Richard Wright and the Critique of Class Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Cedric J. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Class Theory ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Marxist Ideology ◽  
To Come ◽  
Communist Party Usa

Cedric J. Robinson’s previously published essay discusses how Wright’s art expresses both the terrors and the possibilities of modern times. According to Robinson, Wright’s choices of literary forms enabled him to explore the complexities and subtleties of radical politics more authentically than conventional history, biography, or political-tract writing would allow. Through novels, Wright brought living consciousness into direct confrontation with social theory and ideology. Believing that Marxist ideology paternalistically remained for rather than of the (especially black) proletariat, Wright wanted to draw on existing folklore to express blacks’ deep and complex consciousness. Robinson argues that for the Communist Party USA to make good on its promise to serve as the greatest guarantee against fascism, it had to come more fully to terms with the appeal of fascism among the working class. Wright’s art tried to make sense of that troubling phenomenon.

Nation, Locality and Radical Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Left ◽  
National Model ◽  
Selection Of

Concentrating upon the years between the 1924 and 1929 general elections, which separated the first and second minority Labour governments, this chapter traces the rise of a modernised, national vision of Labour politics in Scotland. It considers first the reworking of understandings of sovereignty within the Labour movement, as the autonomy enjoyed by provincial trades councils was circumscribed, and notions of Labour as a confederation of working-class bodies, which could in places include the Communist Party, were replaced by a more hierarchical, national model. The electoral consequences of this shift are then considered, as greater central control was exercised over the selection of parliamentary candidates and the conduct of election campaigns. This chapter presents a study of the changing horizons of the political left in inter-war Scotland, analysing the declining importance of locality in the construction of radical political identities.

Conclusion

Never Trump ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 240-248
Author(s):  
Robert P. Saldin ◽  
Steven M. Teles
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Western World ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
New Era ◽  
Professional Interest ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Right

This concluding chapter highlights how the Republican Party has been substantially transformed by the experience of having Donald Trump at its head. The president's reelection in 2020 would only deepen that transformation. Deep sociological forces—in particular, a Republican Party base that is increasingly white, working class, Christian, less formally educated, and older—will lead the party to go where its voters are. What Trump started, his Republican successors will finish. Just as parties of the right across the Western world have become more populist and nationalist, so will the Republicans. That, of course, bodes poorly for most of the Never Trumpers, who combined a deep distaste for Trump personally with a professional interest in a less populist governing style and a disinclination to see their party go ideologically where he wanted to take it. Ultimately, the future is unwritten because it will be shaped by the choices of individuals. Never Trump will have failed comprehensively in its founding mission, which was to prevent the poison of Donald Trump from entering the nation's political bloodstream. However, it is likely to be seen, in decades to come, as the first foray into a new era of American politics.

Framing William Albertson: The FBI's “Solo” Operation and the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
John Earl Haynes ◽  
Harvey Klehr
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Federal Bureau Of Investigation ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
Executive Secretary ◽  
Successful Intelligence ◽  
High Level ◽  
Communist Party Usa ◽  
The Cold War

William Albertson, who was executive secretary of the New York Communist Party and a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), was framed as an informant for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1964. Only in recent years have newly released FBI records enabled scholars to understand why the FBI undertook the operation and how much damage it did to the CPUSA. In 1964 two leaks from the FBI hinted that the bureau had a high-level informant in the CPUSA who was providing information about secret Soviet subsidies. The leaks were accurate and endangered one of the FBI's most successful intelligence operations, Operation Solo, which involved the use of two brothers, Morris Childs and Jack Childs, who were confidants of CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall, as key informants. The framing of Albertson was intended to deflect CPUSA and Soviet attention from the real FBI informants to a bogus one. The ploy succeeded. The forged documents the FBI planted convinced Hall and other senior CPUSA officials that Albertson was the FBI informant. Despite Albertson's vehement denials and energetic defense, he was expelled. The CPUSA thought it had eliminated the informant, and the Childs brothers were able to continue in their role until old age forced their retirement in 1977.

The social theory of the Trinity

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD SWINBURNE
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Individual Substance ◽  
Divine Essence ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Rational Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Trinity

AbstractSubsequent to the fifth century until modern times all theologians agreed that God the Trinity is constituted by three persons (in Boethius's sense of ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’) who have a common divine essence, and are individuated only by their relations to each other. Having that essence entailed each being omnipotent and so perfectly good. In virtue of his perfect goodness the Father necessarily produces the Son (in order to have one equal whom to love and be loved by) and the Spirit (in order that the Son have one equal other than the Father to love and be loved by). There cannot be more than three divine persons because three persons are sufficient for the existence of unselfish love, and so any fourth divine person would be produced by an act which none of the three needed to produce, and so would not exist necessarily and so could not be divine. Necessarily if there is one divine person, there are three and only three divine persons.

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