Modern Political Ideologies Research Articles

Hobbesian Instinctual Reason versus Rousseau’s Instinctual Innocence: Backstage logic of colonial expansions and origin of the left–right political dichotomy

This essay discusses three dimensions that differentiate Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality in which the origins of the Left–Right political distinction and the seeds of the colonialist–anticolonialist debate can be explored. The study initially focuses on the diametrically opposed political ideas of the two philosophers regarding the “state of nature” and their perception of human nature in general. The second section is based on the fundamental differences between the two philosophers’ trust and distrust of human nature. In the third setion the essay tries to assess the two authors’ disagreements over the notion of progress, and synthesizes a new concept, instinctual reason, which is distilled from a Hobbesian chain of thought and Rousseau’s subsequent criticism. Through this synthesis, the study aims to elucidate the backstage logic of imperialist/colonialist expansions and explore the origins of the Left–Right distinction. In the final analysis, this essay aims to reveal that Hobbesian instinctual reason is one of the primary impulses of colonialist expansions, whilst Rousseau’s instinctual innocence is in essence anticolonialist. By the same token, the essay argues the Hobbesian position in these three dimensions constitutes the origins of modern right-wing political ideologies, whilst Rousseau’s position has inspired the leftist stance.

Специфика идеологического влияния на функционирование власти в современной России

The paper considers the development paths of modern political ideologies in Russia, their continui-ty and relationship with the USSR ideology, the role of the state in the creation of the ideological com-ponent of public policy. The study demonstrates the specific nature of power in modern Russian reality. It substantiates the functions of political ideology and its levels and divides into periods the evolution of the ideological situation in post-Soviet Russia. Pat-riotism is characterized as one possible reason for a new ideology. The research identifies that the mod-ern development path of political ideology is situa-tional (it is largely determined by both foreign and domestic political moment) and hybrid in nature (it combines the elements of social conservative or neo-conservative and liberal ideologies). The au-thors conclude that new political ideology should determine ideological cores and guidelines articulat-ed with the moral, historical, religious, legal and other social moral values attractive to all generations and social strata.

Isms, ideologies and setting the agenda for public debate

ABSTRACTThis article presents a long-term account of isms from antiquity to the present. It discusses the spread of isms into nearly all spheres of life and why isms are still perceived as ideological. Based on a combined analysis of word frequencies in large digital libraries and more detailed contextual discussions of patriotism, liberalism, nationalism and totalitarianism, the article studies the emergence of isms and their potential transformation from pejorative labels to concepts of group-identification and analytical categories. Isms have been highlighted as future-oriented concepts on which modern political ideologies were built from the early nineteenth century on. Isms have also been identified as being collectively responsible for the twentieth-century experience that has been conceptualized as totalitarianism. While elaborating the notion of isms as ideological future-oriented ‘concepts of movement’, the article points out their crucial role in forging historic roots for these modern ideologies as well as for religious and cultural phenomena. By emphasizing the rhetorical potential in using isms as words of abuse, forging traditions for isms and claiming universal applicability to isms, the article provides insight into the constant renegotiation of the relationship between ideologies and isms, a phenomenon that has gained increased topicality in recent decades.

Renaissance Conspiracies in Nineteenth-Century Italian Art: The Rediscovery of History between Literature and Visual Culture

This article investigates the revitalization of the literary theme of Renaissance conspiracies in nineteenth-century Italian art. The topic of political plots enjoyed widespread diffusion in Italian Renaissance literature, especially in the second half of the 1400s, when it was chosen as the subject of several texts. It is significant that four centuries later this topic was resurrected and reframed in a number of artistic works, becoming a pivotal theme of both Romantic visual culture and the later artistic movement of the Macchiaioli . In this evolution, the issue of conspiracies acquired new overtones, placed within the context of a turbulent period of political transition. It becomes a vehicle for modern political ideologies and an artistic pattern able to convey a new cultural sensibility. Thus the fertile relationship between literature and art brings new life into the recovery of Renaissance history, enriching the early modern tradition and continuously reviving it.

