Generally believed that "theory of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat" is a "Cultural Revolution" guiding ideology, which in ten years the "Cultural Revolution" period has been widely publicized, has written to the Chinese Communists "nine", "Top Ten", "Eleventh large "by the political report and constitution, but also to write the fourth and fifth National People's Congress meeting adopted constitutional changes, the impact is huge. When it was proposed that "the history of Marxism has set a third great (...) milestone," and after more than ten years later, "since the founding of the party on a number of resolutions on the question of history" has made ​​it a completely different assessment that It is the "leftist" errors and this should be "resolutely corrected." In this paper, the editorial "October Socialist Revolution opened up along the path," CPC "nine", Hua Guofeng, the Third Plenum and "since the founding of the party on a number of resolutions on the question of history," as the coordinates of the tracking the fate of its history and study. q "The Theory on Continuing the Revolution under the Leadership of Proletarians" is commonly regarded as the guiding ideology of the Cultural Revolution. Widely publicized during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, it has been incorporated into the Chinese Communist Party's constitution and the People's Republic of China's constitution for numerous times and has exerted a great influence on the state. By the time it was initially proposed in 1967, it was regarded as' the third landmark in the history of Marxism. But it was subject to a completely different fate more than ten years later as it was labeled "pinko" and was required to he "corrected" in Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China. This paper aims to conduct an investigation of the historical fate of "the Theory on Continuing the Revolution under the Dictatorship of Proletarians" with reference to the following texts: Go Ahead Along the Way Inaugurated by October Socialist Revolution, Report of the Ninth National Congress of the CPC, Hua Guofeng's Talkings, Report of the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China. (shrink)

This paper explains how A. Bogdanov changed from a left Bolshevik impatient for armed insurrection into a moderate proponent of revolution through cultural transformation by placing him in the context of a debate over epistemology among Russian Social Democrats in the early twentieth century. By relying on neo-Kantian epistemology to justify socialist revolution, N. Berdyaev actually began to turn away from Marxism. Lenin espoused a naive realism that was consistent with scientific socialism, but which did not satisfy Bogdanov. Empiriomonism, Bogdanov’s (...) neo-Positivist epistemology, led him away from violent revolution and toward a proletarian cultural revolution. (shrink)

Communist discourses are resurging in various disciplines across the globe. Philosophy has its share of this resurgence especially after the global financial crisis of 2008 made a number of its thinkers convene in various conferences and intellectually meet in a host of publications. In these intellectual engagements, the idea of communism is once again interrogated as the moribund capitalist system failed humanity its promise. Alain Badiou is among the leading figures in the philosophical task of (re)interrogating the idea of communism. (...) Badiou raised the urgency of reformulating what he calls as the communist hypothesis for it to both reconsider its supposed failures of the past and better suit the current conditions. Badiou is particularly guided by the lessons of the May ’68 of France, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China, and various contemporary popular uprisings to develop a reformulation of the communist hypothesis. In advancing a laborious task of reformulation, Badiou inevitably rejected a core category of the Marxist-Leninist tradition: the party. The rejection is supported by a view of the party that reduced it to its supposed fusion with the State, i.e., the party-State fusion. Such a fusion is characterized by either parliamentarian or insurrectionary politics. In this politics, Badiou argues that the party is obstructed from advancing further the proletarian revolution as it is tied to a Statist procedure. This work develops a Maoist reformulation of the communist hypothesis. Along the course of the socialist constructions of Russia and China, certain moments of what can be called as indigenized and mobilizational politics characterized periods that escape what Badiou reduced the party into, i.e., the party-State fusion. The Maoist notions of the mass line and protractedness come out as indispensable requisites in developing the concepts of indigenized and mobilizational politics. These moments depicted what can be called as the party-masses fusion and provided practical resources not only for the rectification of the supposed failures of the past but also for a reformulation of the communist hypothesis. Through the development and employment of the category of the party-masses fusion and the politics that determine it, the reformulation of the communist hypothesis is supported by a discourse of success rather than of defeat. (shrink)

Turning couplets into a weapon of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is also a creation by the masses in a revolutionary movement.

