Resumen Jürgen Fuchs (1950-99) fue uno de los escritores nacidos en la RDA, cuyas biografías no solo fueron moldeadas por el régimen del SED, sino también deformadas con eficacia. Asimismo, fue uno de los pocos que trató expresiva y abruptamente los tabúes y mecanismos de un Estado gobernado de manera totalitaria. La obra literaria de Fuchs es un testimonio de época, un desafío al régimen comunista y a su legado contenido en los archivos de la Stasi. Por un lado, su (...) escritura, saturada de experiencia y teñida de autobiografía, lleva al lector a un impactante viaje a los tiempos de la segunda dictadura alemana y le permite echar un vistazo, entre bastidores, a la sociedad (post)socialista; por otro lado, se nos revela que Jürgen Fuchs, en su calidad de intelectual, se sintió obligado a intervenir allí donde había que prevenir la violencia, la mentira y el olvido. Este artículo examina el desarrollo literario de este autor, independiente en muchos aspectos, y examina las razones que le motivaron a romper el silencio y tender la mano hacia la verdad y la justicia e incluso, de ser necesario, a provocar un debate abierto. Abstract Jürgen Fuchs (1950-1999) was one of those GDR-born writers, whose biographies were not only shaped by the SED regime, but which also successfully deformed it. He was one of the few individuals who eloquently and unwaveringly exposed the taboos and mechanism of the totalitarian state. Fuchs’s literary oeuvre is a testimony of his times as well as a confrontation with the communist regime and its legacy in the form of the Stasi records. Coloured autobiographically and saturated with his own life experience, his writing takes the reader on a shocking journey into the time of the second German dictatorship, allowing them a look behind the scenes of the (post) socialist society. At the same time it brings about a realisation that as an intellectual Fuchs felt obliged to interfere whenever it was necessary to prevent violence, lies and forgetting about the past. This article traces the literary development of Fuchs as an independent writer and examines his motivation not to remain silent, to strive for truth and justice, and to provoke debate, whenever necessary. (shrink)

The following interview is with a retired eastern German professor whose career constitutes a case history in the comparative politics of “academic unfreedom”. Professor Erhard Naake was the only Ph.D. student in the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to write his dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, whose work was considered “anti-socialist” throughout the history of the GDR regime. Because Herr Naake had the temerity to select Nietzsche as his thesis topic – a philosopher whose work was banned from GDR (...) bookstores and never taught in GDR schools or even universities – he never received an appointment as a professor in a GDR university. Ironically, however, even after the collapse of the GDR in 1989–1990, Herr Naake was penalized by the new powers-that-be in reunited Germany. He once again suffered a violation of his academic freedom when the university evaluation boards, which were composed of western German scholars, refused to let him keep his recently acquired position as a professor and instead summarily fired him, thus leading to his enforced retirement. As we shall see, the dramatic life story of Herr Naake reflects not only complicated issues of academic freedom and communist versus capitalist political values, but also the rich and complex history of eastern Germany both under the Nazis and GDR Communists and within reunited Germany since 1990. (shrink)

Dictatorships destroy intellectual freedom, yet universities need it. How, then, can universities function under dictatorships? Are they more a support or a danger for the system? In this volume, leading experts from five countries explore the many dimensions of accommodation and conflict, control and independence, as well as subservience and resistance that characterized the relationship of universities to dictatorial regimes in communist and fascist states during the twentieth century: Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Francoist Spain, Maoist China, the Soviet Union, (...) and the Soviet bloc countries of Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland. Comparisons across these cases reveal that the higher-education policies of modern dictatorships were characterized by a basic conflict of aims. On the one hand, universities were supposed to propagate reigning ideology and serve as training grounds for a dependable elite. Consequently, university autonomy was restricted, research used for political legitimation, personnel policies subjected to political calculus, and many undesired scholars simply put out on the street. On the other hand, modern dictatorships needed well-educated scientists, physicians, teachers, and engineers for the implementation of their political, economic, and military agendas. Communist and fascist leaders thus confronted the basic question of whether universities should be seen primarily as producers of ideology and functionaries loyal to the party line or as places where indispensable knowledge was made available. Dictatorships that opted to subject universities to rigorous political control reduced their scholarly productivity. But if the institutes of higher learning were left with too much autonomy, there was a danger that they would go astray politically. Besides the editors, the contributors are Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Michael David-Fox, Jan Havránek, Ralph Jessen, György Péteri, Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer, and Douglas Stiffler. (shrink)

In contrast to the home-made Nazi regime, the East German dictatorship was imposed by a foreign power and remained dependent on it. It did not cause a civilizational collapse comparable to Nazism, but it was more totalitarian in its efforts to subordinate all areas of social life to political control. This totalitarian logic resulted in a permanent dilemma: the party-state suppressed the innovative potential which at the same time it needed to achieve its modernizing aims. Various responses to this (...) problem were tried in the course of the history of the GDR: phases of liberalization - loosening of control in various fields - were relatively brief and insignificant. Attempts to reform and rationalize the controlling centre were more characteristic of the East German regime; this strategy, combined with visions of a `scientific-technical revolution', may be seen as the GDR version of reform communism. When the leadership gave up such ambitions in the 1970s, the only alternative left was to pacify society by means of improving living standards and developing a more flexible policy towards the other German state. This minimalist strategy of survival left the regime defenceless when it faced a major crisis at the end of the 1980s. (shrink)

