A ‘Mediterranean New Left’? Comparing and Contrasting the French PSU and the Italian PSIUP

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL A. GORDON

AbstractThis article argues that Gerd-Rainer Horn's model of a ‘Mediterranean New Left’ encompassing both the French Parti socialiste unifié (PSU, 1960–1990) and the Italian Partito socialista italiano di unità proletaria (PSIUP, 1964–1972) needs to be significantly revised. It agrees that, half a century on from the events which gave rise to their foundation, this much misunderstood part of the political spectrum, midway between social democracy and the far left, is worthy of rescue from the ‘enormous condescension of posterity’, but questions how similar the two parties actually were. Major differences emerge, especially in the nature of each party's relationship with communism, with the philosovietism of the PSIUP contrasting with the PSU's evolution towards an anti-Leninist decentralist socialism of self-management. Yet, at the same time, important new evidence is uncovered about the concrete political and personal links that developed between leading intellectuals of the PSIUP and PSU, an example being the friendship of the Italian parliamentarian and theorist Lelio Basso with the journalist Gilles Martinet, later French ambassador to Italy. Other transnational links, both across the Mediterranean and to eastern Europe, are explored. Furthermore, the location of the roots of both parties in the 1940s generation of anti-fascist resistance calls into question prevailing assumptions equating the New Left with the youth of the 1960s, with wider implications for our understanding of the development of the European left across the twentieth century.

2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reuel Schiller

This article examines the politics of airline deregulation in the 1970s, and the events that led to the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. It links the antibureaucratic, antiregulatory policies of the 1970s to ideas closely connected to the New Left, the counterculture, and other left-wing subcultures that dominated high and low thought in the 1960s. By linking this source of antibureaucratic sentiment to the politics of airline deregulation, this article suggests a new direction for historians who study the American state in the last decades of the twentieth century. As they focus their attention on the rise of market-based, neoliberal regulatory policies, they should look for their origins not only in the growing strength of the intellectual and political right, but also in the political thought and practice of the 1960s left.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Tamás Krausz ◽  
Róbert Nárai

In the 1960s, György Lukács—under the slogan Back to Marx!—called for a "renaissance" of Marxism within Eastern Europe. To understand the nature of this renaissance, we have to understand the many important questions that the Hungarian uprising of 1956 raised for the anti-Stalinist left inside Hungary and Eastern Europe more broadly. This interview goes into the attempts to rethink the future of socialism from the Eastern European situation in the second half of the twentieth century, including the political lessons of 1968, the internal fight within the Hungarian Socialist Party, and the continued relevance of V. I. Lenin's Marxism.


Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This chapter concerns the politics of managing the domestic banking system in post-war Britain. It examines the pressures brought to bear on the post-war settlement in banking during the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, the growth of new credit creating institutions and the political demand for more competition between banks. This undermined the social democratic model for managing credit established since the war. The chapter focuses in particular on how the Labour Party attempted in the 1970s to produce a banking system that was competitive, efficient, and able to channel credit to the struggling industrial economy.


Author(s):  
Julia Moses

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the dramatic emergence of modern welfare states across Europe. Why did this transformation take form? Was this process uniform across Europe? And what did it mean for relations between individuals and states? This chapter suggests that European social policies in the early twentieth century were characterized by an emphasis on integration and community. This perspective chimed with widespread utopian aspirations for social improvement voiced across the political spectrum and across the Continent. Nonetheless, the relative emphasis on integration and community varied across Europe and over time. Moreover, associated quests for an ideal future held the potential to be both enabling and oppressive. This chapter highlights two related themes that reveal these complexities: work and population politics. It charts developments in social legislation across Europe, including eugenics, labour, and family policies, and it traces the impact of transnational reform movements and international organizations.


Author(s):  
Sally M. Horrocks

Commentators and politicians have frequently argued that the performance of the British economy could be significantly improved by paying more attention to the translation of the results of scientific research into new products and processes. They have frequently suggested that deficiencies in achieving this are part of a long-standing national malaise and regularly point to a few well-worn examples to support their contention. What are conspicuous by their absence from these debates are detailed and contextual studies that actually examine the nature of the interactions between scientists and industry and how these changed over time. This paper provides one such study by examining three aspects of the relationship between the Royal Society, its Fellows and industrial R&D during the mid twentieth century. It looks first at the enthusiasm for industrial research to be found across the political spectrum after World War II before examining the election as Fellows of the Royal Society of men who worked in industry at the time of their election. Finally it considers the extent to which industrial R&D was incorporated into the way in which the Royal Society presented itself to the outside world through its Conversazione. Despite the absence of formal structures to translate the results of the work of scientists employed in other institutional contexts to industry, there is much evidence to indicate that there were plenty of other opportunities for the exchange of information to take place.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 286-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Polletta ◽  
Katt Hoban

Activists have long justified their egalitarian organizational forms in prefigurative terms. Making decisions by consensus, decentralizing organization, and rotating leadership serves to model the radically democratic society that activists hope to bring into being. Our comparison of consensus-based decision-making in three historical periods, however, shows that activists have understood the purposes of prefiguration in very different ways. Whereas radical pacifists in the 1940s saw their cooperative organizations as sustaining movement stalwarts in a period of political repression, new left activists in the 1960s imagined that their radically democratic practices would be adopted by ever-widening circles. Along with the political conditions in which they have operated, activists’ distinctive understandings of equality have also shaped the way they have made decisions. Our interviews with 30 leftist activists today reveal a view of decision-making as a place to work through inequalities that are informal, unacknowledged, and pervasive.


