Ideological Confusion Research Articles

Reform Corruption: A Discussion on China's Current Development

CONCOMITANT WITH CHINA'S RAPID AND RADICAL REFORM there has been rampant corruption among its bureaucrats. Chinese authorities have exhorted cadres to get rich last in the wake of the coming Communist prosperity. Deng Xiaoping favours a pattern in which people will become prosperous first, and others later.' But many government officials, wanted to be first and last on the road towards common prosperity, have turned a deaf ear to the Party's advice and so the nation's leaders have resorted to various means of intimidationexecuting one as a warning to a hundred. Yet just as a Chinese saying proclaims that not even a prairie fire can destroy the grass, it grows again when the spring breeze blows, corruption remains chronic and contagious and does seem to be tapering off. Addressing this perennial problem, this paper argues that reform corruption in China has much to do with ideological confusion, lack of incentive, lack of deterrence and deficiencies in management,2 all of which have been either created or exacerbated in the course of reform. The paper suggests that ideological indoctrination alone does tackle the issue adequately and that structural changes may assist in reducing corruption. As early as December 1951 when the Three-Anti campaign was launched against corruption, waste and bureaucratism, bourgeois ideas were already selected as a favourite scapegoat, as a major cause of corruption. This approach is adopted by some foreign observers as well. John Gardner, for example, writes that corruption of veteran and new party cadres results from environment in which the bourgeoisie retained a dominant position.3 The authorities have repeatedly employed this kind of attack in political movements since 1950, but seeing the bourgeoisie as an easy target has blinded Chinese leaders to other causes of bureaucratic corruption.

The evolution of knowledge systems: ideological confusion or healthy pragmatism?

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The Zigs and Zags in the Treatment of Intellectuals

The Chinese Communist Party's economic reforms have at times slowed down and have even halted, but they have not deviated from their course of loosening government controls, moving towards a more market-orientated economy, and opening up to the outside world. The Party's policy towards the intellectuals, whose skills are crucial to economic modernization, have generally followed the shifts in the economic sphere, but the shifts in the intellectual sphere have been more extreme and have at times deviated from the course. This was the case in the autumn of 1983 with the campaign against western spiritual pollution. Although the campaign quickly dissipated in the economic realm and scientific community, it continued on into 1984, specifically against those intellectuals who were influenced by such western thinkers as Sartre, Freud, Kafka and Euro-Marxists. The Party charged them with causing ideological confusion and questioning of the Party and socialism.

Fašizmo interpretacijos ir dabartinė ideologinė kova

Straipsnyje kritikuojamos fašizmo interpretacijos dabartinės ideologinės kovos kontekste, siekiama įvertinti skirtingų klasinių interesų poveikį fašizmo interpretacijoms ir jo tyrinėjimų rezultatams. Buržuazinių fašizmo tyrinėtojų ideologinė funkcija – išteisinti kapitalizmą, nekaltinti monopolijų dėl fašizmo atsiradimo ir jo piktadarybių. Iki 7 dešimtmečio vidurio tarp buržuazinių lietuvių emigrantų buvo paplitusi totalitarinė fašizmo koncepcija, kuri visą dėmesį sutelkia į totalitarinius valdymo metodus. Psichoanalitinės koncepcijos fašizmo genezę ir jo ypatybes bando pagrįsti socialiniais psichologiniais veiksniais: fašizmas atėjo į valdžią dėl to, kad atitiko tam tikrus žmonių charakterio bruožus; dabartiniam žmogui esą būdingos mechanistinės mistinės savybės, o tai formuoja polinkį fašizmui. Aptariami lyginamieji fašistinių režimų tyrinėjimai. Visos buržuazinės fašizmo doktrinos ignoruoja jo organišką ryšį su monopolijomis. Marksistinė metodologija, išreikšdama darbininkų klasės pozicijas, orientuoja fašizmo tyrinėjimus pirmiausia į jo klasinės esmės bei prigimties analizę, fašizmą nagrinėja kaip tarptautinį reiškinį, kaip imperializmo ir bendrosios kapitalizmo krizės rezultatą.

A Suitable Case for Treatment: Ideological Confusion in Vigny's Cinq-Mars

Journal Article A Suitable Case for Treatment: Ideological Confusion in Vigny's Cinq-Mars Get access Keith Wren Keith Wren Canterbury Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume XVIII, Issue 4, October 1982, Pages 335–350, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/XVIII.4.335 Published: 01 October 1982

A Suitable Case for Treatment : Ideological Confusion in Vigny's Cinq-Mars

A Suitable Case for Treatment : Ideological Confusion in Vigny's Cinq-Mars

Modernization and the American Fall into Slavery in Uncle Tom's Cabin

U NCLE TOM'S CABIN has proved be difficult problem for both literary critics and historians, for despite the sentimental characterization of Tom and Eva, despite the crude melodrama of Eliza's flight and Tom's martyrdom, slavery slowly emerges in the novel as powerful presence which dominates the fate of the characters and haunts the imagination of all but the most hostile readers. Yet while acknowledging that Harriet Beecher Stowe created scenes of real artistic power and that her analysis of the capitalistic elements of the slave system were remarkably astute, some critics have argued that the novel has no unifying vision which would have raised it the first rank of American literature and significantly advanced America's understanding of slavery and the slave experience. Elaborating on comment by Henry James, Edmund Wilson expressed in Patriotic Gore widely shared opinion that some of the most memorable episodes and unforgettable characters in Stowe's famous work almost miraculously leap into being out of background of undistinguished narrative, inelegantly and carelessly written. Giles Gunn, reinforcing judgment made by Gushing Strout, insists that this lack of artistic control and careful thought finally undermines whatever aesthetic and intellectual qualities exist in sections of the work because, unlike serious art, which challenges us to think about these matters in fundamentally different and novel way, the disjointed episodes in Uncle Tom's Cabin merely serve as a Baedeker the ideological confusion and moral ambiguity of her own age. Yet, despite such judgments, scholars and critics have been forced acknowledge that, particularly among other novelists, Uncle Tom's Cabin continues evoke responses the intensity of which are produced by only few classics of American fiction.

