On the Aporias of Marxian Politics: From Civil War to Class Struggle

diacritics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Étienne Balibar ◽  
Cory Browning
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
pp. 180-216
Author(s):  
Matthew E. Stanley

This chapter analyzes how the Socialist Party of America invoked the “Second American Revolution” to advocate left nationalism, incremental reform, and Christian socialism, or to validate calls for revolution or international industrial emancipation. Pairing the class struggle with abolitionism tied socialism to domestic tradition and rendered the Civil War part of a revolutionary struggle. The Industrial Workers of the World, meanwhile, claimed one of the most contentious legacies of the abolitionists: the defiance of absolute property rights. However, the Red Scare helped undermine the socialist narrative of the war for the Union as a working-class war. Political repression reinforced the decline of revolutionary Civil War memories, which in turn yielded before rising strains of conservative industrial patriotism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-235
Author(s):  
Sophie Wahnich ◽  
Alexander Dunlop ◽  
Sylvia Schafer

Abstract In the spring of Year II (1794), the future of French society was uncertain. This article looks at the response to the uncertainty of three members of the Committee on Public Safety, who discussed the need to choose between a revolutionary political community and civil war, even as they disagreed about what form the future republic should take.


Author(s):  
Mytrofanenko Yu.

The purpose of the work. The article aims to study the problems of Ukrainian Revolution in 1917–1921 on a territory of Kirovograd or Dnipropetrovsk region. The type of article is empirical. An unrenowned episode from the history of Ukrainian Revolution in 1917–1921 is analyzed in the article, in particular, the participation of the citizens of Katerunoslavska province in Kamianske town in the events of “National rebellion” in 1918 in Elysavetgrad against Bolsheviks and anarchists. Results and scientific novelty of the study. The author attracted attention to the geographical mistake in the memoirs of V. Antonov-Ovseenko “Notes About Civil War”. The scientific novelty, that author explaine, that he confused the names of the cities: Katerynoslav and Elysavetgrad. The reasons and consequences of the participation of workers of Dniprovskyi plant in Kamianske city in the events of Elysavetgrad national rebellion are determined in the article on the basis of sources. For a long time Bolsheviks concealed, shifted responsibility to their political opponents and then erased from the pages of censored memoirs of participants of revolutionary events the episode of battles between Kamianske and Elysavetgrad workers because it did not fit into the concept of “class struggle” in the history of revolution in Ukraine. The main result of Kamianske workers deception was the numerous victims on both sides. Only the leaflet spread by Elysavetgrad headquarters of the city protection among Kamianske citizens and the end of battles near Elysavetgrad stopped the following bloodshed. Nevertheless, in their memoirs Bolsheviks from Kamianske continued to accentuate that those were they who had established the Soviet power in Elysavetgrad, continued to be proud of the participation in the attempt of helping Bolsheviks to invade Elysavetgrad. The author originality is refutes these statements on the basis of resources. The material of the article may have practical application in scientific studios on the history of Ukrainian Revolution in 1917–1921 on a territory of Kirovograd or Dnipropetrovsk regionKey words: revolution, rebellion, bolshevics, anarchists, Red guard, mishap, Katerynoslav, Elysavetgrad, Kamianske. Мета роботи. Стаття присвячена аналізу маловідомого епізоду революційного періоду 1917–1921 рр. на теренах сучасних Кіровоградської та Дніпропетровської областей. Проаналізовано документи Єлисаветградської міської думи, мемуари учасників подій: Володимира Антонова-Овсієнка та червоногвардійців Дніпровського металургійного заводу м. Кам’янське. В статті на основі джерел розглянуто цей епізод Української революції 1917–1921 рр., визначено причини та наслідки участі робітників Дніпровського заводу м. Кам’янське в подіях Єлисаветградського народного повстання.Результати та наукова новизна дослідження. З’ясовані обставини участі робітників Кам’янського заводу у придушенні «Народного повстання» в Єлисаветграді. Вони були в складі червоногвардійських частин, яких кинули на підтримку більшо-викам та анархістам, що протягом кількох днів безуспішно намагалися оволодіти Єлисаветградом. Доведено, що Володимир Антонов-Овсієнко автор спогадів «Записки про громадянську війну» припустився помилки, що стало причиною географічного казусу. Він сплутав назви міст: Катеринослав та Єлисаветград. Також встановлено, що червоногвардійці Кам’янського стали жертвами більшовицької провокації, які використали їхню необізнаність у ситуації, яка склалася в Єлисаветграді та відправили на фронт. З’ясовано долю кам’янчан, які брали участь в боях під Єлисаветградом.Емпірична стаття написана на різноманітних першоджерелах. Здійснено верифікацію спогадів кам’янських більшовиків, які неправдиво описали результат бою та рушійні сили Єлисаветградського народного повстання. Матеріал статті має прак-тичне застосування. Зокрема, копії документів, використані автором, поповнили експозиції Кам’янського краєзнавчого музею, а факти та узагальнення використовуються під час екскурсії. Під час написання статті було використано метод історичної критики джерел та текстологічного аналізу, застосовано регіональний метод Ключові слова: «народне повстання», більшовики, червоногвардійці, анархісти, «революція, Єлисаветград, Катеринослав, Кам’янське.


