Suchergebnisse

Intro -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- THE AUTHOR -- DEDICATION -- PREFACE -- Part I-MARX AND THE MARXISTS -- 1-THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF KARL MARX -- 2-EVALUATION OF MARX'S CONTRIBUTIONS -- 3-ORTHODOX MARXISM-KAUTSKY, PLEKHANOV, DE LEON -- 4-REVISIONISM-BERNSTEIN AND JAURÈS -- 5-LENIN -- 6-LEON TROTSKY-FOR THE DEFENSE -- 7-ROSA LUXEMBURG -- 8-STALIN -- 9-MARXISM TODAY -- Part II-SELECTED READINGS -- -Reading No. 1- -- MARX AND ENGELS: THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO -- -Reading No. 2- -- KARL MARX: HISTORICAL MATERIALISM -- -Reading No. 3- -- KARL MARX: THE FETISHISM OF THE COMMODITY AND ITS SECRET -- -Reading No. 4- -- KARL MARX: HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION -- -Reading No. 5- -- KARL MARX: RELIGION AND ECONOMICS -- -Reading No. 6- -- KARL MARX: ON TRADITION, PERSONALITY, AND CLASS-FORCES -- -Reading No. 7- -- FREDERICK ENGELS: "SCIENTIFIC" VERSUS "UTOPIAN" SOCIALISM -- -Reading No. 8- -- KARL KAUTSKY: THE INFLUENCE OF THE MODE OF PRODUCTION -- -Reading No. 8a- -- KARL KAUTSKY: ON THE AGRICULTURAL PROGRAM -- -Reading No. 9- -- GEORGI PLEKHANOV: THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY -- -Reading No. 10- -- DANIEL DE LEON: INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM AND THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC -- -Reading No. 11- -- EDWARD BERNSTEIN: SOCIALIST IDEALS, FACTS, AND EXPERIENCE -- -Reading No. 12- -- JEAN JAURÈS: IDEALISM AND HISTORY -- -Reading No. 13- -- N. LENIN: STATE AND REVOLUTION -- -Reading No. 13a- -- N. LENIN: THE WORKER, THE DAY AFTER THE COMMUNISTS TAKE POWER -- -Reading No. 14- -- N. LENIN: COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION AND STRATEGY -- -Reading No. 14a- -- N. LENIN: ON SHOOTING CRITICS OUT OF SEASON -- -Reading No. 14b- -- N. LENIN: ON COMMUNIST MORALITY -- -Reading No. 14c- -- N. LENIN: ON COMMUNIST WORK IN TRADE-UNIONS -- -Reading No. 14d- -- J. STALIN: HOW TO MAKE OFFENCE LOOK LIKE DEFENCE -- -Reading No. 15- -- LEON TROTSKY: THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION -- -Reading No. 16.

We may argue about the wisdom of announcing 'unconditional surrender' as an aim in the last major war," observes Schelling in his recent book, Arms and Influence—as one might expect, a brilliant and important study—"but seem to expect 'unconditional destruction' as a matter of course in another one" (p. 23). Secretary McNamara does in fact require "adequacy of our forces from the standpoint of convincing others that the initiation of general nuclear war would inevitably bring about" not their facing the choice between capitulation and devastation, but exclusively "their own destruction." Suppose the enemy underestimates our force and its defenses or exaggerates the obstacles he can put in our path—suppose, that is, we have failed to be "clear and convincing" about our capabilities. Assume that the enemy then attempts to disarm us, disarming himself in the act.

Dr. Nathan Leites of the RAND Corporation, author of The Operational Code of the Politburo and other works, is presented here in an article, written in 1949 but hitherto unpublished, on same dynamics of human nature as they relate to democratic beliefs. Dr. Leites asserts, first, that too many discussions of democ racy, including many learned ones, neglect or refuse to put forward their ulti mate preferences for a certain kind of man and society. Ultimate preferences about human nature cannot be challenged by logical empiricism. Ultimate gen eralizations about human nature can be challenged by the so-called scientific method and tested for conformance to events. Secondly, given ultimate preferences about human nature, which are compatible with the scientifically tested limitations of human nature, one may build a "demo eratic" system—that is, a system wherein the environment is guaranteed, to put it exaggeratedly, to produce democratic people conforming to the ultimate preference. Thirdly, the contributions of political scientists to our knowledge of late environ ment, and that of psychologists to early environment, help to tell what is neces sary to adjust men to a society which permits democratic human activities as defined by the irreducible, ultimate preferences on which we may agree! Dr. Leites asserts in conclusion that democracy may be threatened, not only by communist aggression, but by uncontrolled destructiveness or badly controlled destructiveness that results in moral uncertainty and dysfunctions of conscience.

During Stalin's lifetime Soviet writing, with his encouragement, presented him as a master theoretician, without a living peer. The more recent tendency on the part of his successors to reduce reference to this and others of his roles has not amounted to a denial of the earlier theme of intellectual greatness. It may therefore be of some importance, even after his death, to investigate Stalin's theoretical writings, not only to clarify his function and accomplishments as an intellectual, but also to gain further insight into Bolshevik and Soviet patterns of thought. A particularly interesting subject for such an investigation is Stalin's last and most widely heralded theoretical writing, the article, "Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R."

One of the factors in world politics which social scientists are beginning to subject to systematic analysis is that of elite behavior in international relations. While hypotheses about elite behavior appear to be not only essential to, but also implicit in, any formulation of foreign policy, it still requires to be demonstrated whether research of this order has any operational utility. Clearly, many students in this field have not articulated their assumptions about the conduct of elite groups in foreign affairs; it is often doubted that hypotheses based upon intensive investigation of the doctrine of elites and their cultural matrices have any bearing on the analyses usually pursued in the study of international relations.

During recent years there has been a noticeable rise in the production of, and interest in, a relatively new kind of analysis of political behavior. Anthropologists had become increasingly concerned with describing and explaining the entire way of life of the non-literate societies they were studying. Some of them came to believe that cultural anthropology should return to home, i.e., that the methods of observation and recording, and also the theories which they had developed on so-called primitive material should be applied to our own society and other large and complex groups. At the same time, psychologists and psychiatrists had become increasingly interested in describing and explaining the entire way of life, subjective and behavioral, of the individuals they were studying. They tended to be particularly interested, on the one hand, in the broad varieties of human nature ("character types" and "defense mechanisms") and, on the other, in the unique structure of each case. But some of them came to be interested in ascertaining the psychological regularities, if any, in large groups. The confluence of these two developments in the human sciences led to the emergence of what we may call psycho-cultural analyses of social events.