Democratic Revolution Research Articles

“The True Practice is Theory”: Edgar Bauer, Republicanism, and the Young Hegelians

ABSTRACT The recent past has witnessed a significant amount of new interest in the intellectual history of the Vormärz, or the period in German history immediately prior to the 1848 Revolutions, and especially in the theories of republicanism developed among those who are variously known as the Young, Left, or New Hegelians. At the same time, scholars have reopened the question of Marx’s relationship with republicanism and the republican conception of freedom. But one figure who has been conspicuously overlooked in this context was arguably the most radical and revolutionary republican of the period: Edgar Bauer. This paper fills a gap in the extant literature by providing a survey of Edgar Bauer’s work during the crucial years of 1841–1843. It shows that his position differed in important ways from that of his brother Bruno and explains the political stakes of his equally vehement attacks on the Christian state, on the one side, and its liberal opposition, on the other. It proposes that his position developed rapidly over the course of the three years in question, until he was finally arrested, put on trial, and imprisoned for insulting religious society, mocking the law, arousing dissatisfaction with the state, and offending the majesty of the king.

The Transformative Power of the Oromo Protests in Ethiopia: Resilience and Political Change

This article explores why the Oromo protests have transformed the Ethiopian political landscape since demonstrators took the streets in November 2015. It also examines the relationship between the two pillars of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), ethnic federalism and developmentalism, and the Oromo protests. The study aims to illustrate the connection between the Ethiopian state’s fundamental strategies and the capacity of popular movements to bring about political change. The study has used a qualitative research approach with both primary and secondary data. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted and recorded with a voice recorder, and data was analysed through thematic analysis. The findings of the research show, first, that the securitisation of development strategy performed by the EPRDF triggered the protests. And second, that the primordial understanding of ethnicity, as defined in the Constitution, contributed to the articulation of the Oromo protests as a movement. The study concludes that the Oromo protests will pave the way for reform because they reflect the regime’s failures and also represent the demands of the larger part of Ethiopian society.

Элементы мировоззрения шестидесятников – участников русского революционного сообщества 1860-х гг.

The article analyzes the ideology of the Sixties – members of the Russian revolutionary community of the late 1850s – 1860s. A revolutionary community means a set of ideologically close personalities and associations with revolutionary views; it makes possible to examine members of the revolutionary underground and people sympathizing with revolutionary views as one community. Due to the fact that definitions of the Sixties as revolutionary democrats, Narodniks, nihilists, etc. are common in historiography, the article proposes to look at their ideology as a non-hierarchical, eclectic combination of different views, concepts and ideas, among which there were no main ideas. The author of the article identifies six main elements of the ideology of the Sixties: the denial of the old regime (which presupposed anti-conservative views, as well as the prevalence of the nihilism subculture), socialist orientation (from the strict theory of “Russian socialism” to abstract sympathies for the very idea of socialism), “craving for the people” (which foreshadowed the ideology of revolutionary Narodnichestvo of the 1870s), democratic ideals (which mainly assumed egalitarianism, the idea of equality of all members of society, which resulted in interest and support for the women’s movement, the creation of communes for living together and everyday life), enlightenment (expressed in the cult of science and knowledge, educational work among the intelligentsia), faith in the proximity of the revolution (a specific feature of the Sixties, which manifested itself in anticipation of an imminent mass popular uprising). The research is based on a complex of various sources (memoirs, journalism, investigative testimony), according to which it is possible to identify the views of both well-known publicists of democratic magazines and the emigrant press, as well as members of underground revolutionary circles.