The paper aims to present the philosophical background and justification of the theory of social realism. Social realism is a representative example of a literary period in which the autonomy of literature in terms of, for example, the aesthetic value of a literary work, was brought to a negligible level given the radical demands of regime poetics of writing in accordance with politics and ideology. Socialist-realism, poetics in which party writing and educating people in the form of socialist progress and (...) without any concern about literary creation are paramount, finds its postulates in theories of the Union of Russian Proletarian Writers (RAPP) and proletarian cultural and educational organization (Proletkult). Theorists of socialist realism poetics claim that their postulates find philosophical justification in Marx’s and Engels’ texts about art. The primary subject of analysis in the article will, therefore, be the connection between the theory of social realism and the classical Marxist conception of art. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the theory of social realism is justified by classical Marxist aesthetics regarding historical materialism which determines art, but not in the sense of denying the autonomy of the art. (shrink)

When the counteroffensive against the February Adverse Current lasted into July and August, things seemed to be looking up for people across the country. Everyone was under the impression that there was hope to "carry the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the end," and that all traditional ideas that fettered people's minds would be cast aside. However, a top-to-bottom adverse current of the counterrevolutionary reformism that that had been around since October suddenly ran rampant; so did an atmosphere of (...) class compromise that suggested: "The first Cultural Revolution is over." People across the country were once again thrown into bewildering confusion, especially the young intellectuals and students who were highly sensitive and the first to feel such changes. So, "What shall we do?'and "Where is China heading?" again became the questions people were asking. The very first reason for establishing the Ultra-Left Commune is to address this serious question. (shrink)

With the failure of the Soviet Union, Aleksandr Bogdanov has come under increasing scrutiny as the anti-authoritarian, left-wing opponent of Lenin among the Bolsheviks and the main inspiration behind the Proletk'ult movement, the movement which attempted to create a new, proletarian culture (Sochor, 1988). Bogdanov's efforts to create a new, universal science of organization, a precursor to systems theory and cybernetics, has also attracted considerable attention (Gorelik, 1980; Bello, 1985; Biggart et.al. 1998). And he has been recognized as (...) an early environmentalist and as a feminist (Graham, 1984; Gare, 1994; Gare, 1996, pp.249-52). But few people have paid much attention to Bogdanov as an historian, sociologist and philosopher of science. Yet Bogdanov developed highly original ideas on science, offering unique resolutions to the oppositions between instrumentalism and realism and between internalist and externalist accounts of scientific development, and following from these, proposed a radical transformation of science as the foundation for an equally radical transformation of society. (shrink)

In December of last year, a few clowns appeared on the grand and spectacular stage of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. These clowns were the reincarnated ghosts from the Capital Red Guard West City, East City, and Haidian Districts Pickets. They viciously attacked Chairman Mao's revolutionary line, engaged in slander on the Central Cultural Revolution Group, called dear Comrade Jiang Qing names, and sabotaged the organizations under the proletarian dictatorship. They provoked violence, created chaos, searched and confiscated the (...) possessions of revolutionary organizations, and spread reactionary declarations. The crimes they committed are simply too numerous to mention. These clowns were none other than the "Capital Red Guards United Action Committee.". (shrink)

The article examines and analyzes the state structures of Soviet Ukraine in the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century, which were responsible for the organization, support and control in the field of culture and science of the country. In line with the postmodern transformations of this chronological segment, the system of state structures and their influence on the activities of semi-independent scientific organizations have been reconstructed. In view of postmodernism as a philosophical current, the nonviolent resistance of the (...) scientific intelligentsia to proletarian culture, forced by the Soviet nomenklatura with a mass, uncompromising character, is revealed. The political processes around state structures and scientific organizations are reproduced in historical retrospect. The activity of scientific organizations of the above historical period is investigated and an attempt is made to reproduce their organizational and social network. The article proves that the evolution of modern society is due to the complex influence of a set of important trends and factors that determine the progressive development of its economic, political, social and spiritual spheres. The relevance of the study is due to modern transformation processes in a post-communist society focused on democratic, liberal European values. With the spread and development of liberal views in Ukrainian society, we are increasingly seeing the emergence of private scientific institutions, which are the prototypes of scientific organizations of the previous century. As a result, their internal activities and connections with other organizations are of great interest today, not only among scientists, but also among business representatives. This necessitates a more in-depth development of this problem, taking into account the evolution of the theory and practice of social and public administration of various forms of ownership of organizations and enterprises. (shrink)

