Resistance within South Africa’s Passive Revolution: from Racial Inclusion to Fractured Militancy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Paret
Keyword(s):  
Passive Revolution ◽  
Racial Inclusion

Passive Revolution in Japan: The Restoration of Hegemony under Abe?

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110138
Author(s):  
Myles Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Japanese Prime Minister ◽  
Passive Revolution ◽  
High Degree

This article draws on Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution to explore the second tenure of Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō from 2012 to 2020. It sees the high degree of political stability that Abe achieved as a contrast to the preceding two decades of Japanese politics and asks what accounts for Abe’s success in restoring Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) dominance in an era of enduring economic and social crisis. The article argues that Abe executed a strategy of passive revolution that incorporated two “faces”: an “outward” face oriented around consent and an “inward” face rooted in coercion. The former involved economic policies (in particular “Abenomics”) designed to appear capable of resolving chronic economic stagnation, growing inequality and other social and economic problems, restoring popular support for the LDP without undermining conditions for capital accumulation or empowering subaltern classes. In contrast, the latter involved various low-profile security and administrative policies that enabled the Abe government to dramatically increase its power while silencing or disarming potential rivals and critics. The article sees this two-sided strategy of passive revolution as effective in restoring LDP dominance but unlikely to prove the basis for a more expansive hegemony or a resolution to Japan’s organic crisis.

Organic Crisis, Integral State, Passive Revolution: Twilight of the Neoliberal Order?

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-95
Author(s):  
Ian McKay
Keyword(s):  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
The People ◽  
Passive Revolution

Abstract A reconnaissance of the 2020 pandemic begins by registering the moments of refusal and supersedure, demonstrating the extent to which it seemed to many to be an organic (transformational) crisis re-ordering neoliberal capitalism’s fundamental elements. Vaccine development and debates over lockdowns illustrate the emergence of a neoliberal integral state, one in which the lines between government, industry and finance are blurred to the point of invisibility. Yet the pandemic also suggests that such states are hobbled as effective organisers of hegemony by their incapacity to safeguard the lives and interests of the people they purportedly represent and to break with imperial patterns of global dominance. Passive revolutionary attempts to contain revolutionary critiques and activism are to be expected; yet they may not succeed, given that the covid-19 pandemic arose from the environmental consequences of the global processes of capitalist accumulation neoliberals defend. The ‘next left’ has an opening, provided it soberly addresses the crisis of the neoliberal order and develops a convincing strategy for overcoming it.

Globalisation, Hegemony and Passive Revolution

2001 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Showstack Sassoon
Keyword(s):  
Passive Revolution

Hidden Revolutionary Processes in 1990s India?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiří Krejčík
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Capitalist Class ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
History Of ◽  
Decisive Victory ◽  
Contemporary Situation ◽  
Passive Revolution

The chapter considers the history of India, mainly in the last decades, in light of the contemporary situation, created by the decisive victory of the Hindu nationalist party. While India has not experienced a political revolution in the generally accepted sense, it is a noteworthy fact that the label „revolution“ has been used to describe varying developments during the last half-century. This raises conceptual questions. In particular, it needs to be clarified whether the idea of a „passive revolution“, a major structural change without the collective action and the struggle for social power that are associated with full-fledged revolution, is applicable. In India, it has been applied to Gandhi’s actvities, but also to those of his less charismatic disciples; but some scholars have doubted its relevance. The chapter argues for a cautious application of the concept, especially with regard to the rise of a new capitalist class.

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