Six dialogues en quête d'auteur

Six dialogues in search of an author, by Albert Bressand The Third World countries face a fundamental choice, between a strategy of "catching up" with the West, passing probably through an increased interdependance, and a strategy of "decoupling" or "collective autonomy". For the author, the dialogue on the new order appears as a manifestation of first approach but in a language much nearer the second, hence a considerable confusion in the North-South dialogue, accentuated further still by the essentially political character of the context in which the economic problems of development are tackled. To this ideological confusion comes a hesitation on the part of Western countries whose attitude is fundamentally more defensive than constructive. The long-term importance of the stakes, and in particular the necessity of integrating into the world concert the new powers who to-day are trying to assert themselves by the South-South dialogue, would require, however, a much firmer and more open attitude on the part of the Western powers. The transitory character of the present period makes it inevitable to hold a dialogue at two levels, led by the political organisations of UN, on the one hand, and more specialised organisations, such as the IMF, the World Bank and GATT, on the other. If it gives itself the means, France can play a very special role in the effort to organise new international relations.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Political Ideology

Participants in the corporate responsibility debate frequently find that they have unlikely political allies and opponents. Both conservative (opposing government intervention in the economy) and liberal (favoring substantial government intervention) arguments are made for greater corporate social responsibility. The author explains this paradox and attempts to resolve this ideological confusion.

True Confessions: Interviewing Liberal Intellectuals

The words and have often provoked considerable semantical and ideological confusion, especially among those who bear both labels. The distinguished intellectual historian Paul Conkin told me not long ago that he had abandoned the use of in his writing and lecturing as it was too vague. For all of its acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize, Richard Hofstadter's Antiintellectualism in American Life contains only very general (and pious) descriptions of intellectuals, identifying them chiefly by their work, which allegedly possesses disinterested intelligence, generalizing power, free speculation, fresh observation, creative novelty, radical criticism.' Albert Guerard, in 266-page paean to the intellectual, defined him as a man aware that he has an intellect, and resolved to make the most careful use of it.' Jacques Barzun's House of Intellect distinguishes intelligence from intellect in language so hazy and at the same time lovely as to virtually qualify it as poetry? We shall look loftily beyond this obscurity and discuss liberal intellectuals as though we understood who and what they are. My credentials for doing so derive from interviewing experiences in three research projects involving people who have been widely awarded the designation--with or without their consent. The first was study of the Fund for the Republic, unique and controversial tax-exempt foundation created in the McCarthy Era to defend civil liberties and expand civil rights. Among those interviewed were Robert M. Hutchins, W. H. Ferry, John Cogley, Joseph Lyford, Harvey Wheeler, Hallock Hoffman, Michael Harrington, Scott Buchanan, Sidney Hook, Walter Millis, Adam Yarmolinsky, Harry Ashmore, William O. Douglas, Rexford Tugwell, Bishop James Pike, and Dwight Macdonald.4

Economism: A Heresy Exploited

At the end of his book of 1902, Chto delat?, Lenin declared laconically that the Russian Marxists would have “to liquidate the third period.” The “third period” here meant the years after 1898 when, according to Lenin, organizational fragmentation and ideological confusion had sabotaged the Russian Social Democratic movement. A voluntary federation of the scattered parts of the movement would, in Lenin's view, merely perpetuate in new form the confusion of the “third period.” Not reform but “liquidation” was thus essential. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party would have to be reconstructed in Russia around the framework of Iskra's agents, who in turn were to be directed by the editors of Iskra abroad.Here was the justification for the campaign which the leaders of Iskra had already initiated and which they knew among themselves as the “state of siege.“

Some Ideological Confusion Among Negro College Students

A pressing question of the moment, one which is being asked with everincreasing insistence -is: What kind of a post-war world may we expect? Materials enough to fill volumes are flooding the presses of the country on the subject, much of it written by individuals who are even now in the declining years of life and who have scant hope of exerting vital influence in whatever society there may be. Manifestly, our most realistic point of contact with the post-war world is through the persons who will have the privilege of. making and shaping itthe young men and women who are on the very threshold of adulthood. If we can find out what they are thinking, and especially where lie their most specific areas of mental conflict (in terms of social values), we may at least begin to understand some of the obstacles which they must overcome before they are qualified to assist in molding the world of tomorrow. Accordingly, we shall present here certain data dealing with the social understanding of 100 students in attendance at a Negro college in Oklahoma, Langston University. In so doing we have in view two major aims. We want to report on a set of Social Understanding tests given at this college and to describe the ideological confusion which we have found to exist among our students. And we further expect to point out some of the implications arising from this confusion for teachers of the social sciences.