_A sweeping, ambitious history of American democratic socialism from one of the world’s leading intellectual historians and social ethicists__ “The movement whose tangled history Gary Dorrien tells in _American Democratic Socialism_ has deep roots in the very ‘American’ values it is accused of undermining.... The version of the socialist left that emerges is one that deserves more attention.”—Hari Kunzru, _New York Review of Books__ Democratic socialism is ascending in the United States as a consequence of a (...) widespread recognition that global capitalism works only for a minority and is harming the planet’s ecology. This history of American democratic socialism from its beginning to the present day interprets the efforts of American socialists to address and transform multiple intersecting sites of injustice and harm. Comprehensive, deeply researched, and highly original, this book offers a luminous synthesis of secular and religious socialisms, detailing both their intellectual and their organizational histories. (shrink)

How is it possible that "socialism" is today a living idea? How does it push us to a review of its complex heritage and to a research into its perspectives? What is the old and the new that socialism implies for the 21st century? After decades of neoliberal counterrevolution, the twilight of "really existing communism", the stories about the "end of history" and the entry into a "post-political" and "post-ideological" era, it may be surprising that the questions (...) with which we open this review continue to constitute theoretical problems of prime importance. And yet they are. (shrink)

Visiting historical places can give important impulses regarding education of history, society, and politics. While there does exist extensive research on visitors' experiences at memorial sites, little is known about the impact of everyday places holding dark history. Two experimental studies took place in a research institute, a former women's clinic, where in the time of National Socialist dictatorship in Germany hundreds of forced sterilizations took place. Historical awareness was manipulated via systematic variation of prior information. We found (...) partial evidence that historical awareness had a negative effect on personal mood. Awareness of the site's NS history had a negative effect on the perceived valence of related photos but did not influence their qualitative description. Also, there was partial evidence that the site itself was perceived less positively and evoked more arousal when participants were aware of its NS history. Possible reasons are discussed. (shrink)

This book examines the historical development—in practice and theory—of governance in socialist systems. With more than a century of such development from many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union, China, and the DPRK (North Korea), it is possible to gain much from careful study of their political systems.But what is the nature of this socialist governance? It is abundantly clear that the type of governance in socialist countries had never before been seen in human history. How does (...) this governance work? What was the political theory that arose from the practice? How did this type of governance develop over time and in light of specific conditions?These are the questions that Socialism in Power sets out to answer. It does so not by using methods developed for studying Western liberal nation-states, but by deploying Marxist-Leninist analysis. Not an abstract Marxism, but concrete Marxism, as it was applied and developed in light of the particular historical conditions of the countries in question.The book begins with careful analysis of the works of Marx and Engels, with a particular emphasis on Engels, who was crucial in establishing the basic principles of socialist governance. Next, the book focuses on the Soviet Union, which was the first country in human history to experience socialism in power. The rarely studied DPRK (North Korea) comes next, as a transition to East Asia, followed by a number of chapters on China, which arguably has the most developed form of socialist governance. (shrink)

Through an historical analysis of the transnational practices of economists during the Cold War, Johanna Bockman rejects the narrative that the revolutions of 1989 represented the victory of ‘Western economics’, and especially neoliberalism, over ‘East-European socialism’. Rather, Bockman shows that the space of exchange, as well as policy experimentation in socialist states such as Yugoslavia and Hungary, led to the articulation of alternative, decentralised, ‘market socialisms’ from the 1950s up until the 1980s. Instead of operating within separate and incommensurable (...) paradigms of ‘capitalist’ and ‘socialist’ economics, Bockman shows how neoclassical theory and its long tradition of comparing distinct economic systems became the centralepistemeallowing for the transnational exchange of ideas between economists of both the East and the West. This review-essay evaluates the book’s central claims but argues that the book stands on weaker ground when arguing that a reformed socialism was a viable option in Eastern Europe after 1989. (shrink)

This article examines approaches to early socialism from an intellectual history viewpoint, focussing on British Owenite socialism. It assesses the author's own research in the field over the past thirty-five years in an effort to measure the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches he initially adopted to the field. It attempts to balance insights associated with the so-called “Cambridge School” with those gained in particular from the standpoints of the history of religion and the history (...) of emotions, and a theory of group identity which can in part be associated with the history of utopianism. (shrink)

The book examines disabled figures in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, in African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and in the popular cultural ritual of the freak ...