Orestes Brownson's Freedom of the Church: Introducing Orestes A. Brownson's Essay "Civil and Religious Freedom"

Orestes Brownson's Freedom of the ChurchIntroducing Orestes A. Brownson's Essay "Civil and Religious Freedom" Richard M. Reinsch II (bio) Orestes Brownson's wonderful essay "Civil and Religious Freedom" (1864) provides a remarkable philosophical and constitutional defense of religious liberty. The essay bears the particular merit of bridging the traditional American understanding of religious freedom as an individual right with the corporate notion of freedom of the church, which acts, Brownson argues, as the shield of religious liberty. First, permit me a few words on this figure who has not received in recent decades the rich scholarly and public discussion he deserves. Orestes Brownson was a fixture throughout much of the nineteenth century, writing at the intersection of that period's constitutional, religious, and social controversies. Born in 1803 in Vermont, [End Page 112] the New Englander migrated across Christian denominations and modern ideologies in early adulthood. He espoused a prototype of Protestant liberation theology that believed Christianity could recruit the sentiments of the masses for egalitarian social reform. He was also a significant member of the Transcendentalists, until he concluded that this school of thought's exaltation of spirit over nature and reason was sheer madness. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., focused on Brownson's religiously informed social and political activism because Schlesinger believed it was crucial evidence of a deposit of progressivism in America well before the New Deal.1 While Schlesinger can legitimately claim the young Brownson as an American progressive forerunner, what ultimately marks Brownson's mature path is a genuine quest for understanding the truth about the human person and our capacity to understand what we should do to flourish as created and relational beings. Brownson rejected radical Leftist political theorizing after the 1840 elections. "Mugged by reality," as it were, Brownson wrote that the 1840 presidential campaign, which featured William Henry Harrison winning the presidency on a campaign appeal of a "log cabin and hard cider," revealed to him the mob-rule aspects of mass modern politics. In short, engaging in political activism to reach egalitarian ends was just as likely to produce dastardly results. A politically wiser Brownson soon arose. Political refinement in Brownson was indelibly linked to his conversion to the Catholic Church in 1844, which concluded his theological searching and his radical political thought and style. Finding his theological home in Rome liberated Brownson from the need to vindicate a Gnostic politics of perfection. He understood that politics could not bear the ideological weight that he had placed upon it, and this entailed understanding the tragic and limited nature of politics and human existence. There is no final progress or emancipation in this refined account, but a firm awareness of how the differentiated dimensions of human nature, albeit imperfectly, are realized in various social, political, economic, and religious contexts. [End Page 113] In this way, Brownson provided an original, robust defense of American constitutionalism and religious freedom. He saw our political order as fundamentally just because of its ability to balance and soothe the collectivist and anarchic instincts of political modernity. American constitutionalism was not perfect—Brownson articulated its own discontents quite well in The American Republic (1865)—but he also argued that it contained ample resources to uphold a dignified political order of freedom and responsibility. Brownson stated in 1853 that the question that dominated his mind and writing was articulating the proper relationship between the church and the state, or, as he frequently noted, the spiritual and temporal realms. This, he argued, "in one form or another is almost the only question discussed in our [Brownson's Quarterly] Review, [it] is precisely this question as to the relation of the two orders, the rights and powers of the spiritual order in relation to the temporal, and of the church, as the representative of the spiritual, in face of the state, the representative of the temporal."2 Brownson was a profound critic of modern political ideologies that subsumed the church under the state. He opposed political atheism because of its complete divorce of the political order from religion and morality. The publicly enforced notion that the state faces no source of authority higher than its own that can...

