Twenty essays based on papers delivered at the International Symposium on the Varieties of Marxism held at the VanLeer Jerusalem Foundation 16-19 June 1974 and dedicated to the memory of George Lichtheim, an eminent historian of Marxism. The overall message is that, far from being a monolithic, crystal clear explanation of the universe, Marxism continues to be a multi-faceted ideology with diverse expressions in diverse cultures, spawning a wide spectrum of "official" prophets, each sincerely convinced that he or she is (...) correct and all others are wrong. Kamenka in his contribution, while somewhat too easily chiding Marx for being too absolute in his prescriptive ethics, suggests that the varieties of Marxism stem from "ambiguities and tensions at the very heart of Marx’s thought," and that it "speaks to us, like Christianity, with many voices and in accents that are at best suggestive and at worst deliberately seductive rather than precise". Eight of the articles, including that of Kamenka, can be described as being theoretical, concerned about clarification of such questions as the methodology of Marx, the place of Engels in Marxism, Marxian Ethics, Totality in Lukacs and Adorno, Sartrean Marxism, the transformation of the concept of practice from Kant via Marx to Lukacs, and the reawakened interest in the "Asiatic Mode of Production" as a stage in the evolution towards Socialism. Ten articles discuss the manifestations of Marxism in Western Europe, Russia, Italy, Zionism, the Arab world, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Latin America, and the radical student movements of the 1960s in the United States, France, and Israel. Two other articles examine the differences and reasons for differences with Marx expressed by two major commentators, Trotsky and Mao. (shrink)

A diagonal version of the strong reflection principle is introduced, along with fragments of this principle associated with arbitrary forcing classes. The relationships between the resulting principles and related principles, such as the corresponding forcing axioms and the corresponding fragments of the strong reflection principle, are analyzed, and consequences are presented. Some of these consequences are “exact” versions of diagonal stationary reflection principles of sets of ordinals. We also separate some of these diagonal strong reflection principles from related axioms.

Class line is a fundamental line of the Party. To be the Communist Party is to make revolution, eradicate the bourgeoisie and promote the proletariat, stress class status, and implement the proletarian class line!

The issue of the theory-ladenness of observation has long troubled philosophers of science, largely because it seems to threaten the objectivity of science. However, the way in which prior beliefs influence the perception of data is in part an empirical issue that can be investigated by cognitive psychology. This point is illustrated through an experimental analogue of scientific data-interpretation tasks in which subjects judging the covariation between personality variables based their judgments on pure data, their theoretical intuitions about the variables, (...) or both data and prior theoretical beliefs. Results showed that the perceived magnitude of correlations was greatest when subjects relied solely on theoretical intuitions; that data-based judgments were drawn in the direction of those prior beliefs; but that exposure to data nonetheless moderated the strength of the prior theories. In addition, prior beliefs were found to influence judgments only after a brief priming interval, suggesting that subjects needed time to retrieve their theoretical intuitions from memory. These results suggest ways to investigate the processes mediating theory-laden observation, and, contrary to the fears of positivist philosophers, imply that the theory-ladenness of observation does not entail that theoretical beliefs are immune to data. (shrink)

The stock market’s reaction to information disclosure of environmental violation events (EVEs) is investigated multi-dimensionally for Chinese listed companies, including variables such as pollution types, information disclosure sources, information disclosure levels, modernization levels of the region where the company locates, ultimate ownership of the company, and ownership held by the largest shareholder. Using the method of event study, daily abnormal return (AR) and accumulative abnormal return (CAR) are calculated under different event window for examining the extent to which the stock (...) market responds to the EVEs. Furthermore, statistical significance of the difference in stock market reaction is compared between event firms with different characteristics. The relationship between CAR and its impact factors is examined by multivariate analysis. The findings reveal that the average reduction in market value is estimated to be much lower than the estimated changes in market value for similar events in other countries, demonstrating that the negative environmental events of Chinese listed companies currently have weak impact on the stock market. (shrink)

This paper offers a two dimensional variation of Standard Deontic Logic SDL, which we call 2SDL. Using 2SDL we can show that we can overcome many of the difficulties that SDL has in representing linguistic sets of Contrary-to-Duties (known as paradoxes) including the Chisholm, Ross, Good Samaritan and Forrester paradoxes. We note that many dimensional logics have been around since 1947, and so 2SDL could have been presented already in the 1970s. Better late than never! As a detailed case study (...) illustrating the power of 2SDL, we examine the system DL of Deontic Logic of Andrew Jones and Ingmar Pörn offered in 1985 to solve the Chisholm paradox of Contrary to Duties. The critical examination is done using logics and methods available in 1985 and solutions are proposed using what was available in 1985. (shrink)

Based on the institutional theory, this article attempts to examine two consecutive questions regarding the impact of various factors on corporate decision in environmental information disclosure (EID): (1) whether or not to disclose; and (2) the level of disclosure. The relevance of these factors is empirically tested using data collected from publicly listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in China. Some interesting findings appear. We find that firms that are state-owned, those that operate in environmentally sensitive industries, those having (...) more industrial peers engaged in EID, and those with better reputation are more likely to disclose environmental information. When it comes to the content of EID, variables that attempt to capture external institutional pressures exhibit either no or weak explanatory power. Only the variable of organizational image and reputation is demonstrated to have a significant impact on both the act and the content of EID. This study provides a snapshot of the dialogues between constituencies in the organizational field and EID development. (shrink)

We have empirically examined the relationship between top executives’ turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility by identifying the influence of ten specific turnover reasons resulting in the chairman’s departure and two important types of chairman’s succession. Using a sample of 782 manufacturing listed companies across 3 years in China, we find that the corporate environmental responsibility is negatively associated with the involuntary and negative turnover (i.e., dismissal, health and death, and forced resignation) and positively associated with improving corporate governance, and (...) not associated with the normal turnover (i.e., retirement and contract expiration) and the types of chairman’s succession (i.e., independence, and internal or external promotion). Our study significantly contributes to research in environmental disclosure by revealing the relationship between chairman’s turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility. A feasible way is suggested to regulators and other stakeholders in monitoring or assessing the possible abnormality of environmental responsibility when firms experience involuntary and negative chairman’s turnover in the emerging economies. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)