Ethiopia and the Running Sores of Ethnic Federalism: The Antithetical Forces of Statehood and Nationhood

Ethnic federalism in Ethiopia proved non-viable in practice because it came to be widely seen as a political tool used by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)-dominated Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), whose ideological foundation was inspired by Soviet system of ‘democratic centralism’: a benign façade that veneered an authoritarian vanguard party operating under a token parliament. This article examines the dynamics of statehood and nationhood: antithetical forces of integration and differentiation, which play out around the commonly shared albeit highly contested polity of the nation-state. The need to dialectically resolve these antagonistic though mutualistic stakes lies at the epicentre of political debate in contemporary Ethiopia, ultimately pointing to the constitutional reform dilemmas it now faces. By drawing on literature on political theory, the article argues that the federal constitution proved antagonistic to the inherited politico-cultural orientations that posited the nation-state as the principal supranational identity. By redefining narrow forms of collective identity that were anchored precisely on ethnic sentiments that grew largely in reaction to perceived injustices, the federal constitution appeared neither to embrace, as a system of legitimation, the characteristic and authoritative dimensions of ‘Ethiopian’ identity as a supra-national universal habitus of loyalty and identification. Nor did it provide integrative cohesion to an otherwise essentially differentiated primordial ethnic and linguistic identity features that now came to be diffused and indeed accentuated at sub-national regions as rigid and hermetic sites of conflict and strife, rather than discursive, reflexive, and interactive domains of cultural and social life.

A critique of building a developmental state in the EPRDF's Ethiopia

ABSTRACT This article explores the main features of Ethiopia's ‘developmental state’ and takes a critical look at how the model is applied in practice, capturing parallels and contradictions through comparative evidence with that of the East Asia model. Accordingly, it notes that the East Asian model has a strong ideological influence on the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime, allowing it to formulate a strong vision of development, but this, although it contributed to economic growth, failed to ensure democracy and stability in the country. It argues that land grabbing and political instability are the biggest threats to Ethiopia's development prospects.

The development of a scientific view of history in the early works of K. Marx

The subject of this study is the dynamics of the ideas of materialism in the views on society and the history of K. Marx. The object of research is the early works of the thinker (the 40s of the XIX century). The author pays special attention to the reconstruction of the method developed by K. Marx for the analysis of history and society. The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that a retrospective look at the method created by K. Marx will allow it to be applied more effectively in modern social research. The methods used are the analysis of primary sources, as well as comparative-historical, analytical-interpretive, hermeneutic methods. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that historical reconstruction is carried out through the prism of a modern scientific approach to the analysis of society, the essence of which is in the progressive unfolding of human nature. As a result, it is revealed that at the beginning of his creative career K. Marx took the position of dialectical idealism and revolutionary democracy. However, the practical activity of the thinker allowed him to gradually ideologically evolve, which is shown in this article. And already in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, we can observe the quintessence of the theory of materialism in views on society and history. This theory is at the same time a method, an analysis tool that has not lost its heuristic value and is applicable to the analysis of modern society.

Youth Uprising Movements in Sri Lanka in 2022

Today Sri Lanka is facing a huge economic crisis and political crisis due to intemperate corruption. Ordinary people are not in a position to face this crisis. Therefore, to find a solution to this crisis, the youth population of Sri Lanka came forward. Still, they are playing a considerable role in Sri Lanka’s political sphere. On the 1st of April 2022, the protest started at the president’s residence in Mirihana. The protestors demanded the resignation of the president and Prime Minister from the government. They use slogans such as ‘Go Home Gota, Government without Rajapakshas, and Give us our stolen money.’ In this situation, three months ago, the youth population of Sri Lanka started a protest that is called ‘Aadaraye Aragalaya.’ This article enunciates the youth uprising movements in Sri Lanka and the objective of writing this article is to share the value of doing a democratic revolution to change world politics, especially in an undemocratic system. Sri Lanka used this democratic revolution to change the ruling system in 2022. The important fact is that for doing this protest, the population of youth is giving their support for a positive purpose. Therefore, this article intends to explore the definitions of youth and youth political participation, the youth uprising movements in world history, the History of the youth uprising movement in Sri Lanka, and finally cogitated the nature of the youth uprising movement against the Rajapaksa’s regime in 2022.