1966, the inaugural year of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was also the thirtieth anniversary of Lu Xun’s death. Quotations from and praise of China’s best known and preeminent modern writer were in abundance that year and an official commemorative event, reportedly attended by more than seventy thousand people, was held in Beijing. The anniversary date presented the Maoist state with a prime opportunity for boosting the cultural and intellectual authority of their doctrinal assertions by association with Lu Xun. (...) In asking what Lu Xun was in 1966, I seek to bring to view the thingness of his afterlife (or afterlives) under CCP rule. This paper discusses how the Maoist treatment of Lu Xun turned him into a political icon, to add aesthetic value to Mao Zedong Thought. Insofar as aesthetics turns on what can be felt, heard, seen, sensed, touched, or imagined, aestheticization is generally accompanied by a certain process of reification. I thus consider the concrete instances by which people came to experience Lu Xun—such as selected quotations from Lu Xun, Chairman Mao’s formulations about Lu Xun, and images of the writer in poster art—focusing in particular on the widely publicized speeches presented at the official commemoration of his death in October 1966. Since the 1980s, these 1966 commemorations have been routinely disparaged in China as an aberration. To take the Maoist version of Lu Xun seriously as the careful construction of an aesthetic object is to do more than elucidate its ideological abuse of Lu Xun. By engaging productively with the Maoist craving for an ideal revolutionary comportment, we may yet catch a glimpse of the kind of world it took for Lu Xun to make sense as a Maoist icon. Without this Maoist intensity of feeling, there would not have been the post-Maoist preoccupation with recovering or defending, as it were, Lu Xun’s true or real form (if such a phenomenologically pure act is even possible). (shrink)

The most important figure among Russia's radical Marxists was A.A. Bogdanov (the pseudonym of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii). Not only was he the prime exponent of a proletarian cultural revolution; it was Bogdanov's ideas which provided justification for concern for the environment. And his ideas are not only important to environmentalists because they were associated with this conservation movement; more significantly they are of continuing relevance because they confront the root causes of environmental destruction in the present, and offer what (...) is perhaps the only way to overcome these causes. (shrink)

Both the music and subculture of punk historically arose from disaffected working-class youth. This socio-economic starting point was absolutely crucial for making punk what it is. However, along with this standpoint came various levels of class consciousness that we can see evidence of in the lyrics and in various practices of people within the scene itself. I divide this consciousness into 3 specific levels of structural understanding and agency. Inspired by Georg Lukacs' analysis of class consciousness and Antonio Gramsci's theory (...) of hegemony, I demonstrate how punk as a subculture and musical art form is a notable demonstration of "proletarian culture". But just as the revolutionary potential of the proletariat hinges on a unified ideology and consolidated and consistent praxis, so too does the revolutionary potential of punk. [This text was written for a non-academic, general audience] . (shrink)

First published in 1977. Ethics is the most practical branch of philosophy: its immediate concern is with people's actions. Yet most philosophers do little to relate ethics intelligibly to the human situation. In this inquiry into the nature of ethics, William Ash draws on the relevant works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin to present the theory and practice of Marxist ethics. He offers an explanation of the moral aspect of Marx's dictum: 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in (...) various ways; the point, however, is to change it.' The book includes, perhaps for the first time in so considered a form, an assessment of Mao Tsetung's contribution to Marxist moral philosophy, together with the ethical implications of such developments in social practice as the Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The author deals with the question of value by analysing the concept of 'good'; with the question of claims on people and things by analysing the concept of 'right'; with the question of the limits and scope of freedom of choice and action by analysing the concept of 'ought'.' Clearly written in order to 'de-mystify' the subject, the book challenges readers to test the author's enlightened, Marxist approach in terms of the ethical ordering of their own society. (shrink)

In the fall of 1973, the mass Campaign to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius started to develop. At the beginning, I was very nervous. I said to myself: "Oh no'. Prior to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, I was always revering Confucius. Now that it is time to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, I will once again become the object of criticism." Later, after further thought, I realized that this was not right; this thinking arose from my old standpoint, (...) [the one which had preceded the standpoint] of the Great Cultural Revolution. I had revered Confucius in the past, but that was because my former standpoint was reactionary and my line was wrong. I had already recognized this during the Cultural Revolution. On the issue of revering Confucius, I had already taken the first step in self-criticism too. Now, on the basis of criticism which I have already established, I will put forth more advanced criticism of Confucius and of my own earlier thinking on revering Confucius. With the revolutionary masses, I will criticize Lin Piao and Confucius. (shrink)