EGZISTENCIALISTINIAI VYTAUTO KAVOLIO LIBERALIZMO PAGRINDAI

Straipsnyje gilinamasi į filosofinius Amerikos lietuvių visuomenės ir mokslo veikėjo Vytauto Kavolio liberalizmo teorijos pagrindus. Jame sie­kiama atskleisti koherencijos problemą, su kuria lietuvių išeivių mąstytojas susiduria plėtodamas savąją liberalizmo versiją, ir būdą, kuriuo tą proble­mą stengiasi įveikti. Koherencijos problema kyla dėl to, kad Kavolis siekia sukurti integralųjį liberalizmą, kuris apimtų ne tik liberalizmo, bet ir kitų modernių pasaulėžiūrų, pirmiausia konservatizmo, principus. Kadangi savo pamatinėmis orientacijomis liberalizmas ir konservatizmas yra vienas kito priešingybė, kyla klausimas, kaip galima juos suderinti ir sukurti integralų­jį liberalizmą kaip nuoseklią mąstymo ir veiklos sistemą. Įrodinėjama, kad galimybės suderinti liberalizmo ir konservatizmo sąlygas Kavolis ieško filo­sofinės antropologijos srityje. Mąstytojas žmogaus sampratą grindžia prie­laida, kad pamatinę žmogiškosios egzistencijos struktūrą sudaro aš kaip šis, konkretus, nepakartojamas, savarankiškas bei laisvas individas ir pasaulis, kurio centre – tautinė bendruomenė ir jos kultūrinė tradicija. Santykis tarp aš ir pasaulio apibrėžiamas dvejopai. Viena vertus, nei aš, nei pasaulis yra neredukuojami vienas į kitą. Jie yra savarankiški egzistencijos elementai. Antra vertus, aš ir pasaulis yra tarpusavyje susiję. Jie vienas kitą įgalina: bendruomenė ir jos kultūrinė tradicija suteikia aš turinį, kurio jis pats nepa­ jėgus susikurti, – prasmes, – o aš užtikrina bendruomenės ir jos kultūrinės tradicijos gyvavimą. Iš kavoliškosios žmogaus sampratos kyla atitinkama egzistencinė liberalizmo, konservatizmo ir integralaus liberalizmo ontologi­ja. Egzistencinį liberalizmo pagrindą sudaro aš, konservatizmo – pasaulis, o integralusis liberalizmas remiasi ne viena kuria pamatinės žmogiškosios egzistencijos struktūros dalimi, bet visa ja. Pamatiniu egzistencijos lygmeniu jokio liberalizmo ir konservatizmo konflikto nėra. Liberalizmo ir konserva­tizmo dermę, o kartu ir integraliojo liberalizmo, kaip nuoseklios mąstymo ir veiklos sistemos, galimybę užtikrina tai, kad jų reprezentuojami egzisten­cijos elementai yra ne tik atskiri, bet ir tarpusavyje susiję. Liberalizmo ir konservatizmo konfliktas kyla tada, kai jie suabsoliutinami ir juos siekiama paversti visa apimančiomis pasaulėžiūromis.

The political implications of epigenetics.

Epigenetics, which is just beginning to attract public attention and policy discussion, challenges conventional understanding of gene-environment interaction and intergenerational inheritance and perhaps much more besides. Does epigenetics challenge modern political ideologies? I analyzed the narratives of obesity and epigenetics recently published in the more liberal NewYork Times and the more conservative Wall Street Journal. For the years 2010 through 2014, 50 articles on obesity and 29 articles on epigenetics were identified, and elements in their causal narratives were quantitatively analyzed using a well described narrative policy framework. The narratives on obesity aligned with the two newspapers' reputed ideologies. However, the narratives on epigenetics aligned with neither ideology but freely mixed liberal and conservative elements. This small study may serve as a starting point for broader studies of epigenetics as it comes to affect political ideologies and, in turn, public policies. The narrative mix reported here could yet prove vulnerable to ideological capture, or, more optimistically, could portend the emergence of a “third-way” narrative using epigenetics to question atomistic individualism and allowing for less divisiveness in public-health domains such as obesity.

Marxism and Islamism: Intellectual conformity in Aron’s time and our own

We celebrate great writers not only by reconstructing their ideas but also by thinking in their spirit. Many aspects of Raymond Aron’s legacy could, today, be exploited by writers of an Aronian turn of mind. They might draw on his philosophy of history; his defense of the specificity of politics; his acute awareness of the burdens of responsibility imposed on great powers. In this article, I flag a different topic: Aron’s concern with the impact of regimes and local cultures on political discussion. Of special interest to him were state-sponsored ideology and self-induced groupthink (the ‘opium of the intellectuals’). After briefly describing Aron’s views of both of these phenomena within the context of official and unofficial Marxism, I examine two modalities of communicative inhibition that have emerged since his death. Both turn on the emergence of Islamism as a major modern political ideology; both entail impediments to free speech: the vilification of political disagreement as ‘phobic’ and, relatedly, the political use of law (‘lawfare’) to halt debate on matters sensitive to Islamists.

