Class, Culture and Principles: Evaluating the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the Basis of its Aims and Strategies

Culture in any society is inherited from the past as a form of tradition. It is an automatic and unconscious process. It is usually taken as supra-class unifying category which binds a community. China during Mao proclaimed that old culture serves the interests of the exploiting class and therefore the proletariat as an emerging class should struggle against it and impose its own culture. On this premise ‘the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ was launched. Its aim was to ‘prevent the restoration of capitalism’ by revolutionizing people’s thinking to realize the communist goal of classless society. It lasted from 1966 to 1976, however, debates still continue regarding its aims, principles and practices and achievements or the damages it caused. This article attempts to explore what it actually wanted to accomplish and what strategies and measures were employed to materialize these aims. For this purpose it uses the documents published by the Communist Party of China during that period as the primary sources and judges them on the basis of Marxist socialist principles. The paper reaches to the conclusion that the Cultural Revolution adopted principles, policies and methods which accord with Marxism.

What is Marxist geography today, or what is left of Marxist geography?

The history and geography of intellectual neglect of Marxism are the history and geography of Marxism itself. Scholars of different political persuasions and from different regions of the world, including some ‘Marxists’, have pointed to its various deficiencies ever since its origin. But is Marxism really as bad as it is made out to be? In this short article, I argue that it absolutely is not. I discuss my view of Marxism, including Marxist geography. The latter examines economy, politics, culture and nature/body from the vantage-point of space, place, scale and human transformation of nature. I also discuss what difference Marxism has made to my own agenda of abstract and concrete research. For me, Marxism fundamentally comprises ideas of Marx and Engels, and revolutionary Marxist socialists of the 20th century (Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky), and those who have critically developed their thinking. I discuss four major areas of Marxism: philosophy (dialectical and materialist views of society and nature), social theory, or historical materialism, (geographical) political economy, and theory of communist practice. Marxism treats class, including in its capitalist form, as the causally most important social relation which explains how human beings live their lives. Class relations, and capitalism, structure gender and racial oppression which in turn influence class relations at a concrete level, and which are behind the geographical organization of society. The main goal of Marxism is not to produce ideas for the sake of ideas. It is rather to arm the exploited masses with adequate ideas that describe, explain and critique the world from their standpoint, so they can engage in the fight to produce an alternative social-spatial arrangement, i.e. a democratic and classless society which is ecologically healthier and which avoids geographically uneven development intra-nationally and internationally.

The Notion of Power and Liberalism Evolution

The author of the article makes the attempt to explain the evolution of liberalism and even broader, of human history not through the evolution of the notion of freedom, that became the philosophic mainstream already at the time of Hegel and was convenient for liberalism itself, but on the basis of the notion of power analysis that is interpreted by the liberals as opposite to freedom. Proceeding from the linguistic and political history data, the author demonstrates the multi-components character of the notion of power that is interpreted as: 1) some intriguing and “charming” authority ensuring harmony and order; 2) the source of legal violence; 3) the promise of advantages that leads to voluntary assuming certain responsibilities; 4) dependence on the source of want satisfaction; 5) passion, irrational dependence. The present notion of power structure is coherent to the Varna system specific for Indo-European nations; each Varna has its own, specific only for it, understanding of power. In various epochs and in various societies we find a specific governing notion of power. So, in Russia since ancient times the worldview of Kshatriyas prevailed and it still determines to a large extent its civilizational specifics. The classic western liberalism was characterized by the Vaishyas ideology dominance, i.e. the bourgeois class; on the contrary modern liberalism, libertarianism share the world view of the “classless society” of the Dalits (“gone astray”), whose dominance deprives the world of controllability and destructs all vertical hierarchy. The way out of the universal crisis is possible only on the basis of new historical grounds that will become, according to Heidegger, “the new beginning of history”.

Occupational morbidity in art workers at the State Drama Theater

September 1932 marks the hundredth anniversary of the opening of b. Alexandria Theater, now the State Drama Theater. This jubilee takes place on the 15th anniversary of October, coinciding with the beginning of the second five-year plan, the five-year plan for building a classless society, the five-year plan, which should eliminate the remnants of capitalist elements not only in the economy, but also in the minds of people.

Robert KOCH

A magnificent process of socialist construction is under way in our country. On a short historical stretch, we must build a classless society. All the achievements of science, everything created by the creative genius of man is widely used in this struggle for new forms of life.

Prospects for the 2nd Five-Year Socialist Healthcare Plan in the Republic of Tatarstan

Successful fulfillment of the 1st five-year plan, which prepared the industrial base for the further gigantic expansion of industry, the Bolshevik pace of construction, the country's enormous energy and raw materials reserves, which provide inexhaustible resources for its development, the collectivization of agriculture, the growing activity and consciousness of the masses, transforming labor for the proletariat into a matter of valor and heroism create the preconditions for building a classless society in the second five-year plan.

Marx and history: the Russian road and the myth of historical determinism

This paper aims to point out the limits of the historical determinism thesis in Marx’s thought by analyzing his writings on the Russian issue and the possibility of a “Russian road” to socialism. The perspective of historical determinism implies that Marx’s thought is supported by a unilinear view of social evolution, i.e. history is understood as a succession of modes of production and their internal relations inexorably leading to a classless society. We argue that in letters and drafts on the Russian issue, Marx opposes to any attempt associate his thought with a deterministic conception of history. It is pointed out that Marx’s contact with the Russian populists in the 1880s provides textual elements allowing to impose limits on the idea of historical determinism and the unilinear perspective in the historical process.

Soziale Hoffnung, liberale Ironie

This volume responds to the growing interest in Richard Rorty as a political thinker and critic of the academic left. It introduces Rorty's understanding of politics and democracy and shows his relevance for current debates in the context of the erosion of liberal democracy. Rorty opens up a perspective that addresses both the impetus of postmodern individualism and the goal of a classless society. The contributions this book contains show that, as a political thinker, Rorty passionately took sides in favour of social democratic reform policy and, at the same time, sought to unravel the political antagonisms currently under discussion. These include the relationship between identity and redistribution policies, the conflicts between national solidarity and human rights universalism, and the tension between state policy and global interdependence. Richard Rorty was a provocative political thinker who combined class political social criticism with postmodern irony. His flair for the problems of the new left and his original perspective on liberalism, solidarity and human rights provide us with important impetus for current debates on the state and democracy. With contributions by Susana de Castro, Susan Dieleman, Marie-Luisa Frick, Jens Hacke, Christoph Held, Dirk Jörke, Ulf Schulenberg, Christian Schwaabe, Torben Schwuchow, Martin Seeliger and Veith Selk.

Semantics and pragmatics of the noun communism and of the adjective communist and challenges in understanding prof. Efremov’s science fiction novels about remote future

The paper deals with the polysemy of the word communism, focusing on its canonical meaning – "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" classless society, depicted in Prof. Efremov’s SF novels and which assumed official definition in 1961. This meaning is now being ousted by the one traditional for the West and referring to what Prof. Efremov called pseudosocialism. The change in the semantics of the word "communism" in the Russian language leads to communicative failures in the perception of texts in which the word "communism" is used in the canonical meaning. Along with the undoubted polysemy of the noun "communism" (and the adjective "communist") – communism as a social movement versus communism as a social system versus communism as a worldview, it is necessary to state the lexical ambiguity of these words in relation to the social system.