This article deals with the biotechnology revolution in agriculture and analyzes it in terms of Bernard Stiegler’s theory of techno-evolution and his thesis that technologies have an intrinsically pharmacological nature, meaning that they can be both supportive and destructive for sociotechnical practices based on them. Technological innovations always first disrupt existing sociotechnical practices, but are subsequently always appropriated by the social system to be turned into a new technical system upon which new sociotechnical practices are based. As constituted and conditioned (...) by a technical system, human cultures are necessarily systems of care. Humans take care of themselves and the world through technologies. Agriculture is a very old system of care, stable for more than 10,000 years, but at the moment it is experiencing a profound rupture thanks to the invention of genetic engineering technologies, that promise to revolutionize it. However, their current deployment under capitalist conditions everywhere leads to processes of proletarianization, due to the fact that they enable the expropriation of farmers of the means of production, depriving them of the possibility of appropriating these new technologies and frustrating the invention of a new agricultural system of care. This has lead to a widespread rejection of the new technologies, which is a grave error though, as these technologies can become the basis of a new system of care. But only under the condition that they are wrought from corporate control and redeployed instead to initiate a process of deproletarianization. It is argued that current initiatives in open source and commons-based biotech are probably the most promising harbingers of such a process of deproletarianization. (shrink)

Daga (the Bulgarian word for “rainbow”) was a Bulgarian comic magazine launched in 1979 and regularly published until 1992. Its remarkably westernized aesthetic greatly impacted an entire generation of readers. Included in its variety of stories (history, sci-fi, literary classics) is an action-packed account of Spartacus’ exploits. For ten consecutive issues (1979–1983), the story spanned the hero’s life from a more fanciful narrative of his early years in Thrace to the better-documented events in Italy and his death. The paper explores (...) the plotline, characterization, and visual aspects of “Spartak” to reveal the eponymous hero’s significance for young Bulgarian readers in the 1980s. Drawing on the cultural and historical context, I argue that Spartacus was well suited to serve as a role model and a national hero by embodying the proletarian anti-imperialist struggle and also, notably, because of his supposed place of birth near the river Strimon in modern-day Bulgaria. I also look at examples of contemporary comics, including a new graphic novel based on Daga’s story published in 2020, and consider the transmutations of the hero to suit the post-communist (and anti-communist) ideological agenda, characterized by a departure from the proletarian image of Spartacus in favor of more conservative, aristocratic features. (shrink)

This article, taking a social semiotic approach, analyses two pieces of music written, shared and exalted by two pre-1945 European fascist movements – the German NSDAP and the British Union of Fascists. These movements, both political and cultural, employed mythologies of unity, common identity and purpose in order to elide the realities of social distinction and political–economic inequalities between bourgeois and proletarian groups in capitalist societies. Visually and inter-personally, the fascist cultural project communicated a machine-like certainty about a vision (...) for a new society based on discipline, conformity and the might of the nation. In this article, we are interested in the ways that these very same discourses are also communicated through sound and music in two songs: The Horst Wessel Lied and the BUF marching song, two songs that used the same melody. We analyse the discourses communicated by the semiotic choices made in melody, arrangements, sound qualities, rhythms as well as in lyrics. The article first identifies some of the underlying semiotic resources for meaning making in sound and then shows how these are used in order to communicate specific ideas, values and attitudes. (shrink)

One of the most influential recent developments in supposedly radical philosophy is ‘posthumanism’. This can be seen as the successor to ‘deconstructive postmodernism’. In each case, the claim of its proponents has been that cultures are oppressive by virtue of their elitism, and this elitism, fostered by the humanities, is being challenged. In each case, however, these philosophical ideas have served ruling elites by crippling opposition to their efforts to impose markets, concentrate wealth and power and treat everyone and everything (...) as mere instruments in a way that is not only undermining democracy and threatening economic, social and political stability through growing inequality, but is crippling efforts to deal with the global ecological crisis. Philosophers, Nietzsche claimed, are physicians of culture. Why should people claiming to be philosophers, or at least aligned with philosophers, subvert their own calling? In this paper I will suggest that with the expansion of education and the rise of neoliberalism, those involved in education and research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have been proletarianized, and most have accepted this proletarianization. They have been reduced to a fraction of the proletariat - wage-slaves without economic security and therefore dependent on the will of others on whom they are dependent. They are not ordinary wage-slaves, however, but wage-house-slaves, having salaries rather than wages. If, as Marx argued, social being determines consciousness, posthumanism can be understood as the expression of ressentiment of these house-slaves at their condition while simultaneously serving to affirm their superiority to field-slaves while serving their masters. Their work is supported because it provides ideological cover for their masters, the new transnational managerial class or corporatocracy as they expand their power through information technology, while absolving this corporatocracy from responsibility for the consequences of their growing power. In making this claim I will argue that the real target of deconstructionists and posthumanists, although this is now seldom appreciated, has been the humanism of the New Left, a revival of the Radical Enlightenment inspired by Renaissance civic humanism and the German Renaissance. (shrink)

