Soviet Policy Toward National Communism: The Limits of Diversity

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Morris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Order ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
National Affair ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
The Right

On one thing the Soviet and Yugoslav Communists agree: “national communism” is a contradiction in terms. “The very expression ‘national communism’,” say the Soviet theoreticians, “is a logical absurdity. By itself communism is really international and it cannot be conceived otherwise.” Tito was just as emphatic when he told New York Times commentator, C. L. Sulzberger, that “national communism doesn't exist. Yugoslav Communists too are internationalists.”That the Soviet and Yugoslav positions appear to agree on this point is no accident. Marxist theory has never acknowledged a genuine alternative to socialism or capitalism, and socialism was a profoundly international idea. But in its effort to abolish national strife, create a world-wide economic and social order, and establish political and social internationalism, the socialist movement had to start within the framework of the nation-state. In practice, therefore, socialism was mainly a national affair. The gulf between the necessary national starting point of the socialist movement and its international ideal was, to put it mildly, considerable. Though the international working class solidarity of the Communist Manifesto has been emptied of plausibility by the events of the last hundred years—not least of all by the abandonment in practice of internationalism in 1914 by the socialist movement—internationalism is a fetish to which even the right-wing socialist makes his obeisance.

Conservatism

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kivisto
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Right

Conservatism refers to one of the constituent political positions found in all contemporary democracies. It can be construed as a philosophy, an ideology, a political party, a movement, a disposition, a mode of discourse, performance style, and an emotional relationship to the political. Since the birth of modern democracies in the aftermath of the French Revolution, it has become commonplace to describe the range of political options available to the citizenry as occupying a spectrum from left to right, with a range of alternatives between the extreme poles, including a centrist position in the middle that straddles the divide. The left was associated with promoting challenges to established authorities and existing hierarchies, along with calls for increased economic equality and expanded social and political rights to all citizens, including the heretofore marginalized. This contrasts with the right, which was defined as defending inequalities and differential entitlements, concentrating matters involving rights around preserving property rights, shoring up public and social order, and promoting traditional values and conventional social relations. In this context, liberalism became a mark of political identity associated with the left, as did socialism, while conservatism, broadly construed, represented the right. This framing of politics also includes the possibility of underminings by extremism on both the left and right. For the former, the main threat since the Russian Revolution has been posed by revolutionary communism, while right-wing extremism has manifested itself in reactionary movements, including fascism and illiberal populism. Since liberalism and conservatism must be understood in relational terms, the spatial and temporal settings for the politics of opposition will vary considerably. It is impossible to do justice to the vast literature on conservatism in a bibliography such as this. What follows is a more delimited, and thus manageable examination of work on conservatism. First, it focuses on conservatism in the United States, and not elsewhere. Second, it is chiefly concerned with conservatism since the end of World War II. Third, it concentrates on the study of conservatism by sociologists and those working in cognate disciplines; while not all the authors are card-carrying sociologists, their works reflect a sociological character, although the exception to this third point is the overview section, which presents key readings by advocates of conservatism, and thus offers insider depictions of the meaning of conservatism. Fourth, this article does not concentrate solely on extremist right-wing movements; rather, in surveying the relevant literature on American conservatism broadly construed, it points to a growing consensus that the radical right wing has pushed mainstream conservatism increasingly further to the right.

Some Modest Propositions About an Immodest Subject

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (04) ◽  
pp. 832-836
Author(s):  
Charles W. Dunn
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
University President ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Moral Majority ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Groups

Few subjects arouse emotions like religion and politics. And when combined, few subjects raise more obstacles to balanced and objective scholarly analysis. Many strong and competing biases among both religious and political groups together with a scholar's own ideological and religious views may make it difficult to examine dispassionately the issues raised.Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority on the right and Norman Lear's People for the American Way on the left pose perplexing problems for American democracy. Each group speaks fervently with immodest assurance that its views of American democracy is correct.Comments by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and former Yale University President A. Bartlett Giamatti contrast between these polarized positions. Solzhenitsyn in his 1978 Harvard University commencement address charged that humanism “started Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshipping man and his material needs. … As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed its concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism” (Solzhenitsyn, p. 53). Giamatti, on the other hand, has condemned groups like the Moral Majority by saying they “would sweep before them anyone who holds a different opinion” (The New York Times, September 1, 1981, p. 1).

scholarly journals Individual differences in need satisfaction and intentions to vote for specific political parties – results from Germany

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Sindermann ◽  
Christian Montag
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Big Five ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Need Satisfaction ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Tremendous Importance ◽  
The Right ◽  
Voting Intentions