1973 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Wayne Nagziger

Since 1949–53, when the Nigerian élite was first consulted by the British in a constitutional review, the peoples of Nigeria have engaged in a continual regional, communal, and class struggle for a share in the economic benefits resulting from decolonisation and independence, and the accompanying modernisation. The two coups d'état of 1966 and the civil war of 1967–70 were the most virulent of these struggles. This article analyses economic factors contributing to the Nigeria–Biafra conflict and the interrelated coups. Except for a brief discussion of the colonial economic legacy, the emphasis is upon the decade or two prior to the war.


2021 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 158-185
Author(s):  
Matteo Battistini

AbstractThis essay stitches together the fragments of Marx's work on the United States that are scattered in newspaper articles, letters, notes, in some digressions in his early writings, in his economic manuscripts and in Capital (1867). The main aim is to show that what we can call a “global history of the Civil War” emerges from his pen: a history that is global not simply in a geographical sense, that is, because it expands the European space beyond the Atlantic and towards the Pacific, but also because of the general meaning it takes on in the history of capitalism. The essay highlights how the Civil War opened the Marxian issue of emancipation, his vision of class struggle and his view of the working class, to the presence of a black proletariat that interacted with the struggle of the white working classes, the latter of which until then had been the main focus of his work. It also highlights how the different and disarticulated voices of labor – slave and free, black and white – on both sides of the Atlantic effected a revolutionary shift in the Civil War: interjecting a “revolutionary turn” into what we can call the “long constitutional history” of the political conflict between North and South that changed the economic and social shape of the nation. More importantly, the essay reconstructs what can be termed the “state moment,” which was entangled with the “long constitutional history” and the “revolutionary turn” of the Civil War. As the transnational calls for emancipation from slavery and wage labor impacted the transnational processes of accumulation of industrial capital, the American state became a player in the world market: its financial and fiscal policies became socially linked to the government of industrial capital. In this sense, as the essay underlines in the conclusion, the “global history of the Civil War” that Marx effectively drafted, outlined the theoretical and political hypothesis that formed the basis of his mature reflection in the pages of Capital: the “emancipation of labour” should be thought of as a global issue, “neither a local nor a national, but a social problem.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Shevtsov Vyacheslav V ◽  
◽  
Vyachisty Dmitry D. ◽  

The article presents an overview of the political measures of the Soviet government to marginalize the socio-professional group of technical intelligentsia in 1917–1919. The article describes the process of forming the attitude of the Soviet government to the social group of technical specialists in the conditions of the accomplished October revolution and the Civil war in the country. The political writings of V. I. Lenin as the leader of the Bolshevik party and the head of the country regarding the place of technical specialists in the social space of the new state were characterized. The motives of the authorities in implementing a change in the social status of technical specialists were identified. Through the use of the historical-genetic method, the study analyzes the consecutive statements of V. I. Lenin regarding this socio-professional group was carried out. As a result of this, the periodization of the development of their relationships was constructed. The construction of such a chronology is relevant, because it makes possible to assess the motives of the actions of the Bolshevik government from the point of view of a specific goal setting, not from the standpoint of the class struggle, but in the search for the most effective way to overcome it. At the beginning, the authorities tried to create pragmatic relations with engineers, but seeing their refusal to cooperate, they took a course to stigmatize and marginalize them as a social group. As a result of this discrediting, the only buyer of their services became the Soviet government, using them centrally in the most important fields of production and economy. The authorities were forced to abandon further marginalization in the face of the difficult situation on Civil war, the small number of remaining specialists and the low efficiency of their work. In this regard, the process of rehabilitation of engineers was initiated, authorized by V. I. Lenin at the VIII Congress of the Bolshevik party. The head of state in a short period managed to organize a campaign to discredit the specialists, after which they were forced to abandon the anti-Soviet rhetoric and begin to integrate into society on the terms proposed by the Bolsheviks. Keywords: engineers, technical specialists, intellectuals, V. I. Lenin, Bolsheviks, class struggle


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline A. Hartzell ◽  
Matthew Hoddie
Keyword(s):  

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