Stefan Jonsson uses three monumental works of art to build a provocative history of popular revolt: Jacques-Louis David's _The Tennis Court Oath_ (1791), James Ensor's _Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889_ (1888), and Alfredo Jaar's _They Loved It So Much, the Revolution_ (1989). Addressing, respectively, the French Revolution of 1789, Belgium's proletarian messianism in the 1880s, and the worldwide rebellions and revolutions of 1968, these canonical images not only depict an alternative view of history but offer a new understanding (...) of the relationship between art and politics and the revolutionary nature of true democracy. Drawing on examples from literature, politics, philosophy, and other works of art, Jonsson carefully constructs his portrait, revealing surprising parallels between the political representation of "the people" in government and their aesthetic representation in painting. Both essentially "frame" the people, Jonsson argues, defining them as elites or masses, responsible citizens or angry mobs. Yet in the aesthetic fantasies of David, Ensor, and Jaar, Jonsson finds a different understanding of democracy-one in which human collectives break the frame and enter the picture. Connecting the achievements and failures of past revolutions to current political issues, Jonsson then situates our present moment in a long historical drama of popular unrest, making his book both a cultural history and a contemporary discussion about the fate of democracy in our globalized world. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the First World War, the poet Paul Valéry wrote of a "crisis of spirit", brought about by the instrumentalization of knowledge and the destructive subordination of culture to profit. Recent events demonstrate all too clearly that the stock of mind, or spirit, continues to fall. The economy is toxically organized around the pursuit of short-term gain, supported by an infantilizing, dumbed-down media. Advertising technologies make relentless demands on our attention, reducing us to idiotic beasts, no (...) longer capable of living. Spiralling rates of mental illness show that the fragile life of the mind is at breaking point. Underlying these multiple symptoms is consumer capitalism, which systematically immiserates those whom it purports to liberate. Returning to Marxʹs theory, Stiegler argues that consumerism marks a new stage in the history of proletarianization. It is no longer just labour that is exploited, pushed below the limits of subsistence, but the desire that is characteristic of human spirit. The cure to this malaise is to be found in what Stiegler calls a "pharmacology of the spirit". Here, pharmacology has nothing to do with the chemical supplements developed by the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmakon, defined as both cure and poison, refers to the technical objects through which we open ourselves to new futures, and thereby create the spirit that makes us human. By reference to a range of figures, from Socrates, Simondon and Derrida to the child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, Stiegler shows that technics are both the cause of our suffering and also what makes life worth living. -- Publisher description. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, and the Pursuit of the PublicPaul StobIn Deliberation Day, Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin argue for the creation of a national holiday, "Deliberation Day," in which citizens come together over a two-day period in their local schools and community centers to deliberate over the merits of presidential candidates and their platforms (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). While Ackerman and Fishkin propose that the government pay each (...) citizen a $150 stipend for voluntary participation, the purpose is not so much to monetarily to reward citizens for "showing up" as it is to foster an enriched civic culture that would send shockwaves through America's political infrastructure: "If Deliberation Day succeeded, everything else would change: the candidates, the media, the activists, the interest groups, the spin doctors, the advertisers, the pollsters, the fund raisers, the lobbyists, the political parties. All would have no choice but to adapt to a more attentive and informed public" (3). The task of Deliberation Day would be to create a new social context in which citizens could become enlightened through public participation. As the authors conclude the book, "We can, through an act of political imagination, create new institutions for redeeming the ancient promise of democratic citizenship. Ordinary men and women need not be the hapless playthings of the powerful. They can and must find new ways to hold their leaders to account, and redeem their dignity as human beings by responsibly shaping their collective destiny" (219).Ackerman and Fishkin's proposal is indeed filled with political imagination. I bring their proposal to light not to critique the possibilities and limitations of Deliberation Day, but to understand the way in which the authors understand "the public." At the bottom, what the polity needs, Ackerman and Fishkin believe, is a public space dedicated to the reinvigoration [End Page 226] of political culture. It is not that the citizenry is incapable of hammering out intelligent political solutions, but that it needs access to social contexts that facilitate deliberation and the emergence of a common good. To foster a culture of political intelligence, the public needs only the chance to enter the forums that will facilitate thorough, cooperative political decision-making.Ackerman and Fishkin are not alone in calling for access to or creation of these types of forums. Habermas's bourgeois public sphere—a public space in which citizens could come together and rationally debate the activities of the state—essentially represents the evolution of a context, a social space, a public arena (Habermas 1989). The bourgeois public sphere is meant to be egalitarian, providing citizens a forum in which to debate openly and foster a common political consciousness.1 But this sphere has proved problematic for a number of scholars. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (1993), for example, propose a proletarian public sphere to counter capitalism's socioeconomic domination over public resources. Joan Landes (1988) argues that the bourgeois public sphere entails male domination in public life, to the exclusion of women. Nancy Fraser (1992) builds on the feminist critique by adopting the term "counterpublics," collectives of citizens—women, peasants, the working class, and other groups demarcated by issues of race, gender, and ethnicity—that arise in reaction to the dominant public sphere.2In the introduction to Counterpublics and the State (2001), Robert Asen and Daniel Brouwer argue that critiques of the bourgeois public sphere specifically and public sphere theory generally amount to three "reconfigurations" in the way in which scholars think of the public. First, scholars have come to recognize the existence and interaction of multiple public spheres. Second, they have come to acknowledge permeable boundaries of access to the multiple public spheres. Third, scholars have come to recognize the dynamic role of the state in shaping public discourse. One considerable result of these three reconfigurations is an increasing recognition of the political divisions that permeate society (Asen and Brouwer 2001, 17-25).If Asen and Brouwer are right, and I think they are, these three reconfigurations represent the general thrust of contemporary public sphere scholarship, including as it is understood among communication scholars.3 And however diverse such scholarship may be, a few common themes seem to recur across... (shrink)