THE FIRST STAGE OF COMMUNISM, FOR MARX, IS A MODIFIED EXCHANGE ECONOMY. THUS IT SHOULD BE MARKED BY ALIENATION OR FETISHISM. BUT MARX DENIES THIS IN CHAPTER 1 OF VOLUME I OF "CAPITAL". THE REASON BEING THAT THE WORKERS WOULD BE IN CONTROL OF THEIR EXCHANGE RATHER THAN CONTROLLED BY IT. IN EARLIER WRITINGS, THIS CONTROL SEEMED TO REQUIRE A POWERFUL STATE APPARATUS, AND THUS POLITICAL ESTRANGEMENT. IN SOME, BUT NOT ALL, OF HIS LATER WRITINGS, MARX ARGUES THAT SUCH A (...) STATE APPARATUS WOULD NOT BE NECESSARY. THIS CONFLICT IS DUE TO THE FACT THAT MARX EMPLOYS TWO DIFFERENT MODELS FOR THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM. (shrink)

Imagine, if you can, St. Augustine convening a council in the year 430 and announcing, "Sorry, the eschaton has been cancelled. Moreover, the City of Man, with a little time and effort, will gradually transform itself into the City of God." Now imagine the dismay of certain French communists in 1976 when their party’s 22nd Congress dropped the goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat and proclaimed its dedication to a "democratic road to socialism." This imperfect analogy may allow (...) us to sense the passion that motivates Etienne Balibar’s attack on the PCF’s decision and his defense of an orthodox reading of Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat. (shrink)

Generally believed that "theory of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat" is a "Cultural Revolution" guiding ideology, which in ten years the "Cultural Revolution" period has been widely publicized, has written to the Chinese Communists "nine", "Top Ten", "Eleventh large "by the political report and constitution, but also to write the fourth and fifth National People's Congress meeting adopted constitutional changes, the impact is huge. When it was proposed that "the history of Marxism has set a third (...) great milestone," and after more than ten years later, "since the founding of the party on a number of resolutions on the question of history" has made ​​it a completely different assessment that It is the "leftist" errors and this should be "resolutely corrected." In this paper, the editorial "October Socialist Revolution opened up along the path," CPC "nine", Hua Guofeng, the Third Plenum and "since the founding of the party on a number of resolutions on the question of history," as the coordinates of the tracking the fate of its history and study. q "The Theory on Continuing the Revolution under the Leadership of Proletarians" is commonly regarded as the guiding ideology of the Cultural Revolution. Widely publicized during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, it has been incorporated into the Chinese Communist Party's constitution and the People's Republic of China's constitution for numerous times and has exerted a great influence on the state. By the time it was initially proposed in 1967, it was regarded as' the third landmark in the history of Marxism. But it was subject to a completely different fate more than ten years later as it was labeled "pinko" and was required to he "corrected" in Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China. This paper aims to conduct an investigation of the historical fate of "the Theory on Continuing the Revolution under the Dictatorship of Proletarians" with reference to the following texts: Go Ahead Along the Way Inaugurated by October Socialist Revolution, Report of the Ninth National Congress of the CPC, Hua Guofeng's Talkings, Report of the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China. (shrink)

There is a sense, perhaps, in which our present topic is like Mrs. Harris, or snakes in Ireland, or the reigning King of Portugal—that is to say that there is no such thing. For if by communist one means simply a “ red,” it is at least permissible to argue that Moscow and Leningrad are places where there can be no ethics at all. In saying this I do not mean to refer to any particular actions whose object has (...) been to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, or in other words the next immediate step in the policy of these communists. What Zinoviev and others of them say is that they are engaged in a war against all bourgeois administrations, and that, being at war, they are not bound to accept the rules of French duelling,i.e. any outworn conventions, whether these are called ethical or not. Since it is admitted, I suppose, by nearly every. (shrink)

This paper investigates material legalism and its influence on shaping the Albanian communist state. It aims to shed light on the underlying complexities and constraints of material legalism in Albania by analyzing the legislation established during the proletariat dictatorship. This underscores the disparity between the communist ideology, which was claimed to be liberating and progressive, and the history of a legal system that extended control even into private matters. Consequently, challenges arose in the legal interpretation, implementation, and (...) practical enforcement of normative laws in Albanian society. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the importance of recognizing both the formal and material realities when establishing an effective legal order to meet the needs of Albanian citizens. (shrink)

There is a sense, perhaps, in which our present topic is like Mrs. Harris, or snakes in Ireland, or the reigning King of Portugal—that is to say that there is no such thing. For if by communist one means simply a “ red,” it is at least permissible to argue that Moscow and Leningrad are places where there can be no ethics at all. In saying this I do not mean to refer to any particular actions whose object has (...) been to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, or in other words the next immediate step in the policy of these communists. What Zinoviev and others of them say is that they are engaged in a war against all bourgeois administrations, and that, being at war, they are not bound to accept the rules of French duelling, i.e . any outworn conventions, whether these are called ethical or not. Since it is admitted, I suppose, by nearly every. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to outline the history of anticommunist legislation in interwar Yugoslavia and to bring to the fore its key phases. This approach is employed to re-examine the effectiveness of the introduced laws, to pinpoint their shortcomings, but also their strong points. Virtually from its creation, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) was hostile to communism. Anticommunist convictions of the ruling elites influ­enced many aspects of governance, not only internal affairs, as the outlawing of (...) the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in December 1920, but also foreign policy, as postponing the recognition of the Soviet Union to 1940. There are three distinct phases of anticommunist legislation, each clearly marked by a key anticommunist law. During the first phase (1918-1921), there were few legal instruments for combating left-wing radicalism. The second phase (1921-1929) was marked by the introduction of a highly controversial Law on the Protection of Public Security and State Order, which gave previous unprecedented powers to the prosecutors and police to crush the emerging communist movement. This legal framework was further expanded after the proclamation of the King`s dictatorship in 1929, and the overhaul of the Law, as well as the introduction of a special tribunal – The State Court for the Protection of the State. (shrink)

