Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2021.2101395
J. G. Ramsey
As changing seasons give us a chance to look upon the future, far too many people in the United States are officially condemned to have their futures cut short. The most extreme of these cases are found on death row, where thousands now sit, sentenced to be executed by the state – some likely for crimes they did not even commit. To these we must add another 55,000 people who languish permanently in US prisons, sentenced to “life” without even the possibility of
{"title":"Never Throw Away the Key: The Compassionate Radicalism of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy","authors":"J. G. Ramsey","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2021.2101395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2101395","url":null,"abstract":"As changing seasons give us a chance to look upon the future, far too many people in the United States are officially condemned to have their futures cut short. The most extreme of these cases are found on death row, where thousands now sit, sentenced to be executed by the state – some likely for crimes they did not even commit. To these we must add another 55,000 people who languish permanently in US prisons, sentenced to “life” without even the possibility of","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"159 1","pages":"323 - 338"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79756138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2021.2005874
Keti Chukhrov, M. Callahan
Keti Chukhrov’s new book, Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism, is a thought-provoking exploration of political economy, sexuality, aesthetics and philosophy as they were developed in the Soviet Union by thinkers such as Vygotsky, Ilyenkov, Platonov and others. But more than that, the book offers a stunning critique of Western interpretations of the Soviet experience and more specifically the ostensibly “leftist” or radical positions taken by thinkers such as Althusser, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Butler, and others. As Chukhrov writes:
{"title":"What is the Common Good?","authors":"Keti Chukhrov, M. Callahan","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2021.2005874","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2005874","url":null,"abstract":"Keti Chukhrov’s new book, Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism, is a thought-provoking exploration of political economy, sexuality, aesthetics and philosophy as they were developed in the Soviet Union by thinkers such as Vygotsky, Ilyenkov, Platonov and others. But more than that, the book offers a stunning critique of Western interpretations of the Soviet experience and more specifically the ostensibly “leftist” or radical positions taken by thinkers such as Althusser, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Butler, and others. As Chukhrov writes:","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"253 1","pages":"17 - 37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72968022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2022.2047364
B. Chasin
the 1990s and then presents a series of conceptual typologies. These include seven “radical social innovations” that unpack workers’ uses of direct democracy, creative response to crises, reconsideration of divisions of labor, and development of solidarity. He also outlines six “recuperative moments” – in other words, what workers seek to recover (jobs, tools, machines, workplaces) – that ultimately help explain the prefigurative promises of autogestión. Part 3, in short, is a must-read for anyone interested in a thorough overview of the movement of recuperated businesses. Part 4 concludes the volume by discussing the social innovations of recuperated businesses as alternatives to capitalism. The main argument woven throughout this work is that Argentine worker-recuperated businesses have directly addressed capitalist exploitation and alienation through autogestión and prefigured a social reality that can help us rethink working class agency, cooperativism, and the possibility of radical economic change. Ultimately, this book is not only about what workers struggle against, but also about what they are fighting for: secure, meaningful, dignified work. In many ways, this is a rosy conclusion. But throughout the book, Vieta provides serious analyses of the very real challenges, tensions, and contradictions that recuperated businesses confront. Rather than offering an oversimplified view of workplace recuperation, Vieta explains and historicizes the “intractable systematic barriers” that workers confront in the process (31). In the end, Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina offers a hopeful interpretation of workplace recuperation, as one through which workers can unify the separation of labor and capital, take back their labor power, and cultivate their capacity to cooperate and build social wealth.