Under the conditions of the revolution in science and technology, of tremendous social changes, of the tempestuous and significant growth in the prestige of scientific knowledge, and of the exacerbation of the ideological struggle, there has been an immeasurable broadening of the social tasks and spheres of operation of such social phenomena as scientific criticism and self-criticism. Study of social, theoretical, and psychological cross-sections of these phenomena is one of the necessary conditions for cultivating lofty civic qualities, a communist world-view, (...) and the moral and aesthetic improvement of the individual. Special attention is directed to the socializing function of criticism and self-criticism in the Program of the CPSU, the materials of the Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU, and the resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On Literary and Artistic Criticism" and "On the State of Criticism and Self-Criticism in the Tambov Regional Party Organization." Scientific criticism reveals the extent to which the results or processes of practical activity are in accord with communist ideals and to what degree the moral and aesthetic norms of individuals and collectives are an expression of proletarian and general human culture. This is a distinctive intellectual and theoretical form of solution of social contradictions. Criticism is organically interwoven into theoretical and practical human activity. It breaks down old and established social traditions and customary values and impels human thought to undertake scientific quests. It does not permit society to content itself merely with its past triumphs. Scientific criticism arouses and cultivates class consciousness and provides an evaluation of social phenomena from the standpoint of the progressive class. Under the conditions of developed socialist society, criticism and self-criticism become an active means for improving ideological, political, and educational work, the development of the toilers' creative capacities, and activation of the sociopolitical and intellectual life of society. (shrink)

To this day I still do not know exactly what sort of people are to be regarded as intellectuals, and what sort of people are not. When I was being re-educated in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, a military representative once told me that I was a "petty bourgeois intellectual." I was only seventeen at the time, had received six years of primary school education, and was barely literate, so I felt I did not deserve to be called an (...) intellectual. By the way, I also felt I did not deserve the appellation "petty bourgeois." My family lived on wages from the government; even our furniture belonged to the government. We had not set up a stall to sell cigarettes in front of our house, so where did he get the term "petty bourgeois"? As for myself as an individual, it was only right and proper that I should belong to one social class or another, and I was not against doing so. However, to this day, I do not know in what class intellectual youths should be counted. In my opinion, if one insists on making comparisons or analogies, they should be counted as lumpen proletarians or the like. But this is taking the subject too far. (shrink)

SummaryThis article situates Ernest Renan's representation of the historical Jesus in the author's intellectual, personal and political trajectory. It traces the development of Renan's ideas about Jesus across a variety of texts, from his loss of faith at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice in 1845 until the publication of Life of Jesus in 1863. It particularly argues that Renan's best-selling book should be rooted in the cultural aftermath of the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 to 1851. The violence of the June Days (...) and the election of Louis-Napoléon bred in Renan a deep disillusionment with democracy and socialism. Where French writers of the 1830s and 1840s had offered a proletarian Christ promising social revolution, Renan therefore depicted a liberal Jesus who offered a non-violent ‘revolution’ of personal morality. This Jesus was an individualist who spurned the temporal realm with ‘transcendent disdain’, preferring instead to pursue a state of inner liberty and perfection. Furthermore, this article argues that this representation of Jesus reflected the self-justification of Second Empire liberals such as Renan, who had retreated from frontline politics into the realm of culture and ideas. Indeed, Life of Jesus was itself a product of precisely this retreat. (shrink)

