Order Under Assault

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-88
Author(s):  
Jeffrey K. Hass
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Material Deprivation ◽  
The State ◽  
Farmers Market ◽  
Food Theft

To provide a backdrop for our stories and to study effects of duress on order, this chapter explores political authority and the field of power (the state and Communist Party). The dearth of food deprived the state of a tool for control, and skills and routines of average officials were not initially aligned with wartime needs. Further, intense material deprivation and hunger shifted civilians’ incentives: survival compelled breaking rules, even for civilians not otherwise so inclined. Finally, some officials and cadres were tempted to steal and resell food in shadow markets for speculative profit, creating a competitor to the state: the collective farmers’ market (rynok). Elites and the police/NKVD knew of food theft and rynok speculation but could not stop it. Paradoxically, shadow opportunists and civilians simultaneously challenged institutional coherence and reproduced it: shadow practices bled the state of control, but also required the state to provide food.

The Power of Public Positions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Condition ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

The Kantian account of political authority holds that the state is a necessary and sufficient condition of our freedom. We cannot be free outside the state, Kantians argue, because any attempt to have the “acquired rights” necessary for our freedom implicates us in objectionable relations of dependence on private judgment. Only in the state can this problem be overcome. But it is not clear how mere institutions could make the necessary difference, and contemporary Kantians have not offered compelling explanations. A detailed analysis is presented of the problems Kantians identify with the state of nature and the objections they face in claiming that the state overcomes them. A response is sketched on behalf of Kantians. The key idea is that under state institutions, a person can make claims of acquired right without presupposing that she is by nature exceptional in her capacity to bind others.

Church and State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

Chapter 3’s discussion of kingdoms and orders in the context of political life leads naturally into the topic of this chapter: the church, the state, and their relationship. The present chapter locates the state (or, better, political authority in general) in relationship to Chapter 3’s categories by presenting it as one of the orders by which God’s structures the world. It is an important actor in the temporal kingdom, where God has ordained it to preserve the world through law. The church in its essence is an agent of the spiritual kingdom, bearing God’s redemptive word to the world. The themes of preservation and redemption, the kingdoms, and the orders find many of their concrete expressions in themes of the church, the state, and their relationship.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Local Populations ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Commercial Environment

This chapter introduces the concept of extralegal groups and a theoretical framework for analyzing them—how they emerge, develop, and become entrenched over time. It explores their dual nature as threats to the state and as local statebuilders. Formally, an extralegal group is defined as a set of individuals with a proven capacity for violence who work outside the law for profit and provide basic governance functions to sustain its business interests. This framing shows how political authority can develop as a by-product of the commercial environment, even where the state has little or no presence. In post-conflict societies, the predatory nature and historical abuses of citizens conducted in the name of the state means that government is not always more trusted or better able to look after the interests of local populations than an extralegal group. Ultimately, extralegal groups blur the lines between the formal and informal; the licit and illicit.

scholarly journals "Communist" dispossession meets "reactionary" resistance

Focaal ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (54) ◽  
pp. 89-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Projit Bihari Mukharji
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Communist Government ◽  
Set Up

The reflections in this article were instigated by the repeated and brutal clashes since 2007 between peasants and the state government’s militias—both official and unofficial—over the issue of industrialization. A communist government engaging peasants violently in order to acquire and transfer their lands to big business houses to set up capitalist enterprises seemed dramatically ironic. De- spite the presence of many immediate causes for the conflict, subtle long-term change to the nature of communist politics in the state was also responsible for the present situation. This article identifies two trends that, though significant, are by themselves not enough to explain what is happening in West Bengal today. First, the growth of a culture of governance where the Communist Party actively seeks to manage rather than politicize social conflicts; second, the recasting of radical political subjectivity as a matter of identity rather than an instigation for critical self-reflection and self-transformation.

