Reassessing Communism

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Reassessing Communism

Author : Katarzyna Chmielewska
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633863791
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis Reassessing Communism by : Katarzyna Chmielewska

Download or read book Reassessing Communism written by Katarzyna Chmielewska and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirteen authors of this collective work undertook to articulate matter-of-fact critiques of the dominant narrative about communism in Poland while offering new analyses of the concept, and also examining the manifestations of anticommunism. Approaching communist ideas and practices, programs and their implementations, as an inseparable whole, they examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon. The authors refuse to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism, absolute evil and Soviet colonization, and similarly refuse to equate communism and fascism. Nor do they adopt the neoliberal view of communism as a project doomed to failure. While wholly exempt from nostalgia, these essays show that beyond oppression and bad governance, communism was also a regime in which people pursued a variety of goals and sincerely attempted to build a better world for themselves. The book is interdisciplinary and applies the tools of social history, intellectual history, political philosophy, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies to provide a nuanced view of the communist regimes in east-central Europe.

The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism, 1976-1992

Author : Yan Sun
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400821754
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism, 1976-1992 by : Yan Sun

Download or read book The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism, 1976-1992 written by Yan Sun and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1995-08-21 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A momentous debate has been unfolding in China over the last fifteen years, only intermittently in public view, concerning the merits of socialism as a philosophy of social justice and as a program for national development. Just as Deng Xiaoping's better advertised experiment with market- based reforms has challenged Marxist-Leninist dogma on economic policy, the years since the death of Mao Zedong have seen a profound reexamination of a more basic question: to what extent are the root problems of the system due to Chinese socialism and Marxism generally? Here Yan Sun gathers a remarkable group of primary materials, drawn from an unusual range of sources, to present the most systematic and comprehensive study of post-Mao reappraisal of China's socialist theory and practice. Rejecting an assumption often made in the West, that Chinese socialist thought has little bearing on politics and policymaking, Sun takes the arguments of the post-Mao era seriously on their own terms. She identifies the major factions in the debate, reveals the interplay among official and unofficial forces, and charts the development of the debate from an initially parochial concern with problems raised by Chinese practice to a grand critique of the theory of socialism itself. She concludes with an enlightening comparison of the reassessments undertaken by Deng Xiaoping with those of Gorbachev, linking them to the divergent outcomes of reform and revolution in their respective countries.

Reassessing Marx’s Social and Political Philosophy

Author : Jan Kandiyali
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315398044
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (153 download)

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Book Synopsis Reassessing Marx’s Social and Political Philosophy by : Jan Kandiyali

Download or read book Reassessing Marx’s Social and Political Philosophy written by Jan Kandiyali and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in the study of Marx’s thought has shown a revival in recent years, with a number of newly established academic societies, conferences, and journals dedicated to discussing his thought. This book brings together distinguished and up-and-coming scholars to provide a major re-evaluation of historical issues in Marx scholarship and to connect Marx’s ideas with fresh debates in contemporary Anglo-American social and political philosophy. Among the topics discussed are Marx’s relationship to his philosophical predecessors—including Hegel, the young Hegelians, and the utopian socialists—his concept of recognition, his critique of liberalism, and his views on the good life. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Marx, Hegel, the history of political thought, and social and political philosophy.

The Totalitarian Paradigm after the End of Communism

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004457658
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis The Totalitarian Paradigm after the End of Communism by :

Download or read book The Totalitarian Paradigm after the End of Communism written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-06-08 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concepts of totalitarianism have undergone an academic revival in recent years, particularly since the breakdown of communist systems in Europe in 1989-91: the totalitarian paradigm, so it seems to many scholars today, had been discarded prematurely in the heat of the Cold War. The demise of communism as a social system is, however, not only an important cause of the recurring attractiveness of the totalitarian paradigm, but provides at the same time new evidence and, correspondingly, new problems of explanation for all approaches in communist studies and totalitarianism theory in particular. This book contains articles by philosophers, social scientists and historians who reassess the validity of the totalitarian approach in the light of the recent historical developments in Eastern Europe. A first group of authors focus on the analytical usefulness and explanatory power of classic concepts of totalitarianism after having observed the failed reforms of the Gorbachev-era and the collapse of Europe's communist systems in 1989-91. In these contributions the totalitarian paradigm is contrasted with other approaches with respect to cognitive power as well as normative implications. In the second group of contributions the focus is on the reassessment of methodological and theoretical problems of the classic concepts of totalitarianism. The authors attempt to reinterpret the classic concepts so as to meet the objections which have been put forward against those concepts during the last decades. The study thereby traces some of the intellectual roots of the totalitarian paradigm that precede the outbreak of the Cold War, such as the work of Sigmund Neumann and Franz Borkenau. It also focuses on the most famous authors in the field: Hannah Arendt and Carl Joachim Friedrich. In addition it discusses theorists of totalitarianism like Juan Linz, whose contributions to totalitarianism theory have too often been overlooked.