{"title":"Political Mourning: Identity and Responsibility in the Wake of Tragedy","authors":"B. Chasin","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2022.2047364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2022.2047364","url":null,"abstract":"the 1990s and then presents a series of conceptual typologies. These include seven “radical social innovations” that unpack workers’ uses of direct democracy, creative response to crises, reconsideration of divisions of labor, and development of solidarity. He also outlines six “recuperative moments” – in other words, what workers seek to recover (jobs, tools, machines, workplaces) – that ultimately help explain the prefigurative promises of autogestión. Part 3, in short, is a must-read for anyone interested in a thorough overview of the movement of recuperated businesses. Part 4 concludes the volume by discussing the social innovations of recuperated businesses as alternatives to capitalism. The main argument woven throughout this work is that Argentine worker-recuperated businesses have directly addressed capitalist exploitation and alienation through autogestión and prefigured a social reality that can help us rethink working class agency, cooperativism, and the possibility of radical economic change. Ultimately, this book is not only about what workers struggle against, but also about what they are fighting for: secure, meaningful, dignified work. In many ways, this is a rosy conclusion. But throughout the book, Vieta provides serious analyses of the very real challenges, tensions, and contradictions that recuperated businesses confront. Rather than offering an oversimplified view of workplace recuperation, Vieta explains and historicizes the “intractable systematic barriers” that workers confront in the process (31). In the end, Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina offers a hopeful interpretation of workplace recuperation, as one through which workers can unify the separation of labor and capital, take back their labor power, and cultivate their capacity to cooperate and build social wealth.","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"41 1","pages":"410 - 415"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72884604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2021.2076045
J. Harasta
In the run-up to the American invasion of Afghanistan, much was made of a previously obscure infrastructure proposal: a gas pipeline to connect the Caspian Sea with Pakistan and the open ocean beyond. This led to breathless articles claiming, “it’s about oil” and statements about a new American War for Oil from the Green Party USA and others. This theory never bore out, despite two full decades of American occupation – most likely because the actual export routes from Azerbaijan were shorter, more direct to European markets and did not have to pass over the forbidding landscapes of Afghanistan and eastern Turkmenistan. Even though this information was clearly available in 2001, it seemed that some among the American Left had difficulty envisioning an imperial war without a petroleum motivation.
{"title":"Wars for Oil, Wars by Oil: Understanding Petro-Autocracy and the ‘New’ Imperialism","authors":"J. Harasta","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2021.2076045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2076045","url":null,"abstract":"In the run-up to the American invasion of Afghanistan, much was made of a previously obscure infrastructure proposal: a gas pipeline to connect the Caspian Sea with Pakistan and the open ocean beyond. This led to breathless articles claiming, “it’s about oil” and statements about a new American War for Oil from the Green Party USA and others. This theory never bore out, despite two full decades of American occupation – most likely because the actual export routes from Azerbaijan were shorter, more direct to European markets and did not have to pass over the forbidding landscapes of Afghanistan and eastern Turkmenistan. Even though this information was clearly available in 2001, it seemed that some among the American Left had difficulty envisioning an imperial war without a petroleum motivation.","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"39 1","pages":"167 - 192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74933554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2021.2082266
Damian Winczewski
Friedrich Engels’s military writings are a relatively poorly known part of his output, even though Marxist theoreticians frequently make references to them highlighting the links between technological progress and the intensity of military conflicts identified by him. The existing literature is pretty old and focuses on Engels as a revolutionary strategist and ideologue, although there are also works written by authors who consider his military interests as being of importance for the development of the Marxist doctrine in the field of operational art and tactics. I think that Engels’s works deserve our attention; they allow us to rediscover him as an insightful thinker in the context of transferring methodological rules of historical materialism into military studies. This enables Marxists to reject on scientific grounds the bourgeois and utopian view that spontaneous and disorganized armed uprisings – following the views expressed by August Blanqui or August Willich – are efficient means for conducting social revolutions. Moreover, the current state of knowledge on the contribution of Engels in this field requires updating and systematization. This will enable discussion of several significant issues. For example,
