Pub Date : 2022-10-10DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221132935
Tarak Barkawi
This essay considers the Ukraine conflict as a war of decolonization. It understands decolonization as a practice of world order making that creates international relations out of imperial relations. What does such a perspective tell us about the conflict in Ukraine and its implications for world politics?
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Pub Date : 2022-10-10DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221132933
Anton Jäger
What would it mean to treat post-history as ‘history’? Taking up this question, Alex Hochuli, George Hoare and Phil Cunliffe’s The End of the End of History reads Francis Fukuyama’s diagnosis of the ‘end of history’ thesis through the lens of political economy, while anatomizing its demise in the populist 2010s. This roundtable contribution assesses Hoare, Cunliffe and Hochuli’s diagnosis in light of recent developments. Stalked by inflation, resurgent militarism and so-called hyper-politics, the 2020s present both challenge and vindication to the ‘Aufhebunga’ approach to post-post-history.
将后历史视为“历史”意味着什么?针对这个问题，Alex Hochuli, George Hoare和Phil Cunliffe的《历史终结的终结》通过政治经济学的视角解读了Francis Fukuyama对“历史终结”理论的诊断，同时剖析了它在2010年代民粹主义的消亡。这个圆桌会议的贡献根据最近的发展评估了Hoare, Cunliffe和Hochuli的诊断。本世纪20年代，通货膨胀、军国主义和所谓的超级政治卷土重来，对“后后历史”的“自由主义”(Aufhebunga)方法既是挑战，也是证明。
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Pub Date : 2022-10-07DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221132931
Daniel Zamora Vargas
In the autumn of 1901, after spending three years in exile in a peasant’s hut in Siberia, Lenin began writing what would become his most influential book:What Is To Be Done? (Lenin, 1902) “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement,” the Russian Bolshevik famously argued in the first chapter of his pamphlet. But more than a plea for the importance of ideas in the making of history, Lenin’s argument was essentially about the leading role of the party in the revolution. The workers themselves, he thought, couldn’t reach spontaneously the consciousness of their historic mission. Revolutionary theory could then only “be brought to [the workers] from without,” “from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers” (Lenin, 1902: 48). Behind the abstract laws of historical materialism, Lenin’s task was, as the Belgian Marxist Marcel Liebman once wrote, to create the “instrument” through which the revolutionary project could be realized (Liebman, 1973: 15). Historical turns required organizations that could channel collective struggles into specific directions. In order to be more than “just one fucking thing after another,” to quote Alan Bennett, history had to be coerced into grand narratives. The flow of events could only be shaped by collective and conscious actors. Class struggle was the steam of History but it needed an engine to move forward. The fall of the Soviet Union, exactly ninety years after Lenin theorized the revolution, would however put History on hold. As Fukuyama famously wrote, we had reached “the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.”While his end of history didn’t imply the end of conflicts nor that all societies would embrace liberal democracy, it nonetheless meant the replacement of ideological battles by “boring” “economic calculation,” “the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands” (Fukuyama, 1989). As in Frederick Taylor’s scientific management, governments wouldn’t require anymore “generals or statesmen” but engineers to deal with what would remain: “economic activity.” Citizens could opt out from grand narratives, unbound by the will of the majority and free to lead their lives as they wish within the rules set by technocrats. And in effect, the expansion of markets as the ordering principle of the social order—guiding investment and reshaping the global division of labor—reduced the relevance of collective decisions. Citizens could now exert their rights as consumers, outside any kind of collective body. Voting on the marketplace, as Milton and Rose Friedman argued, could bring “unanimity without conformity” (Friedman and Friedman, 1980: 66).