In July 1976, Althusser delivered a lecture in Spain on the topic of the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the moment that many Western European Communist parties sought formally or informally to distance themselves from the dictatorships of both West and East, Althusser proposed to examine the emergence of the concept of the proletarian dictatorship in a specificity. The debates of the mid-seventies, he argued, obscured or repressed the concept’s corollary: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a (...) notion that made visible the forms of coercion and control characteristic of ‘bourgeois democracy’. To ignore the latter was to risk squandering the opportunities the conjuncture offered and suffer both political and theoretical regression. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Sacred and the Myth: Havel's Greengrocer and the Transformation of Ideology in Communist Czechoslovakia Marci Shore University ofToronto There is nothing a free man is so anxious to do as to find something to worship. But it must be something unquestionable, that all men can agree to worship communally. For the great concern ofthese miserable creatures is not that every individual should find something to worship that (...) he personally considers worthy ofworship, but that they should find someming in which they can all believe and which they can all worship in common; it is essential that it should be in common. And it is precisely that requirement ofshared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another.Fyodor Dostoevsky (306) Thus the conflict between the aims of life and the aims of the system is not a conflict between two socially defined and separate communities; and only a very generalized view (and even that only approximative) permits us to divide society into the rulers and the ruled. Here, by the way, is one of the most important differences between the post-totalitarian system and classical dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can still be drawn according to social class. In the post-totalitarian system, 1 64Marci Shore this line runs defacto through each person, for everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter ofthe system. Vaclav Havel (37) The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia arrived as a symbolically gentle conclusion to a half-century long era ofharrowing violence and totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. It was an era that saw the emergence ofNazism, Stalinism, and various indigenous fascisms, effecting a startling demonstration of the potency of ideology to co-opt minds and to wreak violence. The existence of communist ideology as a myth cohering communist totalitarian societies has been widely enough asserted. Yet this analysis can be taken to a further level through the aid oftwo paradigms. The first is a theory of human relationships developed by René Girard, which blends the disciplines ofliterary criticism, anthropology, philosophy, and political science. The second is a model arising from Vaclav Havel's parable of the greengrocer, told in "The Power ofthe Powerless" (1979). Girard's model posits the existence ofthe sacred, that locus of power that was once the pole of primitive religions. The core of the sacred is transfigured human violence. Girardian scholar Robert Hamerton-Kelly explains the process by which the sacred comes into being: Girard tells us that [the sacred] is a mendacious representation of human violence; "it is the sum ofhuman assumptions resulting from collective transferences focused on a reconciliatory victim at the conclusion of a mimetic crisis." The element of "the overwhelming" defines the Sacred...but its primary content is violence understood as being...outside ofnormal human control. (142) The sacred is established as the result of a crisis, one which finds resolution in the purging ofa relatively arbitrary scapegoat. Following this catharsis, three expressions sustain the sacred: myth, ritual, and prohibition. An examination ofthe evolution ofthese expressions in Czechoslovakia from the Stalinist period through normalization (the so-termed "posttotalitarian " period described by Havel in his essay) reveals much about the paradoxical dynamics ofideologically-based totalitarianism—which Havel defines most poignantly by suggesting that at the essence of ideological totalitarianism is the collapsing of the traditional dichotomy between victim and oppressor. The Sacred and the Myth: Havel's Greengrocer165 A Girardian deconstruction of Stalinism A political space for Stalinism developed in Czechoslovakia through the tumultuous period of Nazi occupation and the communist nature of anti-Nazi resistance. By the eve ofthe 1948 communist coup, the communists had claimed thirty-eight percent ofthe popular vote in free elections. Milan Kundera describes the coup as a usurpation of power "not in bloodshed and violence, but to the cheers of about half the population" (1986, 8). Defining this initial fanaticism was its honesty, especially among the younger generation. A young Stalinist later to become a reformist, and still later a dissident, Zdenek Mlynár, explains... (shrink)

Mihai Ralea was a university professor and prominent representative of the Romanian interwar literary intelligentsia. M. Ralea taught psychology, sociology and aesthetics, and was at the same time the director of a reputed literary magazine (Viaţa românească-Romanian Life). Ralea was also a politician, initially an important member of the National Peasant Party, representing its centre left wing. In his case, one may notice the contradiction between his moral arguments in public and his deeds after he reached positions of power (Minister (...) of Labour under the royal dictatorship, Minister of Arts under the pro-communist Petru Groza government, etc.). Ralea was also called “the moralist without morals”, and the compromises he made – manifested through his adherence to anti-democratic regimes – can be documented by numerous archival documents. Due to strong political connections, Ralea survived in the high ranks of cultural bureaucracy even during cultural Stalinism. He maintained important positions both at the University of Bucharest and with humanities research institutes of the post-1948 Soviet-style Romanian Academy of Sciences. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he also gained posi-tions of international cultural representation with the Romanian branch of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNES-CO) and the Romanian Institute for the Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (IRRCS, the Romanian VOKS). His survival (as a professor of psychology after 1948) had a significant price – Ralea’s collaboration with the Stalinist regime. Using open sources and also newly declassified archival documents, the article is an attempt to approach M. Ralea’s case of survival in the high cultural bureaucracy in the East European context. (shrink)

This article presents a fragment of the history of psychology in Poland, discussing its development in the years 1945–56, which saw sweeping political and geographical transformations. In that maelstrom of history, psychology was particularly affected by the effects of geopolitical changes, which led to its symbolic ‘arrest’ in 1952, when psychological practice was prohibited and all psychology courses were abolished at universities. Amnesty was declared only in 1956, with the demise of the so-called Stalinist ‘cult of personality’ and the onset (...) of a turbulent period when the crimes of the Stalinist era were prosecuted. We have adopted three time frames for our description and analysis of this dramatic period in the development of psychology in Poland. ‘The past’ is a story about the flourishing of Polish psychology before World War Two and the hopes for the discipline’s restoration after the war. ‘The present’, as the core of this narrative, represents the events of 1950–56. ‘The future’ refers to the period when Stalinist abuses were prosecuted during the Thaw, following the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorship, and the resurgence of Polish psychologists’ hopes for resurrecting their discipline. In all these periods, the narrative is interwoven with the story of the Polish psychologist Mieczysław Kreutz, who offers a model example of the hypothesized dependence of scientific research on sociopolitical change. (shrink)

In Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It), Elizabeth Anderson argues that most people in the United States and other liberal societies spend their working lives under the kind of autocratic rule we would normally associate with communist dictatorships. They are forced to work in oppressive environments, deprived of many freedoms, and given practically no say over working conditions. Even in their nonworking lives workers are frequently subjected to employer scrutiny and sanction. (...) And the legal framework and economic realities surrounding employment are such that exit is viable for only a small minority. Anderson’s work has generated great interest and, along with it, several criticisms that take exception to her observations, economic assumptions, and conclusions. This paper delineates the various economic claims made against Private Government so as to facilitate further inquiry of these issues. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the controversy of Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov, the so-called “another Bolshevik”, with Lenin and his associates on the question of the revolution and the ways of building a socialist society and state. It is shown that Bogdanov expressed a critical attitude towards the revolution and its socialist nature, the ability of the proletariat to play a decisive role in it, and wrote about Russia’s unpreparedness for an anti-capitalist coup, thereby expressing a distinctly marked anti-Leninist position. Based (...) on the analysis of a large corpus of Bogdanov’s works, the authors focused their attention on the following aspects of his work relating to the theme of revolution: the contradictions between Bogdanov and Lenin in its interpretation even before October 1917; Bogdanov’s views on the revolution and real socialism after its completion; his interpretation and evaluation of “war communism”; the program for building socialism in the USSR and the search for ways to form fundamentally new social structures developed in the context of the science of tectology, created by him; Bogdanov’s project “Proletkult” and his utopian novels, in which he foresaw how “socialism in one country” would be built and how the transition from the old exploitative to new forms of human coexistence would be carried out, as well as the danger of the degeneration of democracy into a dictatorship. (shrink)

THE ITALIAN CASE - FROM LABRIOLA TO GRAMSCITaking The Communist Manifesto as a point of departure, this article intends to emphasize the aporia in the works of Marx between Marx the scientist og Marx the politician, that furthermore reflects some of the main fractures between on one hand the theoretical interpretation of the capitalistic mode of production and on the other hand the strategic approaches characterizing the attempts of the European Socialist parties and the early European labour movement to (...) overcome the ever returning crisis and the deep-rooted class conflicts. The specific Italian experiences offer the opportunity not only to discuss the philosophical and scientific contents of historical materialism but also to reactualize the political categories of democracy vis-à-vis the dictatorship of the proletariat and permanent revolution. In this respect, Antonio Labriola was a leading figure in the Italian debate of Marxism in the years between the 18th and the 19th Centuries, while Antonio Gramsci in the 1930ies revised the Marxist-Leninist tradition in the light of Fascism and the Stalinistic impasse of the Russian revolution. (shrink)

The paper conceptualizes five basic developmental paths the post-Soviet republics followed. The conceptual framework of this paper is expanded theory of real socialism in non-Marxian historical materialism, namely proposed the model of secession from socialist empire. The first developmental path was followed by societies in which an independent civil revolution took place. This path of development bifurcates into two furhter sub-variants. Namely civil revolutions in the Baltic republics (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) resulted in the independence and stable democracies. Civil revolution in (...) Caucasus republics (Armenia, Gergia) were partially succesfull because civil movement in these societies were unable to build stable democracies. Countries such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine followed next developmental path. Its characteristic feauture is active participation of republican communist nomenclatures in seceding from the Soviet Union and gaining state independence. In this variant of development, democratization - characteristic for the first period of independence was counterbalanced by the growing autocratization of political system. This path of development was divided into two developmental variants: in one group of countries (Ukraine) the growth of autocratization caused civil resistance (Ukraine), in the rest societies of this group (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova) - not. Finally the countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) followed the fith developmental path. In these societies, independence permitted to preserve dictatorship of local communist nomenclatures. (shrink)

During the communist era, Radio Free Europe (RFE) was Romania's favorite radio station. This paper analyzes the role of RFE in everyday life in the strictly controlled Romanian communist state by looking at the broadcasts of RFE's Romanian Department, their audience, and their impact. Drawing largely on the RFE archives at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) and the former secret police files at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), it (...) investigates how radio waves mediated and channeled information while preparing people to embrace political and cultural change. The paper focuses on the circulation of knowledge, media confluences, and human agency. The rituals that developed around the secrecy which governed the listening process, the personal requests, attitudes, and opinions expressed in letters to RFE, and oral and written testimonies, coupled with the disproportionate and, at times, extreme reactions of the communist state, together reveal the carving out of individual spaces that allowed for the preservation of the “self” during Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship. At such critical historical moments, the connection became visible. Through an analysis of recent media representations in which RFE figures, such as Cold Waves, this study also looks at how RFE shaped personal memories of communist times. (shrink)

Adrian Marino, Cenzura în România - Schitã istoricã introductivã Ed. Aius, Craiova, 2000, 96 p.

