Political Theory of Council Democracy from Bakunin to Luxemburg

2020 ◽  
pp. 44-72
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Paris Commune ◽  
Preliminary Discussion ◽  
History Of

The chapter reconstructs the intellectual history of council democracy from early anarchist interpretations of the Paris Commune over Karl Marx famous analysis of the Commune in The Civil War in France and Vladimir Lenin’s writings on the Russian Soviets to the Interwar council communists’ engagement with the German workers’ councils. The chapter argues, firstly, that Marx’ interpretation of the Commune sets the parameter for many subsequent theories of council democracy, and secondly, that Lenin’s analysis of the Russian soviets delivers an alternative theory of council democracy, insofar as he subordinates the councils to the Bolshevik party. The chapter ends with a preliminary discussion of the relation between the historical councils, theories of council democracy and the concept of the constituent power.

Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 662-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith N. Shklar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

It is well known that each age writes history anew to serve its own purposes and that the history of political ideas is no exception to this rule. The precise nature of these changes in perspective, however, bears investigation. For not only can their study help us to understand the past; it may also lead us to a better understanding of our own intellectual situation. In this quest the political theories of the 17th century and particularly of the English Civil War are especially rewarding. It was in those memorable years that all the major issues of modern political theory were first stated, and with the most perfect clarity. As we have come to reject the optimism of the eighteenth century, and the crude positivism of the nineteenth, we tend more and more to return to our origins in search of a new start. This involves a good deal of reinterpretation, as the intensity with which the writings of Hobbes and Locke, for instance, are being reexamined in England and America testify. These philosophical giants have, however, by the force of their ideas been able to limit the scope of interpretive license. A provocative minor writer, such as Harrington, may for this reason be more revealing. The present study is therefore not only an effort to explain more soundly Harrington's own ideas, but also to treat him as an illustration of the mutations that the art of interpreting political ideas has undergone, and, perhaps to make some suggestions about the problems of writing intellectual history in general.

INSOMNIA AND OTHER CONSTITUTIONAL PATHOLOGIES

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 295-308
Author(s):  
JEFFREY LENOWITZ ◽  
MELISSA SCHWARTZBERG
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cambridge School

The publication of Richard Tuck's 2012 Seeley Lectures constituted an important event in intellectual history and political theory. The Sleeping Sovereign reflects the depth of Tuck's nearly forty years of historical inquiry into the concepts of rights, reason of state, and freedom, beginning with Natural Rights Theories. The leading member of the “Cambridge school” of the study of the history of political thought in the United States, and the Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government at Harvard University, Tuck combines a contextualist, and often intertextualist, approach to the interpretation of canonical works with a theorist's attention to the value these works retain for contemporary political life.

Visions of Council Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
World War ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Claude Lefort ◽  
The People ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Cornelius Castoriadis ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

This book examines the historical emergence of the council system in Russia and Germany by the end of the First World War, it reconstructs the intellectual history of council democracy in 20th century political theory and provides in-depth analysis of council democracy in the political thought of Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort and Hannah Arendt. The book argues that council democracy can productively be interpreted through the prism of constituent power: the form-giving power of the people to decide on their own institutional forms of political co-existence. Whereas other interpreters of constituent power claim an unbridgeable gap between constituent power and constituted power, this book asserts that council democracy discloses a historically grounded way of institutionalising the constituent power. Council democracy, in this interpretation, becomes a way of controlling the constituent power without completely exhausting it, thereby giving the citizenry continual access to the powers of self-transformation, co-creation and constituent freedom.

scholarly journals The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, edited by Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglou, 2017

Scrinium ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 475-507
Author(s):  
Dmitry Chernoglazov ◽  
Grigory Benevich ◽  
Arkadi Choufrine ◽  
Oksana Goncharko ◽  
Timur Schukin
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Collective Work ◽  
History Of

Abstract This review article is a collective work of five scholars who have written their reviews and/or responses to the twelve chapters of the recently published Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium. These reviews discuss such issues as institutional settings, classical scholarship, rhetoric, political theory, literary criticism, historiography, logic, and philosophy in Byzantium. They also deal with the reception of the Neoplatonic ideas in Byzantium as well as with some individual figures such as Maximos the Confessor and Michael Psellos.

On Constructing a Corruption Principle: The Importance of History and Theory in Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 174387212110017
Author(s):  
David Fagelson ◽  
Douglas Klusmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Citizens United ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current State ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Market Good ◽  
Primary Goods

Citizens United has stimulated a cottage industry of legal scholarship on corruption. A prominent stream of this literature is self-consciously atheoretical and suggests that the current state of corruption jurisprudence suffers from a misconceived reliance on liberal political theories and a rejection of the public good. We argue that it is impossible to understand specific acts of corruption without a political theory explaining why such actions are wrong. We show that the current jurisprudence relies on a mistaken intellectual history of the public good and a political theory of American constitutionalism that commodifies citizenship and treats political participation as a market good. Pace Teachout, we cannot draw the bright lines many legal scholars desire without a better political theory of the primary goods we want to protect.

Constituent Power

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kalyvas
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
The Political ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

This chapter seeks to recover an alternative theory of sovereignty as constituent power that significantly departs from the canonical paradigm of command in order to investigate its democratic implications. The first section traces the beginnings of the concept, from the etymological meanings of the Latin verb “to constitute” to its initial medieval articulation that was set against the regal model. The second and third sections revisit formative episodes in the conceptual history of constituent power and consider its diverse but overlapping theoretical and political trajectories as they coalesced around the political ideas of disobedience, resistance, and revolution. The final section attempts to reconstruct the discursive rules and immanent principles that organize the intelligibility of the concept over time and consider the challenges they pose to inherited (mis)understandings of democracy.

Between Two Worlds: American Social Thought After the Civil War

Prospects ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 411-431
Author(s):  
Rush Welter
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
History Of

In recent years American scholars have made significant progress in rethinking the history of the United States after the Civil War. Although much of their effort has come to a focus on Reconstruction, new questions and new techniques of historical analysis have combined to revitalize examination of the era as a whole. Yet-certain specialized studies notwithstanding – relatively little has been done to reconceive the intellectual history of the period. In part, this situation probably reflects the disappointing character of most of postbellum thought, which boasts few such luminaries as the era of the American Revolution or that of the so-called American Renaissance. In part, it may also reflect the fact that study of the period revived at a time when intellectual history no longer seemed to represent the cutting edge of historical inquiry. In any case, the opinions and beliefs of late Victorian America have remained a stepchild of historical research while their adopted family has flourished.

Karl Marx and the Paris Commune of 1871

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Robert McGray
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Adult Education ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Local Form ◽  
Paris Commune ◽  
The Face ◽  
Learning As A Process ◽  
Commune Of 1871

In 1871, citizens of the war torn arrondissements of Paris, in the face of traumatic political and military turmoil, established a new local form of government. The Paris Commune, as this government became known as in the English world, attracted attention for its alternative political-economic organization. One notable commentator was Karl Marx who, while living in England at the time, commentated on the Commune as a test of the bourgeoning field of critical theory. This paper traces Marx's work on the Commune, specifically in The Civil War in France, to examine how his work on this historical event underpins crucial concepts for critical pedagogy in contemporary adult education. While the trajectory between Marx's writings on the Commune and critical adult education is underrepresented and often unacknowledged, I argue that there is an important connection: The Civil War in France revises Marx's theory of dialectics in such a way that it allows us to understand informal learning as a process for possible critique.

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