1901年秋，在西伯利亚一个农民的茅屋里流亡了三年之后，列宁开始写他最有影响力的书:《怎么办?》(列宁，1902)“没有革命理论就没有革命运动，”这位俄国布尔什维克在他的小册子的第一章中提出了著名的论点。但是，列宁的论述不仅仅是对思想在创造历史中的重要性的辩护，本质上是关于党在革命中的领导作用。他认为，工人本身无法自发地意识到他们的历史使命。那时，革命理论只能“从外部带给(工人)”，“从工人和雇主之间的关系范围之外”(列宁，1902:48)。在历史唯物主义的抽象规律背后，正如比利时马克思主义者马塞尔·利布曼(Marcel Liebman)曾经写过的那样，列宁的任务是创造一种“工具”，通过这种“工具”可以实现革命计划(利布曼，1973:15)。历史的转折要求组织能够将集体斗争引向具体的方向。用艾伦·班尼特(Alan Bennett)的话来说，为了超越“一件接一件该死的事情”，历史必须被强行纳入宏大的叙事。事件的发展只能由集体和有意识的行动者来塑造。阶级斗争是历史的蒸汽，但它需要发动机才能前进。然而，在列宁将革命理论化整整90年后，苏联的解体却将历史搁置了下来。正如福山所写的那样，我们已经“完全穷尽了替代西方自由主义的可行的系统选择”。虽然他的历史终结并不意味着冲突的结束，也不意味着所有社会都将拥抱自由民主，但它仍然意味着用“无聊的”“经济计算”、“无休止地解决技术问题、环境问题和满足复杂的消费者需求”来取代意识形态斗争(Fukuyama, 1989)。正如弗雷德里克·泰勒(Frederick Taylor)的科学管理理论，政府不再需要“将军或政治家”，而是需要工程师来处理剩下的“经济活动”。公民可以选择退出宏大的叙事，不受多数人意志的束缚，在技术官僚制定的规则下自由地过自己想过的生活。实际上，市场的扩张作为社会秩序的秩序原则——引导投资和重塑全球劳动分工——降低了集体决策的相关性。公民现在可以在任何集体之外行使他们作为消费者的权利。正如米尔顿和罗斯·弗里德曼(Milton and Rose Friedman)所说，在市场上投票可以带来“没有一致性的一致”(Friedman and Friedman, 1980: 66)。
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Pub Date : 2022-10-07DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221132937
R. Sakwa
When history ends, that will be the end of everything; but of course we are talking about a different sort of end. In the late 1980s, several cycles of history came to an end, although the events of that time were the culmination of changes that had been gathering for some time. The paradoxical feature of the debate at the time was that the potential for genuine change and the capacity for critical reflection on the epochal developments taking place at the time were derailed by the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History’ in The National Interest in the summer of 1989. The debate thereafter focused on the rather hollow philosophical debate on the possibility of alternatives to liberal capitalism rather than on what could potentially have been a much richer discussion on the quality of the relationship between markets and democracy and the balance to be drawn between state intervention and market autonomy. No less significant, the quality of the peace order that could be built as the Cold War came to an end should have been centre stage. Instead, discussion of these two fundamental issues was muted as a sterile historicism once again predominated. Just as Marxist historicism was being chased out through the front door, a rather vulgar and conformist neoHegelian interpretation about the meaning and purpose of history slunk in through the back door.
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Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221113232
Lubomir Terziev
This text elucidates some of the uses and connotations of the word “sorosoid,” which has recently permeated the public discourse in Bulgaria, used to refer to individuals and organizations affiliated with Soros’ Open Society Foundation. I am particularly interested in the inflection “-oid,” which seeks to echo the word “humanoid.” In other words, my specific concern is with strategies of dehumanization of neoliberals in Bulgaria, whereby the fundamental values of open society in this country are challenged. The paper provides a glimpse of some key ideological attitudes in one of Europe’s post-communist democracies.
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Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221113257
K. Fábián
The anti-gender movements began in the West but have thus far been most influential and governmentally supported in Hungary, Poland and Russia. Anti-genderism has served multiple functions to entrench what proponents label as traditional values, while promoting specific class and racialised interests in the cloak of rejecting both the communist past and Western European political and social expectations. Why did anti-genderism develop and become pronounced in otherwise different post-communist countries? This article traces the origins of these movements based on news coverage and scholarly sources, arguing that anti-gender movements signal authoritarian trends and thus matter deeply for open, democratic societies. The Hungarian, Polish and Russian cases offer similar but distinct variations in the political trajectory of their respective movements, highlighting the feedback between conservative, expressively patriarchal, and populist forces and their embracing of anti-genderism.