Author(s):  
Valeria Caruso ◽  
Esteban Campos ◽  
Mariano Vigo ◽  
Omar Acha

El presente trabajo examina la utilidad de la categoría analítica “izquierda peronista” para caracterizar las tendencias anticapitalistas y socialistas del peronismo surgidas en la Argentina de los años 1960 y 1970. Estudia los usos de la categoría en las investigaciones sobre el tema, en las que coexiste con nociones alternativas tales como “peronismo revolucionario”. Aunque el peronismo en general se ha (auto)percibido como un movimiento ajeno a las clasificaciones modernas del espectro político en términos de izquierda-derecha, el estudio de los usos de esas clasificaciones, en ocasiones empleadas por los propios actores, sugiere la relevancia analítica del término “izquierda peronista” en clave politética.Palabras clavePeronismo, izquierda peronista, historiografía, clasificación politética.AbstractThis article examines the usefulness of the analytical category “Peronist left” to characterize the anti-capitalist and socialist tendencies of Peronism that emerged in Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s. It discusses the uses of the category in different works of research, where is coincidental with alternative notions such as “revolutionary Peronism”. Although Peronism in general has been (self)perceived as a movement strange to modern classifications of the political spectrum in terms of left and right, the study of the uses of these classifications, sometimes employed by the actors themselves, suggests the analytical relevance of the term “Peronist left” in polythetic inquiry.Key WordsPeronism, peronist left, historiography, polythetic classification.


2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-54
Author(s):  
Lesley Le Grange

We see images of violence of all kinds in the media on a daily basis. Moreover, violence associated with extreme political/religious beliefs has increased in the twentieth century and is particularly disturbing. In this article the author points out that violence is not a biological tendency but the effect of ever-increasing organisation capacities. As a consequence, violence is committed by people across the political spectrum, including the radical left and the extreme right. Carriers of violence are highlighted in the article, including coloniality and its effects on society generally and education specifically. Given that there is a force field of violence, a vision for non-violence for education is argued for. Inspiration for such a vision could come from traditional indigenous values such as the African value of ubuntu.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Larissa Raele Cestari

O artigo compara as visões de povo que pautaram tanto o jornal Notícias Populares, no momento da sua criação, em 1963, pelo empresário e líder udenista Herbert Levy, representante da elite liberal paulista, quanto o conceito de populismo na versão elaborada pela sociologia paulista na década de 1960. Minha hipótese é a de que apesar de situados em diferentes posições do espectro político e com motivações e intenções diversas, as visões de povo, tanto da elite liberal paulista representada por Notícias Populares quanto dos formuladores do conceito de populismo, carregam aspectos em comum, inclusive na ambiguidade com que as classes populares são tratadas: ora passivas e manipuladas; ora reconhecidas como cidadãs, aptas a reivindicar seus direitos.*This paper compares the concepts of people that appeared both on the newspaper Notícias Populares at the time of its foundation, in 1963, by the entrepreneur and UDN political leader Herbert Levy, a representative from the liberal elite from the state of São Paulo, and the concept of populism elaborated by the paulista sociology in the 1960s. My hypothesis is that, although located at opposite sides of the political spectrum and with distinct intentions and motivations, the conceptions about popular classes from these two distinct poles share several aspects, including the ambiguity with which these classes are treated: either as passive and manipulated or recognized as citizens able to claim their rights.


Author(s):  
Endre Szkárosi

This chapter offers an analysis of the process in which Hungarian poetry “takes back” (recuperates) the vocal and sonic dimensions of language in the second half of the twentieth century. Together with its actional parallels and consequences, this progress implicates a powerful functionalization of the performativity in poetry, which, for various reasons, was neglected in historical avant-garde poetry in Hungary. New avant-garde and experimental waves in art and influences of radical pop music were much more productive in this sense from the 1960s on, and several inspirations of Western cultural trends helped to form a particular underground scene, mainly in the 1980s. Contextualizing these phenomena, the author makes a comparative study of the main tendencies of the given period on such a field in Euro-American sound poetry experimentations (Futurism, Dada, Fluxus), while highlighting some outstanding works of Hungarian poets and groups, such as Tibor Papp, Katalin Ladik, and Konnektor.


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