The essay aims at understanding the nationalist characters present in the cultural discourse of Romanian national-communism by the multilayered analysis of i) communist regime cultural politics, which developed the discourse on the nation in a Marxist-Leninist framework; ii) the keywords around which Romanian public discourse was build since the beginning of modernity until the instauration of communist regime; iii) the marginality of Marxism-Leninism and othe workers' movement in Romania since the 19th century until the communist takeover.
Is too often believed that Chinese Communism, because it is more open & critical than Soviet Communism, can play a determining role in the liberalizing of the oriental world. In support of this thesis the contrast is made between the developments of the 2 Communisms. These optimistic views are not devoid of oversimplification. In effect, the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party since 1920 shows that the allegiance to Stalin was never rejected, & the position taken after the 20th Congress does nothing to indicate the contrary. The reasons for such loyalty are numerous: it is a personal ideal of Mao Tse-tung (as esp demonstrated in his Regarding Contradiction), it fits in with the strongly antiliberal tradition of Confucianism, & finally, the objective conditions of the Chinese economy in its march toward socialism reinforce it. These facts constitute the logical premises of a dictatorship of the Stalinist variety & seriously limit any chances of the liberalization of the regime. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.
The paper analyzes the evolution of public opinion attitudes on transatlantic issues in United States & the European countries. The paper distinguishes two main periods in Transatlantic Relations & examines the evolution of foreign policy attitudes in these two periods. A first period, during the Cold War, was characterized by a foreign policy consensus on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, this consensus was based on the combination of Atlanticism & Europeanism. With different emphasis in the different countries the Atlantic & European choice were seen as crucial to insure the domestic political stability & the foreign policy security. While in Europe the Cold War consensus was first based on a Center-Right coalition & later on extended to the Left, as a consequence of the post-Stalinism & the increasing institutionalization of European integration. In the United States it combined the Liberal & Conservative wings. This consensus broke down as a consequence of the Vietnam war & the detente crisis in the '70s. In Europe, the main consequence was the fracturing of the Left-Right consensus on foreign policy. This double cleavage has been brought forth during the Post-Cold War period & it has manifested itself in its starker way after the 9/11 events & a more unilateralist American foreign policy. The author discusses the different structure of public opinion in Europe ad the United States might have played in the tense relationships between Europe & US during the Iraq war. 4 Tables, 39 References. Adapted from the source document.
An overview of Norberto Bobbio's political evolution. From his youth under the Fascist regime to his involvement with the Partito d'Azione, and, later, the Socialist Party. The article tracks also the development of his thought on socialism.
Filippo Burzio was a unique representative of intellectual & cultural life in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Linked to Gobetti & the "liberal revolutionary" group from the days of his youth, he was an ideal pupil of Mosca & Pareto, & he always supported the need for the leadership -- the elite, the political class -- to contribute to the process of development. This he saw as indispensable in contemporary mass societies, which he termed "bee-hive & ant-hill static societies." Hence -- as the author argues in this essay -- the originality of Burzio's theory of the "demiurge" -- a figure who represents the exact opposite of Nietzsche's "superman," possessing a complex of personal talents (emotive & "magic" forms of rationality) that allow him to "plan" new forms of political & social orders (forms that contrast with the negative "materialist" experiences of the totalitarisms of Nazism & Stalinism) & to "guide" the masses without risk of demagogy or unfreedom. Within this perspective, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War, Burzio developed a unique model of liberalism, which could be summed up by the formula "making each man a king." This model of liberalism aimed to bring together the liberties of classical liberalism & the principles of a democratic system, founded on the equality of all citizens & on popular sovereignty. Only in this way unlike in the case of the "prophets of crisis" who, like Spengler, foresaw the "decline of the West" -- Burzio held that it was possible to resolve the crisis (seen as a crisis of values rather than a crisis of institutions), in which so much of the West had found itself. Adapted from the source document.