The Evrazijstvo movement was an intellectual current which recognized the Revolution of 1917 as a fateful event and conceived itself as a third way for Russia between individualism and Soviet Communism. At the philosophical level Evrazijstvo was an extension of the Russian Idea. Basing himself on the principle of All-Unity Karsavin put his concept of the symphonic personality to work in critically referring to the philosophical concepts and methodological approaches then current in Europe. The Evrazijstvo idea was later to be (...) reduced to the idea of the political power of ideocracy, an ideology of dictatorship and power, which raised sympathies for the strong state of the Soviet dictatorship, thus failing to provide a real alternative to the latter. (shrink)

The Evrazijstvo movement was an intellectual current which recognized the Revolution of 1917 as a fateful event and conceived itself as a “third way” for Russia between individualism and Soviet Communism. At the philosophical level Evrazijstvo was an extension of the Russian Idea. Basing himself on the principle of “All-Unity” Karsavin put his concept of the “symphonic personality” to work in critically referring to the philosophical concepts and methodological approaches then current in Europe. The Evrazijstvo idea was later to be (...) reduced to the idea of the political power of ideocracy, an ideology of dictatorship and power, which raised sympathies for the “strong state” of the Soviet dictatorship, thus failing to provide a real alternative to the latter. (shrink)

Music is an inescapable part of social, cultural and political life, and has played a powerful role in mobilising support for popular movements demanding social justice. The impact of David Bowie, Prince and Bob Dylan, for example, on diversity awareness and legislative reform relating to sexuality, gender and racial equality respectively is still felt; with the latter receiving a Nobel Prize in 2016 for ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. The influence of these composers and (...) performers reached far beyond the concert hall. Conversely, musical propaganda has been a common feature of many dictatorships, most notably Nazism’s Adolf Hitler and Communism’s Joseph Stalin, and is still instrumental in the election campaigns of political parties. US President Donald Trump’s winning retro classic rock campaign playlist conveyed an idealised version of the past which aligned with the tastes and interests of his core constituency, and evoked feelings of nationalistic pride and patriotism. The eclectic selection of upbeat music effectively masked the underlying capitalist initiatives, corporate greed and allegations of financial impropriety that characterised both the Democrat and Republican campaigns. Although unable to impart meaning with the same level of precision as language, music has a potentially broader semantic capacity due to its greater elasticity. It constitutes a common language which has the ability to create a community of people that sings, speaks, reasons, votes and even feels the same way. Accordingly, this article explores the symbiotic relationship between music and law, identity politics and social justice, via the lens of musical semiosis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Two Cheers for Blueprints, or, Negative Reasons for Positive UtopianismAntonis Balasopoulos (bio)It is well known that the decline of programmatic or so-called blueprint utopias and utopianism came on the heels of a widespread and concerted attack against them during the first two decades of the Cold War. In the writings of thinkers like Hayek, Popper, Talmon, Kolakowski, and many others, program became synonymous with hubris.1 It was construed as (...) a dangerous effort to regulate the diversity of human subjectivity and the complexity of the social organism, a repressive will-to-order and predictability that tainted utopias by associating them with Totalitarianism. In Popper’s exemplary exposition:The Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint for society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which therefore is likely to lead to a dictatorship. [...] [Utopia] claims to plan rationally for the whole of society, although we do not possess anything like the factual knowledge which would be necessary to make good such an ambitious claim.2 [End Page 489]Yet, though this view of how Utopia, to recall Robert C. Elliott, became “a bad word,” is accurate in itself, it also reflects only the negative or destructive side of Cold War anti-utopianism, a trend whose logical inconsistencies and ideological biases have already been ably dissected in the work of Russell Jacoby, Marc Olssen, and Darren Webb, to name but a few.3What one could term the “positive” or “productive” side of anti-utopian denunciations of the dogmatically programmatic character allegedly inherent in utopias went well beyond the exigencies of generating a geopolitical and ideological enemy image. It involved an effort to reconcile western subjects to seismic and highly consequential shifts within postwar, late-capitalist societies themselves. If, as I have argued elsewhere, utopian fictions (and, indeed, nonfictions) before the Cold War period can be read as fictions of organization—of everything from architecture and urban planning, to production, sexuality and biological reproduction, clothing, or diet—it is also the case that in them, “organization” is a response, a reaction to traumatic historical experiences of disorganization, from the decline of the ancient city-state in the case of Platonic utopianism; to the impoverishment and dislocation of rural communities in the era of Thomas More; to the experience of the fracturing of religious community during the religious, civil, and international wars that marked the seventeenth century; to the dramatic impact of early nineteenth-century industrialization on artisanal and agrarian communities, on family cohesion and on the rhythms of the premodern working day.4My argument is, then, that the anti-utopian denunciation of blueprint and program was not simply motivated by the liberal capitalist attack against the planned and highly regulated character of economy and society in the countries of so-called actually existing socialism. It was also motivated by the ideological need to normalize and legitimize the transition, within western capitalist societies themselves, to what Scott Lash and John Urry called “disorganized capitalism.” Lash and Urry’s book, originally published during the decade of the triumphant rise of neoliberalism, in 1987, launches its investigation by tellingly quoting the passage of Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto that focuses on the creatively destructive aspects of capitalist social transformation: the bourgeoisie, Lash and Urry observe, is a class “with vested interest in change, crisis and chaos”; the social world over which it presides is one “which swings wildly out of control, menacing and destructive.”5 In their introduction, the authors outline the basic features of the postwar shift from the organized capitalism of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its disarticulated successor formation during the rise of [End Page 490] neoliberal governance. Under the rubric of “disorganization” (which is to say, of a mutation within the western capitalist economic and social order), they include de-industrialization and the decline in the absolute and relative size of the working class in the core capitalist economies; the rise of flexible forms of labor organization in the place of defunct Taylorist principles; the weakening of trade unionist organization; the increasing decoupling of large monopolies from the control and regulation... (shrink)