The Political Theory of the Disruption

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Laski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Church

“Of political principles,” says a distinguished authority, “whether they be those of order or of freedom, we must seek in religious and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most notable expressions.” No one, in truth, will deny the accuracy of this claim for those ages before the Reformation transferred the centre of political authority from church to state. What is too rarely realised is the modernism of those writings in all save form. Just as the medieval state had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erstwhile rival. The church, intelligibly enough, is compelled to seek the protection of its liberties lest it become no more than the religious department of an otherwise secular society. The main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is still that which lies at the root of medieval conflict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall the nature and personality of those groups of which the state is so formidably one be regarded as in its gift to define? Can the state tolerate alongside itself churches which avow themselves societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the state but one of many, or are those many but parts of itself, the one?

Control and Style: Discipline Inspection Commissions Since the 11th Congress

1984 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 24-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Young
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The legacies of the Cultural Revolution have been nowhere more enduring than in the Chinese Communist Party organization. Since late 1967, when the process of rebuilding the shattered Party began, strengthening Party leadership has been a principal theme of Chinese politics; that theme has become even more pronounced in recent years. It is now claimed that earlier efforts achieved nothing, and that during the whole “decade of turmoil” until 1976, disarray in the Party persisted and political authority declined still further. Recent programmes of Party reform, therefore, still seek to overcome the malign effects of the Cultural Revolution in order to achieve the complementary objectives of reviving abandoned Party “traditions” and refashioning the Party according to the new political direction demanded by its present leaders.

Political Intimacy

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 658-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neringa Klumbytė
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The State ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
The Public ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
Political Aesthetics ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Power Orders

This article explores intersections between power, subjectivity, and laughter by focusing on Šluota ( The Broom), a humor and satire journal published by the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party during late socialism (1970s to mid-1980s). In Lithuania, while the official newspapers and journals were commonly distrusted, The Broom was perceived as a grassroots media. In this article, the author asks how officially sanctioned socialist humor was translated into readers’ sincere laughter; how sensual and political dialogue was created between state authorities, artists, and readers. The author shows that in the case of the official culture of humor presented in The Broom, laughter cannot be easily classified as performance of resistance or support for the regime. In The Broom, the discourse of power was never monologic and simply oppressive. It was situational, contextual, and changing. Officially sanctioned laughter was infused with and mediated by private emotions and values. Moreover, the journal provided space for artistic creativity and self-expression that reshaped official political aesthetics. Laughter blurred the distinctions between the state and the citizen, the public and the private, the hegemonic and the sincere. The author argues that laughter is an experience and a performance of political intimacy through which various agents imagine a self, society, and the state and reproduce various power orders. Political intimacy refers to coexistence of state authorities and other subjects in fields of social and political comfort, togetherness, and dialogue as well as in the zones of shared meanings and values.

Latvijas Komunistiskās (boļševiku) partijas Ventspils apriņķa komitejas slepenā sarakste ar Prokuratūras, Iekšlietu un Valsts drošības iestādēm (1945–1949)

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Dzintars Ērglis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Military Personnel ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The State ◽  
State Security ◽  
Safety Regulations ◽  
Supreme Council

The secret correspondence of the Ventspils District Committee of the Latvian Communist (Bol-shevik) Party (LC(b)P) with the Prosecutor’s Office, the Interior and the State Security Institutions dur-ing the last years of the district’s existence, from 1945 to 1949, shows how the Communist Party man-aged and controlled life in the region. The research is based on the scope of documents dedicated to Ventspils District Committee of the LC(b)P. The secret correspondence covers the following issues: collection of compromising materials on the nominees; abuse of authority performed by officials and military personnel; events organized by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of State Security in Ventspils District on election days of the Supreme Council, local councils and the People's Court; sending the best communists to work in the sys-tem of the Ministry of the State Security and the Ministry of the Interior, as decided by the Central Committee Bureau of LC(b)P; the staff conflicts within the Interior and State Security Institutions; defi-ciencies in the work of people's courts; non-compliance with the fire safety regulations, etc.

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