AbstractUnderstanding the psychological basis of individuals' voting intentions is of tremendous importance because voting for specific parties and politicians can influence political developments. In the present study associations of individuals’ satisfaction of each of Maslow’s five basic need categories with voting intentions were investigated in a German sample and these results were compared to results on associations between personality and voting intentions. An online survey was completed by N = 2593 (n = 1035 men) individuals. Participants provided information on socio-demographic characteristics, filled in the Need Satisfaction Inventory, the Big Five Inventory, and stated which of the major German parties they would vote for if general elections were held the following Sunday. Data were analyzed using the statistical software R and RStudio. Among others, it was found that higher satisfaction of physiological needs and higher satisfaction of safety and security needs were associated with intentions to vote for the currently governing party alliance, the CDU/CSU, versus for the right-wing AfD. Regarding personality, among others Openness was positively associated with intentions to vote for nearly every party (except the CDU/CSU) versus for the AfD. Effect sizes of associations were overall rather small; generally speaking, those related to the Need Satisfaction Inventory were even slightly smaller than those found for personality traits. The present results indicate that other factors aside from needs and personality must be considered to understand voting. Therefore, this study sets a starting point for further investigations to replicate and expand the present findings.

The Feminine Voice in Global Journalism: The Example of Ukraine

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Madeleine Wiart
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Feminine Voice ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
American Media ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Ukraine Crisis

This study is designed to identify a discrepancy, if any, between the number of female and male journalists reporting on the crisis in Ukraine. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, as well as primary and secondary research, the following paper attempts to bring attention to gendered differences in crisis reporting, and explain how those gendered differences affect the interpretation of a conflict. Previous research shows women are more inclined to cover crises from a human interest or human suffering standpoint, whereas men cover crises through politics and violence. The study concludes that while the majority of journalists reporting on the Ukraine crisis for The New York Times are male, it does not find a concrete correlation between the primary focus of the sample articles and the gender of the journalist. The analysis provides a starting point for future research, as well as a new perspective to a modern conflict heavily covered by North American media.

Treadwell, Sophie (1885–1970)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia A. Walker
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Character Type ◽  
Short Course ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sophie Treadwell ◽  
Episodic Logic ◽  
The Right

Like many women writers of her day, American playwright Sophie Treadwell began her career in journalism, working at the San Francisco Bulletin and the New York Herald Tribune, where she wrote fanciful vignettes before earning the right to cover sensational murder trials of female defendants and report from behind the front lines of war (including an interview with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa). These assignments appear to have imprinted her dramatic style, which often tempered realistic situations with surreal, sometimes violent, imagery; a well-made play structure with an episodic logic; and the predictability of a character type with an unexpected act of rebellion. Treadwell, who wrote over forty plays (seven of which were produced on Broadway), is best known for Machinal (1928), an expressionist drama about a ‘young woman’ who is coercively compelled to enact the roles of secretary, daughter, wife, and mother over the short course of her doomed life. Only in an illicit love affair does she find true happiness, taking inspiration from her lover’s tales of renegade justice in Mexico to free herself from her oppressive marriage by killing her husband. But her freedom is short-lived, as the social order hails her back into its defining structures. After being forced to fit the pre-set narratives of a sensationalistic press, her life is condemned by the law before finally being taken from her by way of the electric chair.

Mainstream Media Failure Modes and Self-Healing in a Propaganda-Rich Environment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Failure Modes ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Self Healing ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Election Coverage

This chapter examines how mainstream media operated in a propaganda-rich environment by focusing on its failure and recovery modes. In particular, this chapter analyzes two central attributes of mainstream media and professional journalism that shaped election coverage, and in some cases made them particularly susceptible to being manipulated into spreading right-wing propaganda: balance and the scoop culture. The chapter first considers how internal dynamics of news reporting led mainstream media to emphasize the email investigation over substantive discussion of politics. The chapter then shows how Breitbart exploited the hunger for scoops, along with the public performance of objectivity and critical remove of mainstream journalism, to utilize the credibility of the New York Times, and later other major publications, to propagate and accredit the “Clinton corruption” frame. Finally, the chapter describes the failures and corrective mechanisms surrounding the recipients of President Donald Trump’s Fake News Awards for 2017.

The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey by Michael Huemer New York: Palgrave 2013. Pp. xii, 394. Index. 978-1137281654.

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-520
Author(s):  
Gary Chartier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Ethical Intuitionism ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Michael Huemer ◽  
The Right

In The Problem of Political Authority, Michael Huemer argues for anarchism, and so against the authority of state-made law and against the moral legitimacy of the use of force to compel obedience to this kind of law. He explains why the state lacks legitimate authority before suggesting reasons to think that it isn’t necessary as a source of social order. He opts for minimalist moral foundations, eschewing any sort of elaborate normative theory in favor of the intuitionist approach to moral reasoning he defended in his earlier Ethical Intuitionism; his decision to opt for minimalist foundations should make the book accessible to readers inclined to endorse a wide range of normative assumptions.

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