Modern conservatism was born in the crisis of the French Revolution that sought to overturn Christianity, monarchy, tradition, and a trust in experience rather than reason. In the name of reason and progress, the French Revolution led to the guillotine, the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a decade of continental war. Today Western Civilization is again in crisis, with an ever-widening progressive campaign against religion, tradition, and ordered liberty; Francesco Giubilei's cogent reassessment of some of conservatism's greatest thinkers could (...) not be timelier. Within these pages, English-speaking readers will come across some familiar names: Burke, Disraeli, Chesterton, and Scruton. Americans get their own chapter too, including penetrating examinations of John Adams, Richard Weaver, Henry Regnery, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., and Barry Goldwater. But perhaps most interesting is Giubilei's coverage of the continental European tradition–largely Catholic, monarchical, traditionalist, and anti-Jacobin, anti-Communist, and anti-Fascist. Giubilei offers insightful intellectual portraits of statesmen and philosophers like Count Klemens von Metternich, the man who restored Europe after the Napoleonic Wars; Eric Voegelin, the German political philosopher who made his career in America and traced recurrent strains of leftism to an early Christian heresy; Joseph de Maistre, the leading French counterrevolutionary philosopher; George Santayana, a Spaniard who became an American philosopher and conservative pragmatist; Jose Ortega y Gasset, who warned of the "revolt of the masses"; and a wide variety of Italian thinkers whose conservatism was forged against a Fascist ideology that presented itself as a force for stability and respect for the past, but that was fundamentally modernist and opposed to conservatism. Unique and written by one of Italy's youngest and brightest conservative thinkers, Francesco Giubilei's History of European Conservative Thought is sure to enlighten and inform. (shrink)

Russia did not participate in the bourgeois revolution, the revolution occurred in Russia after the Tsar absolute doctrine, dictatorship, terrorism, superstition and personal police state. Stalinist Marxism beyond recognition, damaged Marx's own image. Impoverishment of the proletariat of Marx and Engels theory, crisis theory has been declared invalid, the Marxist dialectics is still valid is that the theory of contradiction. Contradictions of capitalism can be accurately understood as the general alienation, self-alienation. Inherited estate will determine the natural rights of (...) free face of communism. Straight orthopedic surgery is the most urgent task of socialism, and humane socialism contains the highest human rights as straight. Marxism is not is not a utopia, but a concrete utopia. Russia did not join in the bourgeois revolution, and there appeared absolutely Tsarism, autarchy, terror, individual superstition and police country after its revolution. Stalinism made the Marxism distorted beyond recognition and destroyed the figures of Marx himself. The theory of Proletarian poverty and the theory of crisis of Marx and Engles' were declared invalid, while its dialectic, that is Contradiction, is still valid. The contradiction of Capital can be understood precisely as Total-alienation and Self-alienation. Inheriting natural rights will decide the freedom face of Communism. Orthopaedic surgery of upright way is the most urgent mission of Socialism, and human Socialism contains the upright way as the highest human rights. Marxism is not non-Utopia, but concrete Utopia. (shrink)

From the Adriatic to the Baltic, from the Elbe to the Urals and beyond, totalitarianism has collapsed. Yet the 1989 bloodless revolution in Eastem Europe caught most observers by surprise. This essay explores the signal socio-cultural forces which contributed to the sea-change. Throughout Eastem Europe, grassroots movements emerged in the 1970s and 1980s demanding greater participation in social, economic, cultural, and political life. Thus, the rise of a new civic culture and civil society preceded and fostered the momentous changes in (...) Eastem Europe, This essay offers a model of transition from authoritarian systems to political democracy, highlighted by "The Menshevik Divide," and places East European nations and the USSR on a cognitive map which indicates the relative strength of civic values and autonomous action just before the revolution (1988), Curiously, this model also shows why the transition remains incomplete, since authoritarian values and political processes keep many post-communist systems in a twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship. Hence, the quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society is still a futuristic project in much of Eastem Europe and the Soviet successor states, suspended between democracy and "virtual communism.". (shrink)

The concept of transition appears to be linked, in Marxist theory, to a dialectical conception of the historical process, insofar as it presents itself as a necessity resulting from the development of the conditions posed by the old society. In the work of Louis Althusser, who in the mid-1960s imposed himself on the French Marxist debate with positions critical of any residue of the philosophy of history in dialectical materialism, the role of transition appears as problematic as ever. However, in (...) the second half of the 1970s, the French philosopher led a battle in defence of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, linked to that of transition. This article aims to make this apparent contradiction intelligible. An attempt will thus be made to hold together the mechanism of structuration, which prohibits the idea of a dialectical transition to communism, and the opposition to the abandonment of the perspective of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the urgency of the fight against euro-communism. Only the idea of coercive action on the elements of the structure will be able to replace the dialectical necessity in its function of giving foundation to the preservation of the reference to the dictatorship in the revolutionary process. (shrink)

The young generation of the ’80s was born and entirely educated under communist ideology. And yet indoctrination failed for some of these young people, who saw the West as a symbol of a better society to aspire to. In order to escape from S.R. Romania, some of them risked their lives in the “adventure” of crossing the border illegally. The main opponents of the fugitives, the border guards, were part of the same age group. In many cases, they behaved (...) brutally toward the fugitives. Did they come to see them as traitors, or was it just the context in which this adversity manifested itself mixed with the soldiers’ fear of their superiors’ punishments? The study is part of a more extensive research regarding the phenomenon of illegal border crossing during Ceaușescu`s dictatorship. Through this study, I aim to analyse the two situations in which some of the young people of the ’80s could find themselves: opponents of the regime (when fleeing to the West was a form of protest) and involuntary “servants” of the system, such as border soldiers, respectively. Also, I focused on identifying the reasons for the conflict between the two categories of young people belonging to the same generation. (shrink)