Paul Tillich believes that the sacred and human history undergo a parallel development, which is ‘punctuated’ from time to time by the ‘breaking’ of the former within the latter during moments of special significance, kairoi; these become “centers” of human history. Such a ‘center’ must not be comprehended either in terms of quantity, or as a midpoint between past and future, or as a particular moment, but as something that makes coherent the manifestation of the Kingdom of God (...) within the human collective existence. One of the understanding the German Theologian has concerning human history is that it is a succession of such ‘centers’. This is an ‘evolutionary’ view within the history of ideas, and a topic I dealt with in my work. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 414-432, December 2021.

The 20th century is the aeon for the social and national liberation of the individual. Freedom is a boon and basic right of every individual’s existence. Human freedom is infringed by certain social and economic order. This research paper undertakes the task to reveal the reasons behind the pandemonium of humankind living in capitalism; the basic fact for the rise and development of socialism around the globe. This paper is divided into six parts. Part I is introduction. Part II (...) deals with historical need to replace capitalism by socialism. Part III explores the economic decisive factors in capitalism. Part IV explores the economic decisive factors in socialism. Part V leads to threats of neo-colonialism. Part VI is conclusion. This research finally leads to the conclusion that socialism is the system for the abolition of regime of exploitation created by capitalism. It aims at transforming a just society based upon principles of equality, fraternity, democracy and fair play. (shrink)

This article examines the life and activities of the Italian intellectual Aldo Mieli as examples of the impact on intellectual agendas of interference by the authorities. Mieli is nowadays known as one of the founders of the history of science as an autonomous discipline and as a pioneer of gay rights. For most of his life he managed to further his activities related to the history of science. The political career that he started as a young man, however, (...) was cut short because the Italian Socialist Party could not accept his homosexuality. His first exile, and his leaving of one of the two journals he had founded, _Rassegna di studi sessuali_, in the hands of people close to the Fascist regime have been generally seen as Mieli’s free choice. But his private correspondence reveals that his hatred and fear of the regime left him with no option. In particular, the regime did not tolerate any opposition to its demographic policy and its own view of eugenics. As a consequence _Rassegna_ was brought into line and Mieli pushed aside. The Fascist regime thus covertly closed down a prominent forum for discussion of sexuality and homosexuality. (shrink)

This fourth volume of Professor G. D. H. Cole’s magnum opus, ‘A History of Socialist Thought’, covers the period from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the world–wide economic depression of the nineteen–thirties. The period is so crowded with great events that the present volume is issued in two separate parts under the title Communism and Social Democracy. These furnish in a single continuous narrative and commentary the history of socialist movements in all parts (...) of the world, and demonstrate, in clearer light than the previous volumes, the remarkable combination of analysis and synthesis which Professor Cole brings to his work. He has succeeded in reducing a subject–matter of almost unlimited extent, diffuseness and complication to clear patterns and a narrative as direct and easy to read as one of his detective stories. (shrink)

Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analysis supports a programme of public ownership and economic democracy intended to reduce domination in the (...) workplace and wider society. I defend this socialist republicanism from both the Marxist objection that it overlooks the impersonal nature of domination under capitalism and the left-liberal objections that property-owning democracy or worker codetermination are sufficient to suppress dominating relationships. The resulting position identifies the need for more ambitious institutional grounds for republican liberty than is often supposed, while offering us a distinctive emancipatory justification for socialism. (shrink)

This article is based on the assumption that core concepts of National Socialism—different from Marxism—turn not on economic, but on moral concepts, or categories heavily related to such concepts as honour, loyalty, decency and comradeship. The article investigates National Socialism from the standpoint of moral judgments, and turns this investigation into part of a moral history. It further is concerned with the continuing impact of National Socialism beyond the military, political and ideological defeat of 1945; the (...) moral historical approach can show how this influence continues at a level hitherto relatively unexamined. The moral history of National Socialism involves more than a shift of perspective. It opens up a specific, barely explored, field of research. This draws upon a variety of sources, especially films (Hotel Sacher—1939 and Downfall—2004 are discussed). The examination is directed to the concept of loyalty within this framework; it is a concept of virtue, which is moreover suited to illuminate some aspects of the functioning of Nazi morality, and its subsequent influence. (shrink)