The article reconstructs the false foundations of Soviet designs imaginable urbanization detects starting social places concepts of "classical" days of building socialism. Projected into the future the idea of permanent revolution, the destruction of "bourgeois barbarism" and desire the establishment of legal order Bolsheviks led the workers to the approval of a new type of state and the formation of a new anthropological type of person. This type - "eternal revolutionary", "architect of the new world" had to live with a (...) single purpose - to extend the principles of proletarian justice to the axis of the world. The epicenter of the factory or the formation of the new man was an industrial city - industrial zone heroically-miltarism work. The main method of the formation of cities and the new man was a total mobilization, the image of the antagonistic enemy of mythic-Titanic goal, collectively practice of collective responsibility, temporal-topeni the control of the state-party bodies the army-camp architecture, etc. The Communists sought to build the city for centuries, people, nomos chose to build incubators "eternal revolutionaries", the barracks of the unknown soldier or barracks devotees of "Stakhanovite". In the draft party not only needs to become an industrial base for future victories over bourgeois barbarism, but also a gathering place loyal fighters for a revolutionary breakthrough - the construction of communism all over the world. Social city - misguided or sinister space, which is not provided for the life of a healthy society. It is the fruit of pure nomos, state coercion, that denied cultural and national experiences, socio-economic patterns, cravings human being the ruins of the Communist concepts of permanent revolution and militarism of labor. The experience of the Communist daydreaming inspires the statement that as an axiom of the relationship of nomos and fuses in urban space is the right man for happiness. A key measure of their dialectical interaction is the reliance on the security and preservation of the integrity of human nature, national heritage, the experience of past generations. (shrink)

This article deals with the role of the political print media popular with communists in Mexico when anti-fascism became the code for the behaviour of democratic forces in the face of the provocation of Hitler’s fascism. Under the facade of anti-fascist unity, the German-speaking communist exiles established a publishing culture, from which Hannes Meyer and Lena Meyer-Bergner, who had come to Mexico from Soviet exile and who committed themselves to proletarian internationalism, soon separated or were excluded. Independent of (...) the group, they developed strategies in accord ance with their anti-imperialist mission, from propaganda media for the Soviet state to the implementation of a sign language that would enable communication across borders: the International System of Typographic Picture Education (Isotype). The goal of my analysis is to provide a starting point for classifying Meyer and Meyer-Bergner’s work in print media, beyond the extensively researched Taller de Gráfica Popular context, but within the polarization of international opposition to fascism and totalitarian regimes during the Second World War. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler’s concept of individuation suggests that the human being is co-constituted with technology. Technology precedes the individual in the respect that the latter is thrown in a technological world that always already contains externally inscribed memories—what he calls tertiary memories—that selectively form the individual and the collective space of the community. Revisiting Husserlian phenomenology, Stiegler renews the critique of culture industries asserting that imagination and differance have always been technologically mediated, and echoing the Heideggerian anxiety concerning thinking’s over-determination, (...) Stiegler offers an intriguing analysis of the specificity of our age’s technologies while exploring the possibility for political responsibility and educational intervention. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV References Further Reading.

Taking its point of departure from Jullien’s primary claim in The Silent Transformations that ancient Greek ontology propels European thought into ‘the vertigo of the event,’ the article turns toward a European thinker whom Jullien does not mention in this context, namely Walter Benjamin, and asks whether his work, too, succumbs to this vertigo. The choice of Benjamin as a ‘test case’ is governed by two factors: while his work is widely associated with notions of the event, there is little (...) recognition of the degree to which he was engaged with the Daodejing (in translation) from the early 1910s to the late 1930s. Divided into four chronologically ordered sections, each of which is prefaced by a claim advanced in The Silent Transformations, the article shows how Benjamin’s concepts of transition, effective non-action (under the term ‘proletarian general strike’), mimesis, ‘the second technology,’ and Jetztzeit (‘now-time’) are all traversed by a mediated conception of the Dao. The primary question around this re-evaluation of his work, guided by the idea of ‘the silent transformations’ that Jullien adopts from Wang Fuzhi, is whether the theory of revolution Benjamin developed in the 1930s can be characterized as Daoist or, better yet, Marxist-Daoist. (shrink)

