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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
Through empirical analysis and conceptual development, this book analyzes the political psychology of Xi Jinping's Anticorruption Campaign and its role in the Chinese political system. Using Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment and data collected from direct fieldwork, the book analyzes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorship, revealing that it is prone to extremes, through ideology or corruption, and highlights how the Party’s attempts to address one extreme only leads to the rise of another. In turn, it examines the Anticorruption Campaign in multiple ways including its use to increase the role of ideology in Chinese society, how it functions to concentrate Xi's power, its cultural form as a status reversal ritual, and its continuity with previous communist campaigns and ancient Chinese political traditions. Through each of these analyses, the book identifies crucial mechanisms through which the CCP maintains power through interrelated policies, actions, and their emotional effects. Providing a vital understanding of the CCP, this book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of Chinese politics, as well as diplomats and policymakers on China.
This book analyses the institution and concept of dictatorship from a legal, historical and theoretical perspective, examining the different types of dictatorship, their relationship to the law, as well as the analytical value of the concept in contemporary world. In particular, it seeks to codify the main theories and conceptions of 'dictatorship', with the goal of unearthing their contradictions. The book's main premise is that the concept of dictatorship and the different types of the dictatorial form have to be assessed and can only be understood in their historical context. On this basis, the elaborations on dictatorship of such diverse thinkers as Carl Schmitt, Donoso Cortes, Karl Marx, Ernst Fraenkel, Franz Neumann, Nicos Poulantzas, and V. I. Lenin, are discussed in their historical context: 'classical and Caesaristic dictatorship' in ancient Rome, 'dictatorship' in revolutionary France of 1789 and counterrevolutionary France of 1848, 'fascist dictatorship' in Nazi Germany, and 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in Russia of 1917. The book contributes to the theory of dictatorship as it outlines the contradictions of the different typologies of the dictatorial form and seeks to explain them on the basis of the concept of 'class dictatorship'. The book's original claim is that the dictatorial form, as a modality of class rule that relies predominantly on violence and repression, has been essential to the reproduction of bourgeois rule and, consequently, of capitalist social relations. This function has given rise to different types and conceptualisations of dictatorship depending on the level of capitalist development. This book is addressed to anyone with an interest in law, political theory, political history and sociology. It can serve as core text for courses that seek to introduce students to the institution or theory of dictatorship. It may also serve as a reference text for post-graduate programs in law and politics, because of its interdisciplinary and critical approach.
This book was written as a doctoral thesis. It was submitted to and accepted by the University of Poona in 1979. Several people contributed to the creation of this book, in various ways. Prof. S. D. Joshi, my supervisor, introduced me to the study of the Sanskrit grammatical tradition. His unfailing skepticism towards and disagreement with the ideas worked out in this book contributed more to their development than he may have been aware. Prof. Paul Kiparsky gave encouragement when this was badly needed. In the years following 1979 Dr. Dominik Wujastyk was kind enough to read the manuscript and suggest improvements in language and style. To all of these lowe a debt of gratitude, but most of all lowe such a debt to Pandit Shivarama Krishna Shastri. In the course of several years he read with me many portions of Nagesa's grammatical and other works, and much besides. His ability to understand difficult grammatical and philosophical texts in Sanskrit was unequalled, and without his help it would have taken far longer to write this book and indeed might very well have proved impossible. Shivarama Krishna Shastri never saw the result of our reading; he died before this book could appear in print. I dedicate it to his memory. J. BRONKHORST Xl INTRODUCTION In the following pages an attempt will be made to establish that the part of Nagesa's Paribha$endusekhara (PS) which deals with Par.
Life in the United States today is shot through with uncertainty: about our jobs, our mortgaged houses, our retirement accounts, our health, our marriages, and the future that awaits our children. For many, our lives, public and private, have come to feel like the discomfort and unease you experience the day or two before you get really sick. Our life is a scratchy throat. John Marsh offers an unlikely remedy for this widespread malaise: the poetry of Walt Whitman. Mired in personal and political depression, Marsh turned to Whitman--and it saved his life. In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself is a book about how Walt Whitman can save America's life, too. Marsh identifies four sources for our contemporary malaise (death, money, sex, democracy) and then looks to a particular Whitman poem for relief from it. He makes plain what, exactly, Whitman wrote and what he believed by showing how they emerged from Whitman's life and times, and by recreating the places and incidents (crossing Brooklyn ferry, visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals) that inspired Whitman to write the poems. Whitman, Marsh argues, can show us how to die, how to accept and even celebrate our (relatively speaking) imminent death. Just as important, though, he can show us how to live: how to have better sex, what to do about money, and, best of all, how to survive our fetid democracy without coming away stinking ourselves. The result is a mix of biography, literary criticism, manifesto, and a kind of self-help you're unlikely to encounter anywhere else.