Although Merleau-Ponty’s early phenomenology of perception and his essays on art, politics, and language already showed an affinity between the aesthetic phenomena of expression and style and the political and cultural dynamics of society at large, this paper specifically focuses on his late theorizing of the notion of flesh and its relevance to his late understanding of politics and democracy. The emergence of flesh as a concept was contemporary to Merleau-Ponty’s break with Marxism as a philosophical model and with revolutionary (...) dialectics as a political project. It is by showing that such a break was consistently grounded on his theorizing of the being flesh of both the body and of society that this paper shows Merleau-Ponty’s unique contribution to democratic theory and to contemporary political philosophy. In the course of this analysis, it will become clear that in philosophically breaking with the position of a “no that is a yes”—i.e. the model of the revolution, which implies a total negation of the given that becomes a total affirmation of the new order (dictatorship) once in power—he would politically embrace the Weberian “heroic liberalism”—or his “non-communist left”—of parliamentary democracy. (shrink)

This essay critically reconstructs the concept of ‘democratic dictatorship’ which Georg Lukács’s outlines in Blum Theses of 1928. The essay tackles the birth of the Communist Party of Hungary, particularly focusing on its factional struggles during the 1920s. Secondly, the main contents of the Blum Theses, compared with the debate on the ‘Republican Assembly’ in the Italian Communist Party will be discussed. Finally, the essay examines the two most rooted interpretive prejudices concerning the Blum Theses, i.e. their (...) alleged forecasting character towards ‘Popular Front’ strategy and their purported distance from ‘Socialfascism’. (shrink)

Socialist buildings in the city of Kruja (Albania) date back after the Second World War between the years 1945-1990. These buildings were built during the time of the socialist Albanian dictatorship and the totalitarian communist regime. A questionnaire with 30 questions was conducted and 14 people were interviewed. The interviewed residents belong to a certain area of the city of Kruja. Based on the results obtained, diagrams have been conceived and mathematical regression models have been developed which will (...) serve as a base for drawing conclusions. The purpose of this study is to find a relationship that specifies the role of the inhabitants, the role of the dwellings, the physical-mechanical characteristics, and their energy efficiency, in order to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants. The independent variables interact with each other assuming positive or negative values depending on the probabilistic mathematical regression, giving different results based on the calculated data. The variables that co-exist among them are living space, quality of life, time spent at home, social interaction of residents, dwelling humidity level, dwelling orientation, satisfaction level of the inhabitants, dwelling improvements demand, and monthly electricity bills. (shrink)

More than half a century ago, a so-called Third Side appeared in China's political arena. The word "third" signified that its proponents intended to take a "middle way" amid the desperate, life-and-death battle between the Nationalist party and the Communist party. In a 1946 speech delivered at the Tianjin YMCA, entitled "A Political Line of an Intermediate Nature," Zhang Dongsun presented a clear and to-the-point formulation of this "middle way":In the political aspect, we should adopt more from the British (...) and American type of liberalism and democracy, while at the same time adopting, in the economic aspect, more from the Soviet Union's type of planned economy and socialism. From the negative aspect, we should adopt democracy but not capitalism. We should also adopt socialism but not the revolution of proletarian dictatorship. We want freedom but not an everything-goes attitude. We want cooperation but not struggle. Since we do not want an everything-goes attitude, we do not want monopolies by capitalists. Since we do not want struggle, we do not want class struggle. (shrink)

In accordance with the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party [December 1978], Comrade Hua Guofeng, in his "Report on the Work of the Government" delivered to the Second Session of the Fifth National People's Congress [address of June 18, 1979], provided a thorough discussion on the strengthening of socialist democracy and improvement of the socialist legal system. This session of the Congress solemnly passed the Electoral Law, the Criminal Law, (...) the Law of Criminal Procedure, and other important laws, opening a new chapter in the establishment of democracy and law in our nation. This is highly significant as a major turning point for workers throughout the nation, lifting the historical lid at all levels so that we may proceed with the four modernizations with a common mind and purpose throughout the nation, to further develop democracy and fulfill the establishment of the legal system. This will affect the consolidation and development of the state system of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It will protect the personal interests of the people, prevent the revival of counterrevolutionaries, and guarantee the realization of the four modernizations. (shrink)

The proclamation of liberal democracy as the absolute winner of the Cold War and the emergence of “prosecutorial” history after the fall of the Eastern Communist Bloc seemed to have established a certain path for researchers with regard to postwar dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe. A closer look at the meaning of “revolution” as well as at new research efforts reveal strong connections between the East and the West during that time, that determined changes in the pattern and (...) style of the scientific discourse analysing the post-war decades. (shrink)

Stefan Kisielewski’s intellectual struggle with Polish communism: Stefan Kisielewski a Polish novelist, composer, music critic, essayist, feature writer and a politician, was an exceptional personage in post‑World War II Poland. In his features, published in Tygodnik Powszechny since 1945, in a light, ironic and allusive way to prevent censorship, he described the Polish reality that his readers were acquainted with, in a way that revealed the real causes of the phenomena he observed. The truth was simple: the communist reality (...) was the result of politico‑economic system that was imposed based on a Marxist theory of economy. Kisielewski’s criticism of communism was not just a matter of a keen observation and sensible conclusions; it was based on his studies of Marxism that he began before World War II. In turn, in Wilhelm Röpke’s Die Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart, he found an accurate characterisation of the socialist economy and an explanation for its non‑functioning. The second important reason for his criticism of communism was Kisielewski’s Catholicism, which operated as a counter‑balance to Marxism, combined with the idea of a liberal‑democratic regime. In his later years, Kisielewski criticised the social teachings of the Catholic Church, and suggested a new idea that they were based on “the theology of profit” as an ideological justification of the attitudes necessary for the functioning of the market economy in Poland. He even suggested the implementation of a dictatorship to avoid long parliamentary democratic procedures, and in this way to establish a quick and effective market economy on the ruins of socialism. (shrink)