Death as a Window to Life: Anthropological Approaches to Early Medieval Mortuary Ritual

Identity, personhood, ritual, religion, landscape, and the materiality of social practice have inspired anthropologists to advance exiting new agendas. Many of these issues coalesce in mortuary archaeology. This article reviews the dialogue between anthropological questions and the mortuary record through examining three books on early medieval archaeology. It focuses on theoretical developments rather than methodology, discussing key issues relating both to the study of early medieval mortuary remains and to broader anthropological agendas, such as modern political ideology and cultural identity.

Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside (review)

Reviewed by: Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside Barbara Walker Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside. Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman, eds. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. Pp. vii + 310. $75.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper). This collection has many excellent and useful articles on early Soviet history and culture, yet there is a contradiction between the title which proposes to examine historical everyday life in the early Soviet Union, and the introduction to the collection, which focuses on analyzing early Soviet discourses that were created with the intention of shaping everyday life. This contradiction plays itself out in the articles that follow, as does a certain haziness about what is meant by everyday life. According to the well-written introduction by Christina Kaier and Eric Naiman, the goal of this collection is to "take the Revolution inside," that is to explore "the impact of ideology on the interior spaces of the home, the family, the body and the self" (1). These are pretty variable topics, which Kiaer and Naiman seek to integrate by citing Foucault's project of exploring the formation of the modern subject. They see a theoretical contradiction in this proposal, in that Foucault was dismissive of the importance of ideology, yet they argue that in this case it can nevertheless serve the purpose of such a Foucauldian project. The historical novelty of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik victory, they argue, lay in the way that the Bolsheviks brought a modern political ideology to consciousness in the context of daily life, though it should be noted that state efforts to bring ideologies of modernity to consciousness have been an important theme in Russian history for centuries (consider for example Marc Raeff's The Well-Ordered Police State [1983]). In any case, given its attention to the shaping of the modern subject, this introductory essay focuses less on the contextual historical consequences of "taking the Revolution inside"—the actual interior spaces that seem to be promised in the title—and more on the discourses that reflect that effort. The collection begins with a brief article by Sheila Fitzpatrick on the multiple identities of Soviet citizen Anastasia Plotnikova, whose Party autobiography represented her as being of [End Page 832] humble landless peasant background, but whose identity was challenged by the NKVD who described her as the adopted child of a kulak. Fitzpatrick concludes her analysis of this conflict with the comment that she as author must cease her tale with the cessation of the NKVD files in 1936, and that the reader must imagine the rest. In the introduction, Naiman and Kiaer interpret this to mean that history itself is much like fiction but perhaps it also says something about the dependence of the historian on documents or other artifacts of the past, which do not always offer conclusive evidence of the nature of that past. In the following article Lilya Kaganovsky examines the implications for the Bolshevization of identity in the film The Party Card (1936), in which a female party member loses that central document of Bolshevik identity to a deceitful husband. Cynthia Hooper's thoughtful essay on the role of family and intimacy in the 1930s argues that the state approach to those spheres was not the conservative "Great Retreat" from the radical engagement of the 1920s that has been a truism of Soviet historiography for decades. Rather, she argues, it represented an intensification of state engagement with family and private life, above all through pressure on family members to denounce one another. She contrasts this Soviet state form of engagement with private life with that of Nazi engagement, which she describes as distinctly more conservative in its belief in the relative independence, integrity, and organicity of the family. Yet the Nazis too sought to intervene in family life, through means other than encouragement of denunciation, such as state control over reproduction and family structure. But her point that the Great Terror intensified family allegiance while seeking to repress it is well-taken. Boris Wolfson's sensitive examination of two theatrical productions of Aleksandr Afinogenov's play Fear (Strakh, 1931), and the ways in which those...

Conscription in the French Restoration: The 1818 Debate on Military Service

The article analyses the parliamentary debate in the French Chambers of Deputies and of Peers on the Gouvion-Saint-Cyr law. Conscription having been abolished by the restoration, its re-establishment confronted the monarchy with ideological trouble, and the law gave rise to one of the most remarkable debates in French parliamentary history, because virtually all modern political ideologies - conservatism, liberalism, constitutional monarchism, republicanism - confronted each other in theoretically very elaborated speeches. The debate is thus both a summary of the revolutionary experience and a look towards the nineteenth century.