In histories of Serbian painting Sreten Maric is listed among the protagonists of socialist realism, and that on the basis of a single article - his criticism of an exhibition staged by the Association of Visual Artists of Serbia to the benefit of wounded veterans. Without denying the historical basis for this judgment, the author of the present paper pleads for a more nuance approach and propounds the thesis that socialist realism was primarily a complex pattern of social relations, and (...) only in the second place a substantively defined doctrine. On the basis of an insight into the relevant sources it is argued that Maric was not a theorist of socialist realism; on the other hand, an ideologue of social painting he was indeed, believing in a synthesis of Art and Revolution. By way of comparison, the figures of Miroslav Krleza and Georg Luk?cs are referred to: neither of the two was a protagonist of socialist realism, though both belonged firmly to the so-called leftist thought. U istorijama srpskog slikarstva Sreten Maric vazi za protagonistu socijalistickog realizma, i to na osnovu jednog clanka - kritike na izlozbu Udruzenja likovnih umetnika Srbije u korist ranjenih boraca. Ne poricuci istorijsku ocenu, autor pledira za nijansiraniji stav i izlaze tezu da je socijalisticki realizam bio u prvom redu jedan sklop drustvenih odnosa, pa tek onda i neka sadrzinski odredjena doktrina. Uvidom u izvore, zakljucio je da Maric nije bio teoreticar socijalistickog realizma, ali ideolog socijalnog slikarstva jeste bio, uz veru u sintezu Umetnosti i Revolucije. Za poredjenje su mu posluzili Miroslav Krleza i Georg Luk?cs: ni jedan, ni drugi nije bio protagonista socijalistickog realizma, mada su obojica pripadala cvrsto tzv. levoj misli. (shrink)

This important new study is an intellectual history exploring the reception of Darwinism by prominent German socialist theoriests: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engles, Friedrich Albert Lange, Ludwig B chner, August Bebel, Karl Katusky, and Eduard Bernstein. It relies not only on published books, articles, and speeches by these men, but also on some unpublished correspondence. In addition, one chapter covers the anti-socialist stance of prominent Darwinian biologists, including Charles Darwin and the foremost champion of Darwinism in Germany, Ernst Haeckel. Darwinism's (...) effect on German socialism's view of eugenics, race and religion are also discussed. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, technological (...) modernity and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)

This book presents a critical assessment of the political and social order in the post-revolutionary decade of the 1990s in both the transitional economies and Western welfare states confronting fiscal crises. As we enter the new post-socialist century, James M. Buchanan argues that we need to think and act on the premise that the future is uncertain. James M. Buchanan examines the political economy of the post-socialist era, analysing the events of 1989-91 and some of their predicted consequences. In addition (...) he reflects upon the influence of those revolutionary years and the reactions to the changes, as well as the role of economists in the new socio-political environment. The political economy of the post-socialist era will be determined by the forces of historical development, social and cultural evolution, directed political change and exogenous shocks. To a large extent, many of these forces cannot be planned for, except directed political change. This insightful new book will be welcomed by political economists, legal and political philosophers, political scientists and public choice economists. (shrink)

The Nacional Socialist totalitarian project unleashed an unprecedented savagery in Europe, giving raise to the largest war to have taken place in our history and to a never before seen systematic genocide. In opposition to those who consider this way of savagery as something purely irrational, the truth is that Nazism’s savagery was product of a “rational” project which would have its roots in the period of the Enlightenment. The cruel and inhuman murder of millions of people was the (...) result of a perfectly planned, systematic, and rational act, supported in a bureaucracy which made easier the creation of a series of psychological barriers by perpetrators and whose traces were intended to be erased from history. From this point of view, National Socialism showed that Reason by itself does not save the world from savagery. (shrink)

This is a textual examination of Simone Weil's works which the author relates to classic Marxism and anarchism. It discusses Weil's critique of worker misery/alienation, imperialism, and the social systems of capitalism, Nazism and Soviet Communism.