This book explores Marxist and Leninist revolutionary theory. Topics include: the philosophical dialectic, historical materialism, the revolutionary movement, and Communist cadre political rule in the socialist state. Emphasis on Lenin's wartime political treatment of imperialism, national self-determination, and socialism in one country.
A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society. It has also proved to be the most influential work in social science in the twentieth century; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology. Millions of readers this century have treated Capital as a sacred text, subjecting it to as many different interpretations as the Bible itself. No mere work of dry economics, Marx's great work depicts the unfolding of industrial capitalism as a tragic drama - with a message which has lost none of its relevance today. This is the only abridged edition to take account of the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867, excerpts from a new translation of 'The Result of the Immediate Process of Production', and a selection of key chapters from Volume 3, which Engels published in 1895.
A volume in a set of monographs which present a broad and comprehensive consideration of European views on Weber's relevance to twentieth century sociology.
Focusing especially on the 1970s and 1980s in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, this work provides an overview of reforms in socialist agrarian systems. Empirical evidence is used by the contributors to provide an assessment of how agrarian economies performed in different communist countries. The Soviet and Eastern European experience is contrasted with reforms in China, Vietnam and Cuba to provide a detailed account of agricultural restructuring after the collapse of communism in Europe and Asia.
In The Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia , distinguished specialists chart the rise of new thinking on the Soviet system and the decline and fall of Marxism-Leninism in the late Soviet period. They also discuss the failure of Marxism-Leninism to make a comeback in post-Soviet Russia. This book makes a significant contribution to understanding the independent importance of ideas in politics and provides clear analyses of the rise of liberal and social democratic thought about the political system, the economy, international Communism, nationalism and federalism.
A historical account of ideology in the Global South as the postwar laboratory of socialism, its legacy following the Cold War, and the continuing influence of socialist ideas worldwide. In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran. These states sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc or the programs that Soviets, East Germans, Cubans, Chinese, and other outsiders tried to promote. Instead, they attempted to forge new models of socialist development through their own trial and error, together with the help of existing socialist countries, demonstrating the flexibility and adaptability of socialism. All five countries would become Cold War battlegrounds and regional models, as new policies in one shaped evolving conceptions of development in another. Lessons from the collapse of democracy in Indonesia were later applied in Chile, just as the challenge of political Islam in Indonesia informed the policies of the left in Iran. Efforts to build agrarian economies in West Africa influenced Tanzania's approach to socialism, which in turn influenced the trajectory of the Angolan model. Ripe for Revolution shows socialism as more adaptable and pragmatic than often supposed. When we view it through the prism of a Stalinist orthodoxy, we miss its real effects and legacies, both good and bad. To understand how socialism succeeds and fails, and to grasp its evolution and potential horizons, we must do more than read manifestos. We must attend to history.
The collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union requires a major rethink of many sociological theories of social integration and change.Drawing on a wide range of social theory, Social Theory and the Crisis of State Socialism offers a comparative analysis of the democratic revolutions, combining historical understanding with accounts of the crisis of communism in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Larry Ray identifies contradictions within Soviet societies, developing a theory of crisis management that accounts both for the survival of the system over several decades and for its eventual failure. The social structure of Soviet systems is analysed in relation to debates in sociological theory over legitimation, social integration, social movements and modernity. Larry Ray examines new forms of class, political and national identity in post-socialist Europe, demonstrating how political conflicts are related to economic transformation, especially the emergence of 'nomenklatura capitalism', and asks whether sufficient conditions exist for the stabilization of democratic citizenship. Social Theory and the Crisis of State Socialism will be welcomed for comparatively analysing the communist and post-communist experiences of a number of East European countries in the light of a critical examination of the broad issues of social theory and modernity.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The seven-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, Fox News star, and radio host Mark R. Levin explains how the dangers he warned against in the "timely yet timeless" (David Limbaugh, author of Jesus Is Risen) bestseller Liberty and Tyranny have come to pass. In 2009, Mark R. Levin galvanized conservatives with his unforgettable manifesto Liberty and Tyranny, by providing a philosophical, historical, and practical framework for halting the liberal assault on Constitution-based values. That book was about standing at the precipice of progressivism's threat to our freedom and now, over a decade later, we're fully over that precipice and paying the price. In American Marxism, Levin explains how the core elements of Marxist ideology are now pervasive in American society and culture--from our schools, the press, and corporations, to Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the Biden presidency--and how it is often cloaked in deceptive labels like "progressivism," "democratic socialism," "social activism," and more. With his characteristic trenchant analysis, Levin digs into the psychology and tactics of these movements, the widespread brainwashing of students, the anti-American purposes of Critical Race Theory and the Green New Deal, and the escalation of repression and censorship to silence opposing voices and enforce conformity. Levin exposes many of the institutions, intellectuals, scholars, and activists who are leading this revolution, and provides us with some answers and ideas on how to confront them. As Levin writes: "The counter-revolution to the American Revolution is in full force. And it can no longer be dismissed or ignored for it is devouring our society and culture, swirling around our everyday lives, and ubiquitous in our politics, schools, media, and entertainment." And, like before, Levin seeks to rally the American people to defend their liberty.