The article critically analyses the gaps and the analytical potential in Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere concerning corporate discourses and debates. It is shown that Habermas only analyses the field of work in abstract terms, neglecting in particular corporate public spheres. In contrast, corporate public spheres are developed as an analytical concept, expressed by companies in the form of institutionalized co-determination, situationally granted opportunities for participation and self-willed public spheres of workers. These three fields are discussed (...) using empirical examples. It is shown that corporate public spheres are eroded by precarization and instrumentalized by management. Furthermore, digitalization is working towards a comprehensive algorithmic control of corporate public spheres by companies, but also towards new autonomous communication networks that establish proletarian public spheres, so that both refeudalization and revitalization of corporate public spheres can be observed. (shrink)

Questions such as ‘What if such small companies as Hewletts and the Varians had not been established in Santa Clara County in California?’ or ‘What if Q-type keyboards had not been invented?’ are well known among economists. The questions point at a phenomenon called path dependence: ‘small events’, the argument goes, may cause the evolution of institutions to lock in to specific paths that may produce undesirable consequences. How about applying such skeptical views in economics to human ideas and thought (...) in general? That is to say, what if we ask such questions as: what if Greek philosophy had not been interested in ‘essences’ and ‘foundations’? What if Kant had not invented the ‘thing-in-itself?’ Nature and society, according to such Platonic philosophers, can be known only if it can be shown that events are governed, regulated and characterised by ‘forms’, which are immutable, complete, and perfect in their nature. But is there an ‘essence’ that makes a man 100 per cent male? Was there really a ‘foundation’ in history that caused a proletarian revolution in Russia? What if we had pushed aside the rhetoric of utopian ideality? What if we had a worldview different than the one depicted by Thomas More in his Utopia? The essay points at the possibility of such skepticism in human ideas and thought. (shrink)

Zhongdong Railway Incident was an unfortunate event that caused Sino-soviet war. The responsibility was on both sides, but China should take the main responsibility. Northeast local authorities and Zhang Xueliang were the main policy makers, and Nanjing government took an attitude of active encouragement and support. The dispute of two slogans “Supporting Soviet union” and "Guarding Soviet union with armed forces" was established four months later, and the resolution ended with expelling Chen Duxiu from the Party membership. Liu Shaoqi, Secretary (...) of CPC Provincial Committee of Manchuria successfully led workers in winning the war under extremely dangerous and complex circumstance. He not only showed a firm proletarian position, rich fighting experiences and flexible struggle strategy, but also provided valuable experiences for CPC's leading workers to struggle in the white area. (shrink)

Empathy is sharing and understanding others’ emotions. Recently, researchers identified a culture–sex interaction effect in empathy. This phenomenon has been largely ignored by previous researchers. In this study, the culture–sex interaction effect was explored with a cohort of 129 participants (61 Australian Caucasians and 68 Chinese Hans) using both self-report questionnaires (i.e., Empathy Quotient and Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and computer-based empathy tasks. In line with the previous findings, the culture–sex interaction effect was observed for both trait empathy (...) (i.e., the generalized characteristics of empathy, as examined by the self-report questionnaires) and state empathy (i.e., the on-spot reaction of empathy for a specific stimulus, as evaluated by the computer-based tasks). Moreover, in terms of state empathy, the culture–sex interaction effect further interacted with stimulus traits (i.e., stimulus ethnicity, stimulus sex, or stimulus emotion) and resulted in three- and four-way interactions. Follow-up analyses of these higher-order interactions suggested that the phenomena of ethnic group bias and sex group favor in empathy varied among the four culture–sex participant groups (i.e., Australian female, Australian male, Chinese female, and Chinese male). The current findings highlighted the dynamic nature of empathy (i.e., its sensitivity toward both participant traits and stimulus features). Furthermore, the newly identified interaction effects in empathy deserve more investigation and need to be verified with other Western and Asian populations. (shrink)

Selections from the notebooks of the distinguished philosopher discuss subjects such as music, religion, thinking, science, architecture, and civilization.

I argue that culture is not essential to race by considering the strongest and most persuasive contemporary articulation of the view that culture is essential to race—that provided by Chike Jeffers I then argue for the possibility of conceiving of race without adverting to culture by presenting the minimalist conception of race I developed in Rethinking Race as an example of a conception of race that makes no reference to culture. I next show how the ancestry-related (...) features of culture that might be thought to be racial but fall outside of the minimalist race can be captured in a minimalist conception of ethnicity. I finally explain why we are better off conceiving of race in a way that does not advert to culture and conclude. (shrink)