Dictatorship Of The Proletariat Research Articles

Thoroughly Expose Ba Jin’s Counterrevolutionary True Face

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. This is a reference to Liu Shaoqi. From the early 1960s until the Cultural Revolution, Liu was the Chairman of State and Chairman Mao’s designated successor; he was ultimately purged and humiliated during the Cultural Revolution. Liu died in prison of pneumonia due to maltreatment in 1969.2. See [Li] Feigan, “Liening—Gemingde pantu” (Lenin: Traitor to the Revolution), Xuehui supplement to Guofeng ribao (National Customs Daily), February 20, 1925. One could speculate that because this article in particular was used against Ba Jin in the Cultural Revolution, and due to its inflammatory title, it was made inaccessible to scholars when Ba Jin’s political supporters were in power, that is, before and after the Cultural Revolution. That is also perhaps why, despite the editors’ best efforts, we have been unable to locate that article to use in this issue.3. See the first selection in this issue, Li Feigan’s “On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (Makeside “wuchanjiejizhuanzheng”), which was originally published in Makesizhuyi de pochan (The Bankruptcy of Marxism) (Shanghai: Ziyou shudian, 1928), pp. 105–125.4. This refers to the Kuomintang (KMT) government’s signing of the so-called He–Umezu Agreement, under which the KMT agreed not to conduct party operations in Hebei Province, in effect starting to cede control of northern China to Japan.5. See Mao, “On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism,” Selected Works (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 153–178.6. See the fifth selection in this issue, Ba Jin, “‘Afterword’ to Peter Kropotkin’s Blood of Freedom.” Unlike their other charges that he had a past association with anarchism and criticized both Marx and Lenin, which were basically true, one could argue that the authors are being very unfair to Ba Jin in claiming that he opposed the revolution and supported the Kuomintang. Even though he chose to live in areas under Kuomingtang control during the war rather than join the Communists in Yanan, Ba Jin continued to oppose capitalism and supported socialism and communism in general. Paul Pickowicz argued further that by depicting the dark and dreary side of life in the Kuomingtang-controlled areas during the war with Japan, Ba Jin “did a great deal to undermine the legitimacy of the nationalist state.” See Pickowicz, introduction to Cold Nights by Pa Chin [Ba Jin] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003), p. xxxii. Also, as we noted in the introduction to this issue, although it is true that he did criticize the tactics of the Communists in this afterword, unlike older Chinese anarchists, Ba Jin did stay in China after 1949.7. Ba Jin, trans., “Shehui biange yu jingji de gaizao” (Social Change and Economic Transformation), by Kropotkin (Kelupaotejin), Shijie yuekan 1 (May/June 1947): 9–10; really a translation of Kropotkin’s 1919 postscript to the Russian edition of his Words of a Rebel (St. Petersburg and Moscow: Golos-Trouda, 1921). See bibliography in the guest editors’ introduction to this issue.8. The authors are conveniently ignoring here the fact that Kropotkin wrote these comments long before Stalin’s rise to the top leadership posts in the Soviet Union, though it could certainly be true that the Nationalist regime during the Chinese civil war gladly reprinted Ba Jin’s translation for its own purposes.9. Refers to different kinds of problems related to poorly allocated production and consumption quotas, especially for consumer goods, under the nationalized industry of the Stalinist central planning system of the 1950s.10. Perhaps the authors failed to realize here they were admitting that Ba Jin’s critique resonated with readers around the country, even though they imply later in the essay that the resonance was with foreign countries.11. Chen Pixian was first party secretary of Shanghai until his purge in the “January Storm” of the Cultural Revolution in 1967; he rehabilitated in the mid-1970s.12. That is, “conciliation with imperialism, revisionism and reactionaries of all countries” and “annihilation of world revolution.” This refers to the Cultural Revolution charge that Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping led a supposed “pacifist” line in foreign policy that opposed the Maoist line of support for wars of national liberation abroad. See Michael B. Yahuda, “Chinese Foreign Policy After 1963: The Maoist Phases,” China Quarterly 36 (October/December 1968): 106. Many scholars writing since the Cultural Revolution, however, find little evidence that these leaders really acted in foreign policy matters without Mao’s approval.

