three fold civil-military reform challenge: establishing democratic and civilian control over their armed forces; implementing organisational reform to meet the security and foreign policy demands of the new era; and redefining military bases for legitimacy in society. This volume assesses the experiences of Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro, Ukraine and Russia in these areas. Collectively these countries illustrate the way in which the interaction of broadly similar postcommunist challenges and distinct national contexts have combined to produce a wide variety of different patterns of civil-military relations. This book was previously published as a special issue of European Security.
When a totalitarian group seizes power, one of the first institutions it creates is a secret political police. Since the birth of modern totalitarianism, in country after country, secret political police have been the predominant instruments of power, used to consolidate power, neutralize the opposition, and erect a one-party state. Yet, when these same totalitarian regimes have liberalized or collapsed, the secret political police have often managed to survive and even remain relevant. Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes provides a groundbreaking exploration of this survival tendency in seven formerly communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Latin America - and the lessons these transformations hold for future democratic revolutions. But Dismantling Tyranny is also much more: it is a guidebook designed to empower, inform, and guide future transitions toward democracy for those political leaders with the initiative, and courage, to embark upon such a visionary path. Published in cooperation with the American Foreign Policy Council.
Strong, colorful personalities who impose their will upon laws, constitutions, courts, and congresses are an enduring feature of Latin American politics, beginning with the violent regional bosses (caudillos) of the early nineteenth century and continuing with the 'hyper-presidential' systems of today. Paul Lewis explores the origins of the region's authoritarian culture and the different types of regimes that have exhibited it. Taking a student-friendly chronological approach, this thoughtful and accessible text begins with a brief overview of Latin America's Iberian heritage, then describes the general breakdown of order and the rise of the caudillos following independence. Lewis shows how the internal dynamics of caudillo politics have produced, in one country after another, either strong personalistic dictatorships or oligarchies that ruthlessly imposed order on their societies. Order made economic growth and urbanization possible, yet created great social injustices that spurred the development of mass politics. The author describes the twentieth-century upheavals that brought the people into the political arena, resulting in a variety of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary regimes that borrow their inspiration from fascism and communism. Balanced yet cautious about the future of democracy in the region, this accessible book will be invaluable for courses on contemporary Latin America.
The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scope, of commercially tested betterment. Its massive volumes, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality, solve Adam Smith's puzzle of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and of the moral sentiments of modernity. The world got rich, she argues, not chiefly by material causes but by an idea and a sentiment, a new admiration for the middle class and its egalitarian liberalism. For readers looking for a distillation of McCloskey's magisterial work, Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich is what you've been waiting for. In this lively volume, McCloskey and the economist and journalist Carden bring together the trilogy's key ideas and its most provocative arguments. The rise of the west, and now the rest, is the story of the rise of ordinary people to a dignity and liberty inspiring them to have a go. The outcome was an explosion of innovation after 1800, and a rise of real income by an astounding 3,000 percent. The Great Enrichment, well beyond the conventional Industrial Revolution, did not, McCloskey and Carden show, come from the usual suspects, capital accumulation or class struggle. It came from the idea of economic liberty in Holland and the Anglosphere, then Sweden and Japan, then Italy and Israel and China and India, an idea that bids fair in the next few generations to raise up the wretched of the earth. The original shift to liberalism arose from 1517 to 1789 from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, upending ancient hierarchies. McCloskey and Carden contend further that liberalism and "innovism" made us better humans as well as richer ones. Not matter but ideas. Not corruption but improvement. Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to the Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey's influential explanation of how we got rich. At a time when confidence in the economic system is under challenge, the book mounts an optimistic and persuasive defense of liberal innovism, and of the modern world it has wrought.
This book discusses the development of 'dissident' Irish republicanism and considers its impact on politics throughout Ireland since the 1980s. Based on a series of interviews with over ninety radical republican activists from the wide range of groups and currents which make up 'dissident' republicanism, the book provides an up-to-date assessment of the political significance and potential of the groups who continue to oppose the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. It shows that the 'dissidents' are much more than traditionalist irreconcilables left behind by Gerry Adams' entry into the mainstream. Instead the book suggests that the dynamics and trajectory of 'dissident' republicanism are shaped more by contemporary forces than historical tradition and that by understanding the "dissidents" we can better understand the emerging forms of political challenge in an age of austerity and increasing political instability internationally. -- .
This edition of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Politische Ideale (1915) reveals the historical significance of Chamberlain in German conservative political philosophy. Contrasting the vital nationalistic state with the sterile commercialism of liberal democracies, moral freedom with the unruly selfishness of democratic parties, and the decaying culture of the Anglo-Saxon peoples with the relatively pure Teutonic, Chamberlain evokes in this work, with the deftest of strokes, the principal elements of a genuinely conservative state. Apart from studying the salient points of Chamberlain's political doctrine of state-formation, the Introduction to this translation surveys the Prussian intellectual antecedents of Chamberlain, Paul de Lagarde and Heinrich von Treitschke. The works also examines the legacy of Chamberlain's political thought in the Neoconservatism and Prussianism of the Weimar conservatives, Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, and Edgar Julius Jung, as well as in the work of the National Socialist ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg. |
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