{"title":"Engels’s Military Thought: Historical Materialism and Modern Warfare","authors":"Damian Winczewski","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2021.2082266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2082266","url":null,"abstract":"Friedrich Engels’s military writings are a relatively poorly known part of his output, even though Marxist theoreticians frequently make references to them highlighting the links between technological progress and the intensity of military conflicts identified by him. The existing literature is pretty old and focuses on Engels as a revolutionary strategist and ideologue, although there are also works written by authors who consider his military interests as being of importance for the development of the Marxist doctrine in the field of operational art and tactics. I think that Engels’s works deserve our attention; they allow us to rediscover him as an insightful thinker in the context of transferring methodological rules of historical materialism into military studies. This enables Marxists to reject on scientific grounds the bourgeois and utopian view that spontaneous and disorganized armed uprisings – following the views expressed by August Blanqui or August Willich – are efficient means for conducting social revolutions. Moreover, the current state of knowledge on the contribution of Engels in this field requires updating and systematization. This will enable discussion of several significant issues. For example,","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"14 3 1","pages":"193 - 213"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78635825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2021.2050346
J. Ward
From the Cuban Revolution’s successful conquest of political power in 1959 right through to the present day, the practice of democracy in Cuba has been an issue of enduring polarisation. While some look to Cuba as an example of proletarian, participatory democracy in action, the more mainstream view, at least in the Western world, has appraised Cuba as politically unfree and undemocratic: a citizenry held in a tight grip by an all-powerful Communist Party. For a host of different reasons that cannot be explored here in much depth, this article is broadly sympathetic to the former’s interpretation of Cuba’s political system. To summarise, it is my view that the charges that Cuba is “undemocratic” can be attributed to either an erroneous theoretical belief that Cuba’s avowed form of democracy cannot in fact deliver democracy, or a misunderstanding of how the Cuban political system functions. It is not for this article to reckon with the challenges to Cuba’s democratic character in a general sense – other works have in my judgement already dealt adequately with these – but rather to
{"title":"“Popular participation in every essential measure”: The Influence of Cuban Mass Political Participation on State Economic and Labour Policy","authors":"J. Ward","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2021.2050346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2050346","url":null,"abstract":"From the Cuban Revolution’s successful conquest of political power in 1959 right through to the present day, the practice of democracy in Cuba has been an issue of enduring polarisation. While some look to Cuba as an example of proletarian, participatory democracy in action, the more mainstream view, at least in the Western world, has appraised Cuba as politically unfree and undemocratic: a citizenry held in a tight grip by an all-powerful Communist Party. For a host of different reasons that cannot be explored here in much depth, this article is broadly sympathetic to the former’s interpretation of Cuba’s political system. To summarise, it is my view that the charges that Cuba is “undemocratic” can be attributed to either an erroneous theoretical belief that Cuba’s avowed form of democracy cannot in fact deliver democracy, or a misunderstanding of how the Cuban political system functions. It is not for this article to reckon with the challenges to Cuba’s democratic character in a general sense – other works have in my judgement already dealt adequately with these – but rather to","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"75 1","pages":"241 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86168662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2021.2092985
T. Lamusse
… the strategic deployment of discursive constructions like “ civility ” and “ criminality ” to distinguish “ good ” from “ bad ” students. Carceral logics are further embedded, for example, in the public speaking course that relies upon – as it asserts – a hierarchy of speaker and audience intelligibility informed in and through US-centric whiteness. 17
{"title":"Doing Justice Without Prisons: A Framework to Build the Abolitionist Movement","authors":"T. Lamusse","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2021.2092985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2092985","url":null,"abstract":"… the strategic deployment of discursive constructions like “ civility ” and “ criminality ” to distinguish “ good ” from “ bad ” students. Carceral logics are further embedded, for example, in the public speaking course that relies upon – as it asserts – a hierarchy of speaker and audience intelligibility informed in and through US-centric whiteness. 17","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"53 1","pages":"300 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75425040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2021.2018869
Kali Akuno, Brian Drolet, Doug Norberg
Since the meteoric rise of Donald J. Trump in 2015, significant numbers of liberals, progressives, social democrats and leftists have been fixated on his politics, policies, and personality and what they portend for the future of liberal democracy. This built on a fixation with the elections of right-wing strongmen like Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Erdoğan, Boris Johnson, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orban to name a few. The rise of the “strong men’‘ has been interpreted by many on the left throughout the world as a sign that the so-called “age of liberal democracy” is coming to an end and that fascism is ascendant. In response, we are being widely implored by these forces to concentrate our energy on “defending democracy.”