American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957

Author : Joseph Robert Starobin
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520027961
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (279 download)

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Book Synopsis American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957 by : Joseph Robert Starobin

Download or read book American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957 written by Joseph Robert Starobin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1975-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Confronting America

Author : Alessandro Brogi
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807877743
Total Pages : 552 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Confronting America by : Alessandro Brogi

Download or read book Confronting America written by Alessandro Brogi and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Cold War, the United States encountered unexpected challenges from Italy and France, two countries with the strongest, and determinedly most anti-American, Communist Parties in Western Europe. Based primarily on new evidence from communist archives in France and Italy, as well as research archives in the United States, Alessandro Brogi's original study reveals how the United States was forced by political opposition within these two core Western countries to reassess its own anticommunist strategies, its image, and the general meaning of American liberal capitalist culture and ideology. Brogi shows that the resistance to Americanization was a critical test for the French and Italian communists' own legitimacy and existence. Their anti-Americanism was mostly dogmatic and driven by the Soviet Union, but it was also, at crucial times, subtle and ambivalent, nurturing fascination with the American culture of dissent. The staunchly anticommunist United States, Brogi argues, found a successful balance to fighting the communist threat in France and Italy by employing diplomacy and fostering instances of mild dissent in both countries. Ultimately, both the French and Italian communists failed to adapt to the forces of modernization that stemmed both from indigenous factors and from American influence. Confronting America illuminates the political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural conflicts behind the U.S.-communist confrontation.

The Communist Manifesto

Author : Karl Marx
Publisher : Bedford Books
ISBN 13 : 9781319094836
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (948 download)

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Book Synopsis The Communist Manifesto by : Karl Marx

Download or read book The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and published by Bedford Books. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the closing of the cold war era open up the possibility of reading the Communist Manifesto in new ways? In the first teaching edition of the post-Cold War era, Toews proposes new guidelines for reassessing the work to help students reconstruct the meaning of the Manifesto in its time and at the close of the twentieth century. Together with the complete text of the work, this brief volume includes some key foundational documents by Hegel, Feverbach, Marx, Engels, and others that show the evolution of and influences on Marxist theory over time. The editor's introduction traces the trajectory of Marx's thought from the 1830s onward, while providing background on the political, social, and intellectual contexts of which the Manifesto was a historical product.

Uncivil Society

Author : Stephen Kotkin
Publisher : Modern Library
ISBN 13 : 158836917X
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (883 download)

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Book Synopsis Uncivil Society by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Uncivil Society written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society.” The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods, then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe, communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme, one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germany’s pseudotechnocracy to Romania’s megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Poland’s cult of Mary to the Kremlin’s surprise restraint, Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.

The Devil in History

Author : Vladimir Tismaneanu
Publisher : University of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520282205
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis The Devil in History by : Vladimir Tismaneanu

Download or read book The Devil in History written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth century’s experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics. The author discusses thinkers who have shaped contemporary understanding of totalitarian movements—people such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, François Furet, Tony Judt, Ian Kershaw, Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Pipes, and Robert C. Tucker. As much a theoretical analysis of the practical philosophies of Marxism-Leninism and Fascism as it is a political biography of particular figures, this book deals with the incarnation of diabolically nihilistic principles of human subjugation and conditioning in the name of presumably pure and purifying goals. Ultimately, the author claims that no ideological commitment, no matter how absorbing, should ever prevail over the sanctity of human life. He comes to the conclusion that no party, movement, or leader holds the right to dictate to the followers to renounce their critical faculties and to embrace a pseudo-miraculous, a mystically self-centered, delusional vision of mandatory happiness.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Author : Peter Schweizer
Publisher : Hoover Press
ISBN 13 : 0817998268
Total Pages : 99 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fall of the Berlin Wall by : Peter Schweizer

Download or read book The Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Peter Schweizer and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2019-12-04 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 1999 key players in U.S. foreign policy during the 1980s gathered in Washington to discuss the policies and initiatives undertaken by the Reagan administration to challenge Soviet power. The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War is a collection of essays based on presentations made at that historic event.

Communism's Shadow

Author : Grigore Pop-Eleches
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400887828
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Communism's Shadow by : Grigore Pop-Eleches

Download or read book Communism's Shadow written by Grigore Pop-Eleches and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.

The Communist Manifesto

Author : Karl Marx
Publisher : Bedford/st Martins
ISBN 13 : 9780312218126
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (181 download)

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Book Synopsis The Communist Manifesto by : Karl Marx

Download or read book The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and published by Bedford/st Martins. This book was released on 1999 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the closing of the cold war era open up the possibility of reading the Communist Manifesto in new ways? In this edition of Marx and Engels's classic text, Toews proposes new guidelines for reassessing the work to help students reconstruct the meaning of the Manifesto in its time and at the close of the twentieth century. Together with the complete text of the work, this brief volume includes some key foundational documents by Hegel, Marx, Engels, and others that show the evolution of and influences on Marxist theory over time. The editor's introduction traces the trajectory of Marx's thought from the 1830s onward, while providing background on the political, social, and intellectual contexts of which the Manifesto was a historical product.

Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition

Author : Tommaso Piffer
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633861322
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition by : Tommaso Piffer

Download or read book Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition written by Tommaso Piffer and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a tribute to the memory of Victor Zaslavsky (1937–2009), sociologist, émigré from the Soviet Union, Canadian citizen, public intellectual, and keen observer of Eastern Europe. In seventeen essays leading European, American and Russian scholars discuss the theory and the history of totalitarian society with a comparative approach. They revisit and reassess what Zaslavsky considered the most important project in the latter part of his life: the analysis of Eastern European - especially Soviet societies and their difficult “transition” after the fall of communism in 1989–91. The variety of the contributions reflects the diversity of specialists in the volume, but also reveals Zaslavsky's gift: he surrounded himself with talented people from many different fields and disciplines. In line with Zaslavsky's work and scholarly method, the book promotes new theoretical and methodological approaches to the concept of totalitarianism for understanding Soviet and East European societies, and the study of fascist and communist regimes in general.

Socialist Cultures East and West

Author : Dubravka Juraga
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Socialist Cultures East and West by : Dubravka Juraga

Download or read book Socialist Cultures East and West written by Dubravka Juraga and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2002-06-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades of Western Cold War propaganda were designed to depict socialism as inimical to genuine aesthetic acheivement. Now, in the wake of the Cold War, it is becoming possible to reassess the past and present cultural productions of artists with socialist inclinations. The essays in this volume begin such a reassessment, finding that socialist cultural production in the 20th century, both as the official culture of the socialist East and as an oppositional culture in the capitalist West, has been rich and varied. The volume focuses on socialist culture in the industrialized world, primarily Eastern Europe and the West. An introductory essay overviews socialist cultural productions of the 20th century, while the chapters that follow address a wide range of topics. These include Soviet socialist realist fiction and film musicals, the socialist drama of Bertolt Brecht, and British and American leftist fiction. The volume demonstrates that propagandistic Cold War depictions of socialism as a threat to artistic expression were inaccurate and misleading.

History of Communism in Europe vol. 2 / 2011

Author : Corina Pălășan
Publisher : Zeta Books
ISBN 13 : 6068266141
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (682 download)

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Book Synopsis History of Communism in Europe vol. 2 / 2011 by : Corina Pălășan

Download or read book History of Communism in Europe vol. 2 / 2011 written by Corina Pălășan and published by Zeta Books. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Limiting Privilege

Author : Agata Zysiak
Publisher : Purdue University Press
ISBN 13 : 1612498833
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (124 download)

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Book Synopsis Limiting Privilege by : Agata Zysiak

Download or read book Limiting Privilege written by Agata Zysiak and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State socialism tried to industrialize, urbanize, encourage the more frequent washing of hands, urge people to leave the church, emancipate women, and electrify cities—all within a single lifetime. Central to these initiatives was extending educational opportunities to the working class and creating a vision of an egalitarian socialist university that offered advancement for all. Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland traces the possibilities and limits of this goal by looking at a model socialist university established in 1945 in the working-class city of Łódź, Poland. Initially a flagship project of socialist modernization, the university tried to offer social advancement by privileging admission for peasant and working-class children, but these efforts were often fought by the elite who sought to preserve their privilege. By looking at first-generation students, intelligentsia faculty, and an industrial city, Limiting Privilege explores a complex story about utopian visions, failed aspirations, and reluctant academia.

Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture

Author : Alessandro Russo
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478012188
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture by : Alessandro Russo

Download or read book Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture written by Alessandro Russo and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-28 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture, Alessandro Russo presents a dramatic new reading of China's Cultural Revolution as a mass political experiment aimed at thoroughly reexamining the tenets of communism. Russo explores four critical phases of the Cultural Revolution, each with its own reworking of communist political subjectivity: the historical-theatrical “prologue” of 1965; Mao's attempts to shape the Cultural Revolution in 1965 and 1966; the movements and organizing between 1966 and 1968 and the factional divides that ended them; and the mass study campaigns from 1973 to 1976 and the unfinished attempt to evaluate the inadequacies of the political decade that brought the Revolution to a close. Among other topics, Russo shows how the dispute around the play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office was not the result of a Maoist conspiracy, but rather a series of intense and unresolved political and intellectual controversies. He also examines the Shanghai January Storm and the problematic foundation of the short-lived Shanghai Commune. By exploring these and other political-cultural moments of Chinese confrontations with communist principles, Russo overturns conventional wisdom about the Cultural Revolution.