{"title":"Three central triggers for the emergence of Central and Eastern European anti-gender alliances","authors":"K. Fábián","doi":"10.1177/2336825X221113257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X221113257","url":null,"abstract":"The anti-gender movements began in the West but have thus far been most influential and governmentally supported in Hungary, Poland and Russia. Anti-genderism has served multiple functions to entrench what proponents label as traditional values, while promoting specific class and racialised interests in the cloak of rejecting both the communist past and Western European political and social expectations. Why did anti-genderism develop and become pronounced in otherwise different post-communist countries? This article traces the origins of these movements based on news coverage and scholarly sources, arguing that anti-gender movements signal authoritarian trends and thus matter deeply for open, democratic societies. The Hungarian, Polish and Russian cases offer similar but distinct variations in the political trajectory of their respective movements, highlighting the feedback between conservative, expressively patriarchal, and populist forces and their embracing of anti-genderism.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77875395","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 : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221113226
K. Chan
The situation in Hong Kong today is not dissimilar to the moral predicaments that Central and Eastern Europe had endured during the Communist era. Then, as now, state oppression and intimidation aim not only at generating a pervasive sense of learned helplessness in society but also incentivising political opportunism. This paper begins with a thorough examination of the relevance of the open society against the background of the regime’s all-out attacks on the pro-democracy opposition and the civil society in the name national security following unprecedented protests in 2019. Civil society organisations are in retreat under the pressure of autocratic rule, but the normative appeal of the open society as a custodian for the city’s distinctive values and identity is expected to grow against the backdrop of the moral and institutional decay of the official, ‘Orwellian’, realm. It then seeks to explain why the barriers against norm entrepreneurship – individual and collective actions resisting moral decline and decay – are not insurmountable as they first appeared. Three decades after the end of Communism in Europe, the moral commitment to the open society serves as rallying point against the rise of illiberal democracies or electoral authoritarianism. In any case, autocrats are not invincible and there is nothing inevitable about the authoritarian backlash.
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Pub Date : 2022-08-23DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221117493
Ruth Deyermond
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a rupture point in European politics of a kind not seen since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The effects on the human, military, energy and environmental security of Central and Eastern Europe have been dramatic, but ideational factors are proving to be as significant as material ones. Conflicting understandings of shared history are shaping the course of the war in Ukraine and its effects on the rest of Europe, underscoring the status of Russia as the other against which European societies construct their identity. As a result, in the rest of Europe as well as in Ukraine itself, Ukrainian identity is now increasingly seen as European, and European identity is understood to include Ukraine. At the same time, a collective focus on this reshaping of identity is muting some of the most urgent questions about the limits of European liberalism and democracy.
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Pub Date : 2022-08-23DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221115888
Christof Royer, Nicholas Michelsen
This issue of New Perspectives examines the concept of Open Societies. The issue and introduction has been guest edited by Christof Royer of the Central European University, who leads the Open Society Research Platform, with each individual submission independently peer reviewed. In this introduction, we set out the relevance of the concept of open societies for New Perspectives Journal, and why this tangled idea deserves more than the limited interrogation it sometimes receives. Today, it has become a commonplace to point out that we live in an ‘ age of crisis ’ (Tooze 2021; Saad-Filho, 2021). Russia ’ s invasion of Ukraine has captured the headlines, overtaking the COVID-19 pandemic which has kept the world in suspense since its outbreak in 2019. Populist movements around the world claim to defend ‘ the people ’ against ‘ elites ’ while, at the same time, challenging pillars of liberal democracy. The rapid development of modern technologies challenges our ideas of human autonomy and personal responsibility. It is surely wrong to look at these phenomena in isolation. Not only because geopolitical, economic and political crises are (and always have been) interlinked (Thompson 2022), but also, as Katalin Fabian argues in her article, because they reveal deeper con fl icts about fundamental values – of the superiority of the individual over the collective, the meaning(s) of justice and human rights, or the signi fi cance of (but also the tensions between) freedom and equality. The society part an
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Pub Date : 2022-07-13DOI: 10.1177/2336825X221113230
Christof Royer
Is polarisation a fundamental threat to the open society? Are the divisions that run through societies and separate them into two (or more) more or less hostile groups problems to be solved? Or are they the corollaries of a vibrant democratic system that might legitimately be called an ‘open society’? These are the questions I seek to explore in this contribution to the special issue. My argument unfolds through a reinterpretation of Karl Popper’s conception of open society as a democratic idea, characterised by an appreciation of genuine human plurality and diversity that make ‘critical encounters with the other side’ possible (and desirable); this conception of open society also recognises the progressive potential of social and political conflicts. For that reason, political polarisation cannot be regarded as a lethal threat to open societies. By contrast, ‘belief polarisation’, with its Manichean orientation and anti-political tendencies, is a much more serious threat. It follows that advocates of open society should avoid the temptation to solve the ‘problem’ of political polarisation – they should accept it as the price to be paid for the ‘imperfect ideal’ of open society. However, they should take steps to reduce belief polarisation through the active creation of spaces of critical encounters with the other side. The overarching aim of the article, then, is to make a contribution to both the literature on open society and polarisation. To that end, I will bring the concept of open society and the phenomenon of polarisation into a relationship of reciprocal elucidation: through the engagement with open society, I will shine some light on polarisation, and through the analysis of polarisation, I will put flesh on the concept of open society.
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