The aim of the present work is to provide an intellectual biography of the Soviet writer Lev Zinov'evič Kopelev (1912-1997). He grew up and studied during the period of the Stalinism and until the Sixties he can be considered as an "homo sovieticus", who devoted himself to the Communism and his leading figure, Stalin. Victim of the regime he believed into, Kopelev spent nine years in a šaraška, and, after events such as the Prague Spring, he permanently left his believes and his idol Stalin. As a child Kopelev learned German, since he lived in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Kiev of the beginning of the century, and the contact with the German world can be considered as a constant in his life: during the Second World War he worked as an interpreter with German prisoners and in the Sixties he became a germanist by profession. Thanks to different inputs he received as a young man and thanks to the continuous contact with the German world, he underwent a path of personal growth, enriched by the friendship with Heinrich Böll, whose ethical ideals influenced him and led him to develop a project of dialogue and openness towards the "other". This personal evolution converted him from being a convinced communist to becoming a dissident. Deprived of Soviet citizenship in the Eighties, he spent the rest of his life in the West Germany and he devoted his life to examine in depth the links between Russians and Germans towards the centuries. This research led to a great project: the "Wuppertaler Projekt zur Erforschung der Geschichte Deutsch-Russischer Fremdenbilder". In this work Kopelev firstly analysed the evolution of the relationship between the two nations from a literary, political, social and cultural point of view; secondly, he examined the genesis and the development of the prejudices of the ones towards the others and vice versa. This work can be considered as the final point of Kopelev's intellectual development: first of all as a scientist, since he condensed his knowledge in German and Russian literature, history and culture, but also as a man, because it was the result of the moral teaching he had learned from his own experience.
The aim of this research is to delineate, within the Sartrian thought of the Sixties, the mobile perimeter inside which to define ethics as the overcoming possibility for a critical thought. In other words: as the subjective assumption of its political dimension. The shift of Sartre's historical-political thought follows a development not yet studied enough by scholars. The manuscripts of the Sixties about dialectical ethics appear as the fundamental completion of the dialectical experience of the Critique de la Raison dialectique (1960). Sartre was not able to publish the second part of the book during his life: indeed, the blockage of that work is the result of the structural limit of every attempt to conceptualize historical experience. In the Critique, the possibility to make a single history intelligible depends on a refoundation of dialectics as research method for concrete historical reality. Starting by such refoundation, it becomes possible to define the epistemological basis of a historical structural anthropology, and the conditions for the insurgence of human collective action at the same time. In our interpretation, this approach is out of a future perfect's logic that means out of the core of the modern sovereignty's system. Once fixed those points, the research moves around two principal problematic axis. The first evaluates the methodological and epistemological accuracy of Sartre's attempt to formulate a theory of knowledge for Marxism, considering this one as a theoretical-practical experiment yet to be done. At this point, Sartre's regressive-progressive method is compared to Marx's method of critique of political economy, evaluating affinity aspects and overcoming lines. Around the second axis, transverse to the first, the more properly historical-political plexus finds its profile: the dialectical comprehension of events connoting subjectively (that means politically) historical time's flow isn't detachable from questioning about the historicity of subjects involved in this flowing. For this reason, in the Sartrian thought of the Sixties the subjectivity's status is analyzed questioning the normative disposition of social sphere: focusing on normativity allows to understand the mutual implication of subjectification and objectification, in addition to locating basis for a Marxist axiology. Moreover, this perspective allows to improve historical effectiveness of praxis's ethical dimension. This one is the lens by which Sartre analyzes both Stalinism and colonial liberation struggles, but also the point of clarification of the torsion he imposes to the notion of longing. Materialistically, with the longing Sartre discovers the root of an ethics as the necessary step for every politics. ; Ce travail de recherche a pour but de circonscrire, dans la pensée sartrienne des années 1960, le périmètre au sein duquel l'éthique se constitue comme possibilité de la pensée critique, c'est-à-dire comme assomption subjective de la