The Commission Knocked Out Cold: Laura Serrano and the End of the Mexico City Prohibition of Women's Boxing in the 1990s

AbstractThis article examines the conflict over the legalisation of women's boxing in Mexico City in the 1990s. In 1995, Laura Serrano's Women's International Boxing Federation world boxing title put pressure on the legal system that had banned women from professional boxing in the Mexican capital since 1946. As the visibility of women's boxing grew in Mexico, Serrano publicly fought to end the ban in her home city. The Mexico City Boxing Commission's moral arguments and medical discourses about the female body became increasingly untenable as politics of gender equality won in importance. Using a range of sources, including Mexican newspapers and magazines, government gazettes, congress proceedings, and an autobiographical text by Serrano, this article illustrates the interplay of gender ideologies and institutional structures during an important period in Mexican political history. After seven decades of uninterrupted Institutional Revolutionary Party rule, power of the Mexican capital shifted to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) when Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas became the city's first elected governor in 1997. Although the PRD politically claimed the end of the prohibition in 1998, the shift in power cost Serrano the best paid boxing event of her career. It took another legal reform that outlawed discrimination in sports to force the Commission to finally regulate women's boxing in 1999.

Adolescents’ capabilities and aspirations across gender and generations in Amhara, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Insights into the role of changing historical-political-cultural contexts and social norms in shaping adolescent girls’ and boys’ futures contributes to an understanding of human development at the intersection of gender and youth in low- and middle-income countries. This study investigates the capabilities and aspirations of adolescent girls and boys and their evolution in Amhara against the background of three successive political regimes that governed Ethiopia over the last 90 years, the Haile-Selassie imperial regime (1930–1974), the socialist military Derg regime (1974–1991), and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (1991–2019), each with their own institutions, structures and infrastructure, and gender- and age-related relations and norms. The study adopts a capability approach with a gender and generationing development lens as a framework and relies on qualitative data collected through community- and mixed-generation group discussions. The study illustrates that, even if institutional and structural barriers became less stringent over time, cumulative gender- and age-related obstacles – some rooted in beliefs, norms, traditions and relations – hindered the expansion of adolescents’ capability success, consistently more so for girls than boys. (The threat of) gender-based violence pervasively constrains girls’ capabilities success and aspirations in spite of more formal protective institutions.

THE VISUALIZATION OF THE REVOLUTIONS IN NATION STATE BUILDING PROCESS IN TURKEY: SEEKING MUSEUM OF REVOLUTION IN ANKARA

Erken Cumhuriyet döneminde devlet ve halk arasında bir köprü işlevi gören Halkevleri, inkılapların benimsenmesi için ülke sathında müzecilik ve sergi faaliyetleri yürüttü. Bu faaliyetlerin en önemli ayaklarından bir tanesini 1934’te başkentte düzenlenen “İnkılâp’ta Ankara” sergisi oluşturuyordu. Bu faaliyet, bir yandan genç Cumhuriyetin nasıl kurulduğunu yurttaşlara anlatırken öte yandan da tarihsel hafızanın kaybolmamasını da sağlamayı amaçladı. 1930’lu yıllarda dil ve tarih gibi alanlarda kültürel bir dinamizm yakalanmış ve bu gelişmelerin görselleştirilmesi için de çaba harcanmıştı. Aslında bu sergi uzun yıllara yayılacak bir çabanın ilk tohumuydu. Başka bir deyişle, bu serginin daha sonraki yıllarda tesis edilmesi planlanan İnkılap Müzesinin temelini oluşturacağı varsayıldı. Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Cumhuriyet devrimleri ile ilgili evraklar ve eşyalar bu sergide bir araya getirildi ki ziyaretçiler mümkün mertebe otantik eserler ile karşılaşsınlar. Devrimlerin görselleştirilerek yurttaşların tarih konusunda bilinçlendirilmesi salt Türkiye’ye özgü bir durum değildi. Moskova’daki Sovyetler Birliği Devrim Müzesi, Almanya’daki Die Front sergisi ve İtalya’daki Mostra Della Rivoluzione Fascista müzesi genç Cumhuriyet için örnek teşkil etti. İnkılap müzesi kurulması fikri Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi’nin programında kendisine yer buldu ve devlet nezdinde ciddi olarak destek gördü. Dolayısıyla, devletin pek çok kademesi tarafından desteklenen bir fikir olarak serpilip gelişti. Ancak, inkılap müzesi düşüncesi tatmin edici bir biçimde hayata geçirilmesi uzun yıllara yayılan bir çabanın ürünüydü. Kurtuluş Savaşı’na ve gerçekleştirilen inkılaplara ait eserlerin toplanması bürokratik sebeplerden ötürü uzun sürdü. Buna rağmen, Türk ulusal kimliğinin oluşturulmasında ve pekiştirilmesinde görsellik ve müzecilik önemli bir yer tutmaktadır. Cumhuriyet devrimlerinin tüm yurttaşlar tarafından içselleştirilebilmesi için bir ağacın kökü misali ülke geneline kök salmış olan Halkevlerinin müzecilik kolları bu noktada son derece aktif oldu.

