scholarly journals V.I. Lenin’s Theory of Socialist Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052095845
Author(s):  
David Lane
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Partial Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Revolutionary Praxis ◽  
Advanced Capitalist

Lenin transposed Marx’s analysis of capitalism from the advanced capitalist economies to the dependent colonial countries. He combined political economy, geopolitics, political organisation and a sociology of social structure to form an innovative revolutionary praxis. The expansion of Western capitalism shifted the social and political contradictions to countries moving from feudalism to capitalism. Lenin was correct in his appraisal of the social forces in support of a bourgeois revolution. But he provided an over-optimistic prediction for the disintegration of monopoly capitalism and only a partial analysis of the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries. His political approach requires a redefinition of countervailing forces and class alliances and a shift of focus from the semi-periphery to the ‘strongest links’ in the capitalist chain. A ‘return to Lenin’ is not to adopt his policies but a prompt to reinvent a socialist sociological vision derived from the expectations of the Enlightenment and Marx’s analysis of capitalism.

Lenin’s ideas on revolution: Are they still relevant today?

2021 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 178-189
Author(s):  
David Lane
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Partial Analysis ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
Advanced Capitalist

Lenin provided the intellectual foundation of Bolshevik political practice. He combined political economy, geopolitics, political organisation and a sociology of social structure to form an innovative revolutionary praxis. The Bolshevik seizure of power and subsequent Soviet economic and political development became a model for revolutionary socialist parties, notably in China. The author contends that he had an over-optimistic prediction for the disintegration of monopoly capitalism and only a partial analysis of the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries. Consequently, expected socialist revolutions have not occurred in the advanced capitalist countries. When the preconditions for revolution are absent, a complementary dimension to Lenin is the endorsement of reform and participation in capitalist regimes. The dismantling of the Soviet Union and the eastern European communist regimes in the late twentieth century, and the reversion to private property and competitive market relations, delivered a mortal blow to the communist system. Today, Lenin’s political approach requires a redefinition of countervailing forces and class alliances and a shift of focus from the semi-periphery to the ‘strongest links’ in the capitalist chain. The author considers that a ‘return to Lenin’ is not to adopt his policies, but a prompt to reinvent a socialist political and economic vision derived from Marx’s analysis of capitalism.

Punishment and the Lessons from History

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Pratt
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Control ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Sanctions

This article examines the range of social forces which constitute the collection of legal sanctions which make up modem punishment systems. While not disputing the importance of the social control capacities which have been influential in the process, it argues that we also have to take into account changing cultural sensitivities and the still prevailing remnants of 19th Century political economy if we are to effectively understand the nature of punishment today. It draws primarily, although not exclusively, on historical research undertaken in New Zealand.

Comparative Housing Research

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Harloe ◽  
Maartje Martens
Keyword(s):  
Housing Markets ◽  
Convergence Theory ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Housing Research ◽  
Cross National ◽  
Advanced Capitalist ◽  
National Housing

AbstractThe paper reviews major examples of comparative housing research which have been published in the last twenty years and suggests that the dominant approach — grounded in pluralism and convergence theory — which they exhibit is inadequate. Future studies need to be both more detailed and wider in scope, examining the dynamic of the interrelations between the institutions and the social forces involved in the provision of housing. Such a perspective is briefly developed and related to current developments in the housing markets and policies of some advanced capitalist societies. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the practical problems of cross-national housing research.

Cultural Studies and Communication

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Social

Communication and cultural studies share turbulent and contradictory histories, epistemologies, methods, and geographies, both on their own and as partners and rivals. This is in keeping with their status as interdisciplinary areas that emerged in the early to mid-20th century and crossed the humanities and the social sciences. Communication and cultural studies are linked and distinguished both by the topics they analyze and by their politics, countries, disciplines, theories, languages, and methods. Whereas the dominant forms of communication studies are dedicated to scholarly objectivity and disciplinary coherence, cultural studies is more akin to a tendency connected to concerns and identities on the margins of academia, and committed to methodological diversity. And whereas the critical strand of communication studies, notably political economy, examines such social forces of domination as the state and capital, cultural studies investigates the struggles undertaken by ordinary people to interpret dominant cultural forms in terms of their conditions of existence. The supposedly pessimistic orientation of political economy is frequently eschewed in favor of a faith in the resistive qualities of the oppressed and silenced. A similar perspective characterizes cultural studies’ rejection of effects studies for neglecting the politicized way that active audiences interpret media texts. In place of such concerns, the dominant strands of cultural studies tend to favor aesthetic and anthropological ways of analyzing societies to examine subjectivity and power and work with the understanding that popular culture represents and creates rituals and vice versa, through institutions and discourses that construct identities, which in turn form them.

Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Scottish History

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.

Prophets and Profits of Racial Science

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Precision Medicine ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Racial Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Ethnic

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 

Conceptual foundations for the development of J.G.Turner’s general sociological theory: Metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and analytical scheme

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Reznik
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Analytical Scheme ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

The article discusses the conceptual foundations of the development of the general sociological theory of J.G.Turner. These foundations are metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and an analytical scheme. Turner began to develop a general sociological theory with a synthesis of metatheoretical ideas of social forces and social selection. He formulated a synthetic metatheoretical statement: social forces cause selection pressures on individuals and force them to change the patterns of their social organization and create new types of sociocultural formations to survive under these pressures. Turner systematized the basic concepts of his theorizing with the allocation of micro-, meso- and macro-levels of social reality. On this basis, he substantiated a simple conceptual scheme of social dynamics. According to this scheme, the forces of macrosocial dynamics of the population, production, distribution, regulation and reproduction cause social evolution. These forces force individual and corporate actors to structurally adapt their communities in altered circumstances. Such adaptation helps to overcome or avoid the disintegration consequences of these forces. The initial stage of Turner's general theorizing is a kind of audit, modification, modernization and systematization of the conceptual apparatus of sociology. The initial results obtained became the basis for the development of his conception of the dynamics of functional selection in the social world.

Different Resources, Different Conflicts? The Subnational Political Economy of Armed Conflict and Crime in Colombia

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This book explores some of the risks associated with sustainable peace in Colombia. The book intentionally steers away from the emphasis on the drug trade as the main resource fueling Colombian conflicts and violence, a topic that has dominated scholarly attention. Instead, it focuses on the links that have been configured over decades of armed conflict between legal resources (such as bananas, coffee, coal, flowers, gold, ferronickel, emeralds, and oil), conflict dynamics, and crime in several regions of Colombia. The book thus contributes to a growing trend in the academic literature focusing on the subnational level of armed conflict behavior. It also illustrates how the social and economic context of these resources can operate as deterrents or as drivers of violence. The book thus provides important lessons for policymakers and scholars alike: Just as resources have been linked to outbreaks and transformations of violence, peacebuilding too needs to take into account their impacts, legacies, and potential

Sentencing Policy as a Force for Social Cohesion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Henham
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Normative Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sentencing Policy

This chapter sets out the case for adopting a normative approach to conceptualizing the social reality of sentencing. It argues that policy-makers need to comprehend how sentencing is implicated in realizing state values and take greater account of the social forces that diminish the moral credibility of state sponsored punishment. The chapter reflects on the problems of relating social values to legal processes such as sentencing and argues that crude notions of ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ approaches to policy-making should be replaced by a process of contextualized policy-making. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for sentencing policy to reflect those moral attachments that bind citizens together in a relational or communitarian sense. It concludes by exploring these assertions in the light of the sentencing approach taken by the courts following the English riots of 2011.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document