ArgumentThe process of institutionalization of Political Science in Brazil was conditioned by the country’s position in the geopolitical scenario proper to the Cold War, strongly affected by the influence of the USA and, later on, by the military dictatorship experienced between 1964 and 1985. The first Brazilian professionalized political scientists were, during their youth, anti-Stalinist revolutionary militants. They had been financed by the Ford Foundation to pursue their PhDs in the USA. In this paper, I argue that the north-American (...) model of ideological war included governmental and non-governmental institutions. Among the latter, the FF played a crucial role because it had a lot of credibility in state bureaucracy and was able to captivate the potential copartners, who would benefit from its grant, even the anti-American ones. The FF was able to do so because it was keeping a distance from the bellicose image of the USA. In this way, because Brazilian youngsters were leftist, the FF was interested in financing their studies. And, because they belonged to the anti-Stalinist left, they were more open than the communists and wouldn’t oppose to exchange with the USA. (shrink)

Twenty years ago our great teacher and leader Chairman Mao published "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People," an epoch-making piece of Marxist literature. In this brilliant piece, Chairman Mao applied the fundamental law of the universe, the law of the unity of opposites, to sum up comprehensively the historical experience of China's socialist revolution and construction and the international Communist movement and to analyze profoundly the nature, peculiarities and laws of socialist society. He was the first (...) in the history of the development of Marxism to point out clearly that the fundamental contradictions of socialist society are still the contradiction between the productive forces and production relations and the contradiction between the superstructure and the economic base. He was the first to demonstrate clearly that even after the system of ownership of the means of production has been transformed into that of a socialist country there still exist classes, class struggle, and the danger of capitalist restoration. He was the first to indicate clearly that there exist two different kinds of contradictions in socialist society which must be rigorously distinguished and correctly handled, for which he established the great theory of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the basis of the unity of theory and practice, he resolved the issue of preventing and combating revisionism, consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat, and stymied the threat of capitalist restoration. It was an important essay for our time concerning carrying the cause of socialist revolution through to the end, a great enrichment and development of Marxism-Leninism. To study this brilliant essay by Chairman Mao is of the greatest significance for China's current investigation and criticism of the Wang-Chang-Chiang-Yao "gang of four" anti-Party clique. (shrink)

After South Asia won its flag-independence from Britain, Pakistani artists pursued two distinct strategies for the shared goal of producing art in the service of national liberation. A group of communist artists sought to innovate new cultural forms to serve movements of the left, while others endeavoured to recover the pre-colonial Islamicate culture of South Asia to serve state-building efforts. During the Zia coup in 1977, protest poetry and art of the Pak Tea House, Lahore’s art and literary salon, (...) inspired resistance against the military dictatorship. This protest was framed not merely against the military dictatorship, but also against US imperialism more broadly. By examining Walter Rodney’s and Frantz Fanon’s ideal role of the postcolonial artist or intellectual, I show how the role of art in leftist politics was rethought in the aftermath of the Zia coup by the artists and leftists who frequented the Pak Tea House. What the discussions about politically engaged art that took place in the Pak Tea House during the Zia Coup reveal is that novelty and abstraction are important strategies in creating art that can combat imperialist dictatorships. (shrink)

From 17 to 22 October 1955, Madrid hosted the UNESCO Festival of Science. In the early years of the Cold War, in a dictatorial country that had recently been admitted into the international community, the festival aimed to spread science to the public through displays of scientific instruments, public lectures, book exhibitions, science writers professional associations, and debates about the use of different media. In this context, foreign visitors, many of whom came from liberal democracies, seemed comfortable in the capital (...) of a country ruled by a dictatorship that had survived after the defeat of fascism in the Second World War and was struggling to gain foreign recognition after years of isolation. This article analyzes the political role of science popularization in Madrid at that time. It approaches the apparently puzzling marriage between UNESCO’s international agenda for peace and democracy and the interests of the Francoist elites. Shared views of technocratic modernity, the fight against communism, and a diplomacy that served Spanish nationalism, paved the way for the alliance. (shrink)

Tarot cards are one means to unlocking an image. In this article, the image is that of the Albanian writer and political dissident Musine Kokalari at her 1946 trial. Her photograph features in Albanian discourses about its communist past. I argue that the image provides clues as to the manner in which the country has faced up to its own history. For what is certain is that the Albanian account of the Enver Hoxha dictatorship remains incomplete. Drawing on (...) Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘here-and-now in a flash’, and Roland Barthes’ and Italo Calvino’s reflections on photography and the power of the visual, we can identify at least two distinct memory regimes in the relevant historical, legal and political narratives. (shrink)

Fourty years ago, more than 190 Latin American bishops, attended by the newly elected Pope John Paul II, were gathered for the III General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in Mexico, in Puebla de Los Angeles, between January 27th and February 13th, 1979. For Paul VI, The purpose of celebrating the 10th anniversary of Medellin was to translate his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi to Latin America: from “evangelization in the contemporary world” to “Latin America’s evangelization in the present and (...) in the future”. The context was very disturbed for social, economic, cultural and political reality, as well as for the religious situation. Military dictatorships, torture, death and disappearance of thousands of people, resistance guerrillas, the emergence of neoliberalism, the right and neo-pentecostalism, and the election of a pope who lived under communist persecution in Poland, this was the environment that affected the Conference. In this moment of four decades celebration of this important event, the purpose of the article is to make memory of the socio-political and ecclesial context, besides recovering out two themes that are associated with the authors research: youth and education. The method is defined as content and document analysis, so it is bibliographic in nature. The conclusions show how the dynamics of the context acted in the essay of the document. And, despite of this, it was possible to move forward in some jagged aspects - youth and education - which also presented their limitations. An important “preferential option for young people” was defined as one of the pastoral priorities, and education was defined as one of the means for communion and participation. (shrink)