Socialism grew up in opposition to capitalism, just as liberalism developed in reaction to feudalism. Both liberalism and socialism combined potent critiques of the existing socio‐economic order with blueprints for a desirable future society. However, liberalism provides a rather more coherent body of thought than does socialism, and its theories are linked with the emergence of a dominant system combining capitalism and liberal democracy. By contrast, no widespread socio‐economic order has as yet emerged which can be confidently (...) or closely associated with the ideas of socialism. In both cases the relationship between theories and actual systems is a contestable one, but it has been particularly problematic in the history of socialism. (shrink)

This paper offers a new version of a historically influential, yet today unpopular, neglected, and on the whole insufficiently developed argument for socialism: socialism makes it possible for people to really act together. This idea of socialist action, combining the claims that there is a particularly valuable form of joint action and that socialism is about making such action possible, played an important role in the history of the labor movement, going back to the early Marx (...) and running through various strands of socialist thought. I shall argue that socialist action should be seen as central to the socialist project, its critique of capitalism, and the institutional alternatives envisaged by it. (shrink)

The socialist project is burdened by a history of brutal failures. The authors of the papers collected in this volume are convinced that a democratic and humane socialism is both desirable and possible. They lay out their view of different aspects of this new socialism in this book. Anatole Anton and Richard Schmitt are both the editors and contributors to this book. -/- Select chapters translated into Spanish have appeared in a volume in Barcelona, Spain.

Elie Halévy's later works have made him one of the most renowned French liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. I want to argue, however, that there exists another facet of the man, more republican than liberal, to be found in his pre-Great War papers. Halévy reveals himself as a man with reformist tendencies, concerned with the concrete aspects of freedom, both for individuals and peoples, and therefore holding more qualified views on the project of a political and social control of (...) the economy. My analysis focuses on Halévy's unpublished first series of lectures on the history of European Socialism, delivered in 1902 at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, in which the major features of this early Halévy can be best identified. (shrink)

In the 1950s, embryology in socialist China underwent a series of changes that adjusted the disciplinary apparatus to suit socialism and the national goal of self-reliance. As the Communist state called on scientists to learn from the Soviets, embryologists’ comprehensive view on heredity, which did not contradict Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976)’s doctrines, provided a space for them to advance their discipline. Leading scientists, often trained abroad in the tradition of experimental embryology, rode on the tides of Maoist ideology and repositioned (...) their research. Some of their creative realignment of previous research questions, materials, and traditions to Marxist philosophy and agricultural objectives generated productive programs. In particular, Tong Dizhou (1902–1979) translated Engels’s dialectics of nature into a research question about cytoplasmic inheritance. His continuing investigation on it led to the first goldfish “clone” through a nuclear transplantation experiment; Zhu Xi and his associates transferred a goldfish model in embryology into studies on improving carp aquaculture, leading to a rare success in the Great Leap Forward of 1958. These directions for embryology continued well into the 1960s. At a time when global embryology was diversifying and began to be molecularized, eventually forming “developmental biology,” socialist embryology took shape in China with a different set of epistemic and practical commitments. The history of its development challenges and enriches our understanding of the concrete process of change in one discipline under Mao, showing ways in which scientists creatively adapted state-sanctioned ideologies and visions to do productive work outside the framework of molecular biology during the Cold War. (shrink)

According to Trawny, Heidegger’s Black Notebooks show that he turned away from any National Socialism in 1938 and that his thinking could be “contaminated” by National Socialism and anti-Semitism only between 1931 and 1944/1945. However, in this paper it is argued that already in Being and Time Heidegger had made a case for National Socialism; that he discovered in 1938 the “true” National Socialism, and that Trawny’s main criterion regarding Heidegger’s anti-Semitism is false. Heidegger’s case is (...) compared with Max Scheler, who, because of Hitler, turned from the right to the centre. In addition, alternatives to Trawny’s detailed interpretations of three of Heidegger’s anti-Semitic remarks are offered, it is shown that Trawny misconstrues Heidegger’s anti-Semitism, and the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger’s history of Being are presented. (shrink)