Theories heralding the rise of network governance have dominated for a generation. Yet, empirical research suggests that claims for the transformative potential of networks are exaggerated. This topical and timely book takes a critical look at contemporary governance theory, elaborating a Gramscian alternative. It argues that, although the ideology of networks has been a vital element in the neoliberal hegemonic project, there are major structural impediments to accomplishing it. While networking remains important, the hierarchical and coercive state is vital for the maintenance of social order and integral to the institutions of contemporary governance. Reconsidering it from Marxist and Gramscian perspectives, the book argues that the hegemonic ideology of networks is utopian and rejects the claim that there has been a transformation from 'government' to 'governance'. This important book has international appeal and will be essential reading for scholars and students of governance, public policy, human geography, public management, social policy and sociology.
A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society. It has also proved to be the most influential work in social science in the twentieth century; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology. Millions of readers this century have treated Capital as a sacred text, subjecting it to as many different interpretations as the Bible itself. No mere work of dry economics, Marx's great work depicts the unfolding of industrial capitalism as a tragic drama - with a message which has lost none of its relevance today. This is the only abridged edition to take account of the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867, excerpts from a new translation of 'The Result of the Immediate Process of Production', and a selection of key chapters from Volume 3, which Engels published in 1895.
This book explores the impact of railroads on 19thcentury Russian peasant collectivism. The mutual-insurance mechanism in a precarious agricultural environment, provided bya structured communal-village system predicated on the reputation and authorityof community norms,is exposed to rationalist exchange-occasioning an institutional adaptation process:the individualization of property rights in land. Spatial-mobility technology animated market integration, specialization, literacy,and human-capital acquisition among peasant wage workers who commuted from their villages.Temporarily rising transaction costs forced the Tsar to concede household property rights in land in the so-called Stolypin reform of 1906.This challenge to the imperial patrimony, powered by the railroads, steered late imperial Russia toward constitutional governance.The spatial-mobility technology gave peasants access to centers of agglomeration of knowledge, changedcognitive perceptions of distance, and reduced the uncertainty and opportunity costs of travel. The empirical findings in this monograph corroborate the conclusion that the railroads occasioned a cultural revolution in late imperial Russia and made Stalin unnecessary for the modernization of the Euro-asian giant. This book highlights the profound effect that the development of the railroads had on Russian economic and political institutions and practices. It will be of indispensable valueto students and researchers interested in transitional economics and economic history.
Our understanding of the dynamics of Communist systems was substantially improved by taking political culture into account. But how much does the concept of political culture add to our empirical understanding of post-Communist Russia? The book's contributors engage with theoretical debates between political culture and competing 'rational choice' and institutionalist approaches to post-Soviet politics, and provide illustrative empirical studies of civic participation, views of national identity, the Russian criminal justice system and political violence.
By distinguishing between classical Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches to imperialism, this volume challenges generally accepted views on the relationship between these two branches of Marxist thought, reaffirming the principles and tools of fundamental Marxism as essential for understanding and explaining the internationalization of capitalist economic life. Together, original source materials and Polychroniou's highly readable analysis present a commentary both outlining and clarifying essential ideas contained in Marxist writings from the late 19th century to the present. Marxist Perspectives on Imperialism also identifies current political and economic issues to which authentic Marxist concepts can be applied. A review of Marx's views on capitalist production relations and expansion opens the discussion and defines criteria for evaluating analyses which follow. Studies by classical Marxists such as Hilferding, Bukharin, and Lenin are then contrasted to the neo-Marxist writings of Baran, Frank, and Wallerstein, among others. Polychroniou's defense of orthodox Marxism strengthens as he turns his attention to the practical uses of Marxist ideology to topics of international concern. His conclusions clarify a complex topic and provide political economists, sociologists, and political scientists with a clear explanation of the theoretical and methodological contours of Marxist thought on capitalist imperialism.
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