Suchergebnisse

In June, 1974, the two Germanys completed the official "normalization of relations" between them. In the annals of diplomatic history this final act was unique. The two states exchanged, not ambassadors, but "permanent representatives." Of these, the West German envoy was accredited to East Berlin's foreign ministry as the representative of a foreign country. His East German counterpart, on the other hand, was to deal with the Federal Chancellery in Bonn, in accordance with West Germany's view of the special nature of the East-West German relationship. The West Germans insisted that while there was no longer one German state, there still existed one German nation; this precluded the treatment of the two Germanys as foreign countries. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), however, maintained that not only had the one German state come to an end, but that there existed now, along with the two states, two different nations, one socialist, the other bourgeoiscapitalist. Because of the wholly different systems on which they were based, East and West Germany had nothing in common anymore and constituted two entirely separate, hence foreign, countries. As such, they could establish contact with each other only by means of the customary diplomatic relations. The complex procedure by which relations were in the end established was a compromise between these differing views.

In the aftermath of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, the government came to adopt an official strand of Marxism that featured a number of characteristics inherited from the late Soviet interpretation of its own experience, and a number of instrumentalist contortions corresponding to the interest of the emergent dominant strata. Tis generated contradictions between the emancipatory ideational categories employed and the social-material characteristics of the actual process of attempted development. Nowhere were these contradictions greater than in the manufacturing sector, where exhortations and demands for sacrifice on the part of the working class were only matched by the – increasingly farcical – rhetorical place of prominence of that class. By focussing on the rhetorical aims, the practical means, and the achievements recorded in this sector, this article aims to analyse the concrete manner in which these contradictions manifested themselves. Te findings indicate that the effort to construct and develop a socialist economy – narrowly defined as such in terms of the judicial form of ownership – failed on a number of levels. This failure is traced back to the nature of power relations in 'Socialist Ethiopia', and draws attention to the manner in which the ideology of 'state socialism', which shifts attention from the aim of revolutionising productive relations to the development of productive forces under state ownership, has generally been used to legitimise the rule of bureaucratic categories and to conceal exploitative relations prevailing under such rule. In this, the article draws on Marxist theorisation and critique of that ideology

1. Chapter 1: "The Apostle of the Fourth Estate" (1845-1880) -- 2. Chapter 2: "The Genius of Simplification": Guesde, Founder of the First Socialist Party (1880-1893) -- 3. Chapter Three: "The Icy Frisson of the Irreconcilable": Guesde in Parliament (1893-1898) -- 4. Chapter Four: "Finally, We've Cut Ties": The Intransigent (1898-1905) -- 5. Chapter Five: "I Have Remained an Insurgent": Guesde in the Unified Party (1905-1914) -- 6. Chapter Six: "Without him, it's no longer the same thing": Guesde the Minister and Guardian of Unity (1914-22) -- 7. Chapter Seven: "Eternal Guesdism": The Prophet's Legacies. .

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty Four that 'If there is hope, it lies in the proles.' A century earlier Marx was unequivocal: the future belonged to the proletariat. Today such confidence might seem misplaced. The proletariat has not yet fulfilled Marx's expectations, and seems unlikely ever to do so. How could Marx have entertained the notion that the proletariat would emancipate humanity from capitalism and from class rule itself? This book, first published in 1988, attempts an explanation by examining the sources and development of Marx's concept of the proletariat. It contends that t

AbstractLenin's name has been coupled with that of Marx as the co-founder of the theory of 'Marxism-Leninism'. However, despite his emphasis on the role of revolutionary theory, Lenin's original theoretical contributions to the development of Marxism were very limited. His talents were those of a determined revolutionary, in the populist tradition of Chernyshevsky, and a brilliantly effective propagandist and political organiser. His contribution to 'Marxism-Leninism' was to modify Marxist orthodoxy in such a way as to integrate the political and organisational principles of revolutionary populism into Marxism, on the basis of Plekhanov's 'dialectical materialism', whose distinctive interpretation of Marxism was Lenin's constant guide and inspiration. In this paper I want to argue that Lenin never broke from the theoretical and political traditions of Russian populism, but completed Plekhanov's project by assimilating Marxism to the very different theoretical framework of populism.

Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies is an innovative exploration of the ethical and political significance of Cultural Studies and Post-Marxist discourse theory. It argues that although Cultural Studies and post-Marxism tend to present themselves as distinct entities, they actually share a project - that of taking on the political. Post-Marxism presents itself as having a developed theory of political strategy, while Cultural Studies has claimed to be both practical and political. Bowman examines these intertwined, overlapping, controversial and contested claims and orientations by way of a deconstructive reading that is led by the question of intervention: what is the intervention of post-Marxism, of Cultural Studies, of each into the other, and into other institutional and political contexts and scenes? Through considerations of key aspects of Cultural Studies and cultural theory, Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies argues that the very thing that is fundamental to both of these 'politicised' approaches - the quest to establish a theory of intervention, and to relate this to a practice - actually remains frustrated and unrealised as a direct result of the way this has been approached. Because of this stalemate, Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies proposes a new theory of pragmatic intervention - one that is derived from Derridean deconstruction, post-Marxism and Cultural Studies, and which will be of importance and value for politicised academics and intellectuals working in all areas of political and Cultural Studies. Key Features An innovative take on the disciplines of Cultural Studies and Post-Marxism with a clear account of what Cultural Studies and post-Marxism are and why they are important. Offers explanations, accounts and critiques of key figures of Cultural Studies and post-Marxism, such as Butler, Derrida, Hall, Laclau, Mowitt, Rorty and Zizek Draws out the similarities and clarifies the significance of the differences between the approaches and develops a new perspective on the theory and practice of intervention Shows how, by seeing the links and differences between the approaches, both post-Marxism and cultural studies can be reorientated in order to have positive results in the political world

Thirty-one years ago, in 1985, Manuel Sacristán died in Barcelona at the age of 59. After the publication in 2014 of a volume with some of his writings translated into English (Llorente 2014), it is time to help non-Spanish-speaking readers to know more about him. Yet it is not easy to explain to generations born after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that Manuel Sacristán was a most important Marxist philosopher and at the same time one of the few pioneers introducing political ecology and antinuclear peace movement during the last quarter of the 20th century in Spain. Many people believe that Marxism, environmentalism and pacifism are views that exclude each other. Most of what has been said and done on behalf of Marxism since Stalin took over the leadership of the Communist Party of the USSR in the 1930s, up to its dissolution in 1991, contributes to sustaining this belief. The fast industrialization of the Old Russian Empire undertaken by the Soviet State was nowhere near taking into account ecological sustainability. Its socio-environmental impact turned out to be comparable or even worse than the ones caused by capitalist industrialization.