By birth or consent: children, law, and the Anglo-American revolution in authority

In mid-sixteenth-century England, people were born into authority and responsibility based on their social status. Thus elite children could designate property or serve in Parliament, while children of the poorer sort might be forced to sign labor contracts or be hanged for arson or picking pockets. By the late eighteenth century, however, English and American law began to emphasize contractual relations based on informed consent rather than on birth status. In By Birth or Consent, Holly Brewer explores how the changing legal status of children illuminates the struggle over consent and status in England and America. As it emerged through religious, political, and legal debates, the concept of meaningful consent challenged the older order of birthright and became central to the development of democratic political theory. The struggle over meaningful consent had tremendous political and social consequences, affecting the whole order of society. It granted new powers to fathers and guardians at the same time that it challenged those of masters and kings. Brewer's analysis reshapes the debate about the origins of modern political ideology and makes connections between Reformation religious debates, Enlightenment philosophy, and democratic political theory.

The Constitutional Convention of 1937: The Original Meaning of the New Jurisprudential Deal

The Constitutional Convention of 1937: The Original Meaning of the New Jurisprudential Deal

Objectivity in the Making: Francis Bacon and the Politics of Inquiry

How we arrived at a capacity for taking cold, hard looks at the facts of nature-and whether we ever truly have done so-are questions that continue to engage both historians of science and students of culture. Historians of modern European intellectual history commonly credit Francis Bacon with laying the groundwork for a mode of study that begins without presuppositions, religious or otherwise, the kind of searching we know as research and long have credited as being disinterested. In Objectivity in the Making, Julie Robin Solomon shows how disinterestedness became a dominant principle of intellectual modernity by examining Bacon's notion of scientific self-distancing against the background of early modern political ideology, socioeconomic behavior, and traditions of learning. Solomon places him between two cultures-Jacobean monarchical mercantilism and the self-distancing strategies of early-seventeenth-century traders and travelers. She shows that Bacon-by virtue of his prominent political position within the Jacobean court, familiarity with prevailing commercial practices, and humanistic learning-made his signal contributions to natural philosophy because of where he stood at a critical juncture.

Towards an understanding of modern political ideology in Africa: the case of the Ovimbundu of Angola

In 1992, several national newspapers in America and Europe ran headline stories which accused Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, the nationalist movement which had been locked in a vicious civil war with the MPLA–PT government of Angola, of conducting witchcraft trials and burnings of witches at his liberation base at Jamba. The revelations, provided by two high-ranking defectors from UNITA, caused an outcry among both critics and supporters, with all predicting Savimbi's ignominious defeat. Savimbi's longtime critics expected the latest scandal to deprive him of his remaining credibility, and predicted that the support he had gathered as a fighter for Angolan nationalism and a supporter of democracy would evaporate.On the contrary, the incident had little impact on Savimbi's stature among his Ovimbundu supporters. Later that year he went on to win the majority of the Ovimbundu votes in the United Nations sponsored elections, and gained a chance to be in a run-off election against José Eduardo dos Santos for the presidency of Angola. Details about these and similar incidents which have taken place in Africa from the time of conquest reflect a political legacy that has deep roots in Africa's pre-colonial past. They also illustrate some of the fundamental differences that exist between African and Western conceptions of political behaviour and ideology that need to be addressed.

Postmodern critiques: Foucault, Lyotard and modern political ideologies

Abstract ’Postmodernism’, or rather aspects of it, has posed a challenge to modern political ideologies. In particular, the works of Michel Foucault and Jean‐Francois Lyotard, through their attacks on the epistemology of modernity, have articulated persuasive critiques of modern ideologies as mechanisms of domination and injustice. Both writers extend their critiques to formulate new strategies of political action and struggle, creating modes of political prescription in both succession and opposition to these ideologies. However, these new prescriptions are problematic, contradictory and disabling, and can be shown partially to emulate the very political ideologies they attack and supersede. Ultimately Foucault and Lyotard's work needs to be placed in a symbiotic relationship with modern political ideologies, to create an astuter, if less‐defined, critical apparatus.