politicité de celle-ci. Notre lecture considère les manuscrits sartriens des années 1960 sur l'éthique dialectique comme un complément fondamental de l'expérience critique conduite dans la Critique de la Raison dialectique (avril 1960). Dans cet ouvrage majeur, Sartre lie la possibilité de rendre une histoire intelligible à une refondation de la dialectique en tant que méthode d'analyse du concret historique. A partir d'une telle refondation, il devient possible de déterminer les bases épistémologiques d'une anthropologie historique et structurelle, aussi bien que les conditions de surgissement de l'agir en commun des hommes. Une fois fixés ces points, la recherche tourne autour de deux axes principaux. Le premier évalue, sur un plan à la fois méthodologique et épistémologique, l'effort sartrien visant à fournir une théorie de la connaissance au marxisme, considéré comme une expérimentation théorico-pratique encore à accomplir. A ce niveau, la méthode régressive-progressive de Sartre a été confrontée avec celle utilisée par Marx dans la critique de l'économie politique, afin d'en évaluer les points de proximité et de dépassement. Autour du deuxième axe, transversal au premier, on voit se profiler le noyau éminemment historico-politique : la compréhension dialectique des événements qui marquent subjectivement (et donc politiquement) le cours du temps historique, n'est pas séparable d'une interrogation sur l'historicité des sujets impliqués dans ce même mouvement. Pour cette raison, le statut de la subjectivité chez le Sartre des années 1960 a été interrogé à travers une analyse concernant le caractère normatif du social. Le focus sur la notion de normativité a permis, d'un côté, de comprendre l'intériorité réciproque entre la subjectivation et l'objectivation ; et, de l'autre, de fixer les bases pour une axiologie marxiste. Une telle approche permet de valoriser l'efficacité historique de la dimension éthique de la praxis, en l'assumant comme prisme à travers lequel Sartre analyse les problèmes posés par le stalinisme et les luttes de libération anticoloniale. Cela nous a conduit enfin à questionner la torsion imposée par Sartre à la notion de besoin qui devient, d'un point de vue matérialiste, la racine d'une éthique comme passage obligé pour toute politique. ; Il lavoro di ricerca si propone di circoscrivere, all'interno del pensiero sartriano de-gli anni '60, il perimetro mobile entro cui si definice l'etica come possibilità ulteriore del pensiero critico, come assunzione soggettiva della sua politicità. Lo spostamento operato nella riflessione storico-politica di Sartre si compie in una direzione – seguita finora solo parzialmente dagli interpreti ‒ volta ad assumere i manoscritti degli anni '60 sull'etica dialettica come complemento fondamentale dell'esperienza critica condotta nella Critique de la Raison dialectique (1960) ‒ il cui blocage, esito di un limite struttu-rale ed interno ad ogni concettualizzazione dell'esperienza storica, impedirà la pubbli-cazione del secondo tomo dell'opera. Nella Critique, la possibilità di rendere una storia intelligibile è sospesa alla rifondazione della dialettica come metodo d'indagine del concreto storico. A partire da tale rifondazione è possibile determinare tanto le basi epi-stemologiche di un'antropologia storica e strutturale, quanto le condizioni d'insorgenza dell'agire in comune degli uomini. Nella nostra lettura, tale prospettiva si sottrae alla logica del futuro anteriore, caratterizzante il moderno dispositivo sovranista. Fissati questi punti, la ricerca ruota attorno a due assi problematici principali. Il primo valuta, su un piano al contempo metodologico ed epistemologico, la tenuta del tentativo sar-triano di fornire una teoria della conoscenza al marxismo, reso possibile dalla convin-zione che quest'ultimo sia un esperimento teorico-pratico ancora da compiere. A questa altezza, il metodo regressivo-progressivo di Sartre viene confrontato con quello adottato dal Marx critico dell'economia politica, per valutarne i punti di vicinanza e di supera-mento. Attorno al secondo asse, trasversale al primo, si profila il plesso più propriamen-te storico-politico: la comprensione dialettica degli eventi che connotano in senso sog-gettivo (e quindi politico) il corso del tempo storico, non è separabile da un'interroga-zione sulla storicità dei soggetti che, in tale movimento, sono implicati. Per questo mo-tivo, lo statuto della soggettività nel pensiero sartriano degli anni '60 viene analizzato mediante un'interrogazione sul carattere normativo del sociale: il focus sulla nozione di normatività permette infatti da un lato, di comprendere l'interiorità reciproca di sogget-tivazione ed oggettivazione e, dall'altro, d'individuare le basi per un'assiologia marxi-sta. Tale prospettiva consente di valorizzare l'efficacia storica della dimensione etica 4 della praxis, attraverso cui Sartre analizza i problemi posti dallo stalinismo e dalle lotte di liberazione coloniale, ma anche d'illuminare la torsione cui egli sottopone la nozione di bisogno per farne, materialisticamente, la radice di un'etica che diviene passaggio obbligato per ogni politica.