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Study of the Basic Experience of the Chinese Communist Party's Independence over the Past Hundred Years

Independence is the valuable experience of the Chinese Communist Party in making revolution, construction, reform and rejuvenation from the reality of China and relying on the people. Over the past hundred years, the Party has drawn spiritual nourishment from Marxism and traditional Chinese culture, and accumulated the basic experience of independence in theory and practice. Independence has solved the major proposition of the Chineseization of Marxism, solved the major issue of how to win the New Democratic Revolution in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China, and led the Chinese people to successfully embark on the road to socialism and take a road to socialism with Chinese characteristics. The idea of independence is an important guarantee for the promotion of theoretical and practical innovation, and its in-depth study is of positive significance for the continuous enrichment and improvement of the development of the theoretical system and road of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

«The November Breakdown» («November Action») 1918: a Revolution or a Military Coup?

The purpose of the study is to analyze peculiarities of the historical event «The November Breakdown» («November Action») – the national democratic revolution in the Western Ukrainian lands – not as a revolution in its classical version, but a military coup with the elements of the national liberation struggle of Western Ukrainians in the autumn of 1918. On the basis of the historical and political analysis of the historiographical heritage concerning the preconditions and creation of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, the events of October 31 – November 1, 1918, are described as discrepancies and generalizations of their direct participants; the research also clarifies the factors of political and ideological «explanations» of the revolutionary «November Breakdown» in historiography of the Ukrainian diaspora of the 20th Century. The Soviet and contemporary Ukrainian historiography statements about the «revolutionary nature» of the events in Eastern Halychyna in 1918, and hence the November 1918 national democratic revolution, are still debatable. Halychyna Ukrainians made a legal proclaimation of the Ukrainian state within the framework of the Austrian-Hungarian state, they were waiting for a peaceful transfer of power in Eastern Halychyna, and the armed uprising of October 31 – November 1, 1918, became a military coup in the geopolitical realities of the rising tension in the Polish-Ukrainian relations. Therefore, on November 1, the Austro-Hungarian government authorized an act of transfer of the state power in Eastern Halychyna to the Ukrainian National Council, and on November 13, 1918, the Council proclaimed Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. The origins of the myth about the «revolutionary character», or «revolution» in Eastern Halychyna in 1918, are rooted in attempts to «inject» the non-existent in reality class struggle of the region population into the broader context of the Bolshevik and socialist revolution. During the Khrushchev Thaw, in 1957 this myth underwent certain modification in the famous article of historian O.Karpenko, and later on, in 1993, this myth transformation turned into a «national-democratic revolution» in Western Ukrainian lands. In fact, the memoirs of the participants and creators of the «November Action», the external sources, as well as the mass media of that, do not interpret the events under study just as “a revolution”, but only as “a coup”, “disarmament”, etc., which testifies to the militaristic nature of events.

A pragmatic high modernism? rural development and state building in the Ethiopian lowlands, c. 1960–2019.

Large scale agricultural projects driven by a high modernist ideology have been closely interlinked with the process of state building at the Ethiopian lowland frontier since the second half of the twentieth century. This paper provides a diachronic analysis of the political economy of agricultural development and the associated frontier effect in the western and north-eastern lowlands of the country across three different political regimes. A comparative assessment of these patterns suggests that the high modernist paradigm should be applied with some qualification to the agenda of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the coalition that ruled Ethiopia from 1994 to 2019. The EPRDF was far more pragmatic than its predecessors; the oscillation between different degrees of state intervention was based upon past experiences of success and failure in the territorialization of state power in contested borderlands.