Mawdudi and the making of Islamic revivalism

Nasr examines the life and thought of Mawlana Mawdudi, one of the first and most important Islamic ideological thinkers. Mawdudi was the first to develop a modern political Islamic ideology, and a plan for social action to realize his vision. The prolific writings and indefatigable efforts of Mawdudi's party, the Jamaat-i-Islami, first in India and later in Pakistan, have disseminated his ideas far and wide. His views have informed revivalism from Morocco to Malaysia. Nasr discerns the events that led Mawdudi to a revivalist perspective, and probes the structure of his thought, in order to gain fresh insights into the origins of Islamic revivalism. He argues that Islamic revivalism did not simply develop as a cultural rejection of the West, rather it was closely tied to questions of communal politics and its impact on identity formation, discourse of power in plural societies, and nationalism. Mawdudi's discourse, though aimed at the West, was motivated by Muslim-Hindu competition for power in British India. His aim, according to Nasr, was to put forth a view of Islam whose invigorated, pristine, and uncompromising outlook would galvanize Muslims into an ideologically uniform and hence politically indivisible community. In time, this view developed a life of its own and evolved into an all-encompassing perspective on society and politics, and has been a notable force in South Asia and Muslim life and thought across the Muslim world.

Modern Political Ideologies.

Preface to Third Edition. 1. The Nature of Ideology. 2. Liberalism. 3. Conservatism. 4. Socialism. 5. Anarchism. 6. Fascism. 7. Feminism. 8. Ecologism. 9. Nationalism. 10. Fundamentalism. 11. Icons and Iconoclasm. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.

The Concept of the Ruskaia Zemlia and Medieval National Consciousness from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Centuries*

Any society sufficiently cohesive to evolve even the most rudimentary political structure will also, as a matter of course, develop a set of shared concepts about the nature of that society and a justification of its political structure. Scholars usually ascribe the word “Ideology” only to a set of values which is highly abstract, rational, and articulated in the form of theoretical treatises, so that in the modern period liberalism or Marxism is considered as an ideology, but this is not entirely warranted. Medieval states frequently expressed their social and political myths through the medium of ceremonial and symbol, hence the considerable attention to artistic evidence given by the great scholar of medieval political theology Ernst Kantorowicz or by his student Michael Cherniavsky, whose field was Medieval Rus',1 Even in medieval western Europe, but overwhelmingly in medieval Rus', much political thought, like our current symbolic respect for the “flag,” was expressed in extremely laconic terms. Phrases, concepts, and titles served in lieu largely of theoretical treatises, and ideologues demonstrated their creativity and originality in the manipulation of these phrases, concepts, and titles, not the elaboration of intellectual definitions of their significance. Such definitions were superfluous to contemporaries who all understood the shared vocabulary of political discourse, what we might call a political culture, but their absence compels the modern-day historian to rely upon his informed imagination to decode such social and political myths in order to establish their intended meanings. This is not to imply that modern political ideologies lack overarching myths. Indeed the very opposite is exactly the case; in Russian history the myth of the “people” (narod) in Populist thought and the myths of the proletariat or (later) the Party in Marxist/Bolshevik writings spring readily to mind. The lack of elaborate theoretical discussions of comparable myths in pre-Petrine history inevitably requires different methods of study from those one can apply to subsequent centuries.

George Orwell and the Victorian Radical Tradition

Since his death in 1950, at the age of forty-six, George Orwell's personal following and literary reputation have grown so steadily that he has become the most widely read English writer of his generation. Orwell's name has come to evoke almost universal recognition as a kind of legendary symbol of resistance to political dishonesty, hypocrisy, and totalitarianism. But in spite of his popularity, he remains a strangely enigmatic figure and a source of continuing controversy among critics and historians.The initial critical studies of Orwell and his work were often little more than highly partisan attempts to define or dismiss Orwell as an anarchist, a disillusioned socialist, or a conservative reactionary. The shortcomings of this critical approach, which was once virtually an obsession with the politically committed critics of Orwell's generation, have become increasingly obvious. Orwell was one of the most politically “engaged” writers of the twentieth century, but the precise nature of his political posture simply cannot be defined and analyzed within the context of any identifiably modern political ideology, party, or movement. During his politically active years, Orwell enthusiastically supported a wide variety of radical causes and revolutionary reforms, but the political and intellectual conformity demanded by the modern parties of the Left seems always to have been at odds with his well-developed sense of intellectual honesty and personal integrity. As Anthony Powell has observed, “Orwell could never be integrated into any normal party machine. His reputation for integrity might be invoked, his capacity for martyrdom relied on, his talent for pamphleteering made use of, but he could never be trusted not to let some devastatingly unwelcome cat out of the political bag.”