自2015年唐纳德·j·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)迅速崛起以来，大量自由派、进步派、社会民主党和左翼人士一直关注着他的政治、政策和个性，以及它们对自由民主主义未来的预示。这是建立在对右翼强人选举的迷恋之上的，比如雅伊尔·博尔索纳罗、罗德里戈·杜特尔特、雷杰普·Erdoğan、鲍里斯·约翰逊、纳伦德拉·莫迪和维克托·欧尔班等等。“强人”的崛起被世界各地的许多左翼人士解读为所谓的“自由民主时代”即将结束、法西斯主义正在崛起的迹象。作为回应，这些势力正广泛恳求我们集中精力“捍卫民主”。
{"title":"Shifting Focus: Organizing for Revolution, Not Crisis Avoidance, Part 1","authors":"Kali Akuno, Brian Drolet, Doug Norberg","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2021.2018869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2018869","url":null,"abstract":"Since the meteoric rise of Donald J. Trump in 2015, significant numbers of liberals, progressives, social democrats and leftists have been fixated on his politics, policies, and personality and what they portend for the future of liberal democracy. This built on a fixation with the elections of right-wing strongmen like Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Erdoğan, Boris Johnson, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orban to name a few. The rise of the “strong men’‘ has been interpreted by many on the left throughout the world as a sign that the so-called “age of liberal democracy” is coming to an end and that fascism is ascendant. In response, we are being widely implored by these forces to concentrate our energy on “defending democracy.”","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"34 1","pages":"49 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73947637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2022.2103956
M. Dennis
Frequently portrayed as a period of political fragmentation or the rise of the conservative right, the 1970s is now coming in for a different treatment, one that emphasizes the resurgence of labor organizing, the growth of progressive social movements, and even the expansion of a socialist perspective. Not only did the early 1970s witness the renewal of rank-and-file activism, which in turn drew inspiration from the antiwar movement, but it produced what historians Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps describe as a “general turn of the New Left toward socialist ideals.” This was evident in the formation of the feminist-oriented New American Movement, the establishment of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, as well as in the emergence of community activist groups such as the National Welfare Rights Organization, which focused intensively on advancing “economic justice.” Yet rather than an expression of this general tendency toward a renewed socialist perspective, the movement to achieve full employment has often been portrayed as an exclusively liberal or technocratic affair, one that failed to offer a plausible alternative in the search for solutions to the economic crisis of the era. My concern here is not with the tortured legislative process that produced the final draft of the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins bill, except to say that the idea of guaranteeing the right to a job proved as threatening to business interests and their political allies in the 1970s as it did in the 1940s. Instead, it is to suggest that the revival of the movement for full employment
{"title":"The Full Employment Road to Socialism: The Job Guarantee Movement of the 1970s and the Challenge to Capitalism","authors":"M. Dennis","doi":"10.1080/08854300.2022.2103956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2022.2103956","url":null,"abstract":"Frequently portrayed as a period of political fragmentation or the rise of the conservative right, the 1970s is now coming in for a different treatment, one that emphasizes the resurgence of labor organizing, the growth of progressive social movements, and even the expansion of a socialist perspective. Not only did the early 1970s witness the renewal of rank-and-file activism, which in turn drew inspiration from the antiwar movement, but it produced what historians Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps describe as a “general turn of the New Left toward socialist ideals.” This was evident in the formation of the feminist-oriented New American Movement, the establishment of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, as well as in the emergence of community activist groups such as the National Welfare Rights Organization, which focused intensively on advancing “economic justice.” Yet rather than an expression of this general tendency toward a renewed socialist perspective, the movement to achieve full employment has often been portrayed as an exclusively liberal or technocratic affair, one that failed to offer a plausible alternative in the search for solutions to the economic crisis of the era. My concern here is not with the tortured legislative process that produced the final draft of the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins bill, except to say that the idea of guaranteeing the right to a job proved as threatening to business interests and their political allies in the 1970s as it did in the 1940s. Instead, it is to suggest that the revival of the movement for full employment","PeriodicalId":40061,"journal":{"name":"Socialism and Democracy","volume":"85 5 1","pages":"129 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77652785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：