What is democratic backsliding?

What is democratic backsliding?

Legacies of leftism in anti-Japanese war films – The working masses in the Union’s Road and Sea

In Hong Kong film historiography, the films from the Union Film Enterprise Ltd (1952–1967) are totally separated from socialist arts and politics. In this paper, I argue that the working masses in Union’s films are derived from the legacies of leftism, which manifest in films about the anti-Japanese War of Resistance (kang ri). The Chinese leftism legacies, since the 1930s, are concerned with how human beings are formed socially rather than morally, that aesthetics are not separated from politics, and that learning and labor are not separated. Both Road (Lu 1959) and Sea (Hai, 1963) are directed by the same director Ng Wui. They share similar thematic concerns and aesthetic motifs of glorifying the heroic masses in the anti-Japanese war of resistance. These films can see how the ideas and practices of the New Democratic Revolution about the working masses in art and literature, born around the Second Sino-Japanese war, informed the left-wing films in Hong Kong. Also, given the censorship of films in colonial Hong Kong, these films shift the focus from showing the political parties (Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang) and army to the solidarity of the working masses.

Alms, Arms, And The Aftermath: The Legacies Of Rebel Provision Of Humanitarian Aid In Ethiopia

Abstract The 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia is perhaps one of the most internationally recognized instances of acute human suffering. Although the international community’s response to the crisis and the ways in which the famine reshaped the nature of humanitarian aid have been probed, less often discussed is that one of the most effective relief organizations delivering assistance—the Relief Society of Tigray (REST)—was the humanitarian wing of an insurgency, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). This article asserts that the process of responding to the famine amidst a protracted civil war left an indelible mark on the ways in which the TPLF approached domestic civil society and international assistance after war as a part of the governing party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. This article describes the legacies of the rebels’ wartime humanitarian activities. It asserts that REST’s prominence as an organization, its role as a model and catalyst for other party-affiliated organizations, the government’s suspicion of domestic civil society and efforts to strictly control international assistance, and its reliance on service delivery to bolster its domestic legitimacy are all legacies of the rebels’ wartime governance. In doing so, this article calls for greater attention to the dynamics of rebels’ wartime humanitarian activities and the post-conflict implications of this form of rebel governance.

Движение национального возрождения и завоевания власти в Мексике

The article makes a historical review of the political trajectory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from the 1980s to 2018, when he won the elections for the presidency of Mexico. It analyzes his passage through the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), his performance as head of government of Mexico City and his rise as a political figure of the left with national influence, managing to create his own political movement, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), which later became a political party and which was one of the bases of his electoral triumph in 2018. After the historical review, the factors of victory are analyzed, and alternative working hypotheses are proposed to interpret the arrival to power of MORENA from a perspective of alliances with the real factors of power in Mexico.

Infrastructures of Renaissance: tangible discourses in the EPRDF’s Ethiopia

In late 2014, disputes around land, displacement and compensation related to the roll-out of big infrastructure projects across Ethiopia mutated into much deeper conflicts about the authoritarian nature of the state, the political marginalization of particular ethnic groups and the legitimacy of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). As security forces continued to quell mounting protests, the federal government imposed a state of emergency. This article explores how the EPRDF navigated this period of political fragility and why infrastructures were used as strategic vehicles for the party’s discourse. Drawing on the Addis-Djibouti Railway as an analytical lens, this research explores how the party strategically deployed posters, images and speeches centred around infrastructure to directly respond to protestors' grievances. This choice to deliberately embed visuals and rhetoric descriptions of such megaprojects in its political messaging about Ethiopia’s aspired ‘unity in diversity’, ‘democracy’, and ‘good governance’ illustrates how infrastructures were effective carriers of the party’s narratives. Roads, railways, and dams rendered EPRDF’s abstract ideas of political reform and economic renaissance tangible. At this critical juncture, these tangible discourses not only expose how the party attempted to restructure state-society relations in Ethiopia, but also how centrally anchored infrastructure was in the EPRDF’s self-styled developmental state project.