Marx’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”

The Communist Manifesto, which Karl Marx coauthored with Friedrich Engels, clearly explains Marx’s view on the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as follows: The immediate aim of the Communists is t...

The Role of Central and Regional Government in the Regional Development of Albania

Albania is a country in the Southeastern of Europe that has gone through many obstacles since its independence (1912) until the fall of communism regime or “the dictatorship of the proletariat” in 1991. After the fall of communism regime and the change of economy from a centralized one to an open economy, Albania is structuring its legal framework, institutions and agencies, policies, etc., in order to be a member of European Union. Due to its undertaken reforms and required ones from European Union, Albania is in a crossroad regarding the policies and institutional bodies of regional development. One of the latest reforms recently presented and approved in the Albanian Parliament is the new Territorial Reform, which has defined a new organization of the local government. Such reform has not yet been accompanied with a legal revision of respective existing laws. In this context, the lack of a legal framework which would define the roles and responsibilities of the local and government structures, makes things more difficult. Even though there is a financial instrument in place such as Regional Development Fund to eliminate disparities between regions, it is often object of mutual debate of the government and opposition because of the way of funding the projects. This paper tries to review the role of central and local/regional government in Albania with regards to regional development. Firstly, I will present the context of legal and institutional framework of the local and central government. Afterwards, I will try to explain the policy and financial framework of the regional development in Albania. In conclusion, Albania has to define by law the role and responsibilities of its bodies in local and regional levels. The new strategy on regional development should be more integrated with other sector and crosscutting strategies. Also development of capacity building of local and central government in the area of regional development is a key issue, follow the European integration process. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s2p49

Marx’s distinction between socialism and communism

Marx’s distinction between socialism and communism is the subject of this study. Even though socialism and communism terms existed before Marx, they are generally remembered with Marx. From his perspective, socialism and communism was comprehensively handled and compared in the paper. Since it is essential to talk about it while discussing the distinction between socialism and communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat that is a political transition period is also explained in this study. Communism has two phases. The first or lower phase of communism is called as socialism that is the phase between capitalism and communism. The second or higher phase of communism is the perfect stage. There is no inequality or injustice in this stage. Communist society is classless society where products are delivered according to individuals needs. Implications were discussed in the work. Without three of the all sources, only Marx’s own works were used during the examination of socialism and communism.

‘Only one noble topic remained: the workers.’ Sympathy, subtlety and subversion in East German documentary films

That the workers and working life should have been a regular topic of representation in East German film, documentary film in particular, is no surprise given the significance of the worker in the state's self-understanding as the ‘first socialist state on German soil’. This article considers the role of the worker in East German film before focusing on those directors whose representations of workers either directly challenged or subtly undermined the state's preferred presentation. While many films used the worker in order to legitimise the state as the dictatorship of the proletariat and to promote a worker's consciousness in the German Democratic Republic, some filmmakers were more interested in de-anonymising their subjects, looking past the working environment to portray the worker as an individual, not an ideologically coded figure. The article looks in particular at a selection of films made by Jürgen Böttcher, including Drei von vielen/Three of Many (1960), Stars (1963) and Rangierer/Shunters (1981), and argues that some of Böttcher's portraits are simultaneously sympathetic and subversive, looking at both form (audiovisual composition) and content (in particular his focus on leisure, on individualism). Finally, I argue that the later films demonstrate the politics of silence and reflect on the implications of abandoning both voiceover and minimising dialogue.

Zhang Chunqiao and the Politics of the 1975 People’s Republic of China Constitution

Existing studies about the 1975 constitution in the English literature, mostly conducted shortly after its announcement, are primarily interested in how the document differs from the constitutions of 1954 and 1978. The current study is instead primarily interested in the dynamics and process of drafting the 1975 constitution. Although the document reflects the radicalism of the Cultural Revolution, it was also the result of political compromise. The roles of Mao and the party, the concept of “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and the belief in communist internationalism were all toned down because of the preceding events that occurred. The fate of the 1975 People’s Republic of China constitution was closely linked to Zhang Chunqiao, the key person in charge of drafting the document. Although many of Zhang’s ideas as reflected in the 1975 constitution were communistic, the way that the politics was conducted then was not. Unlike the more commonly used method of textual analysis from a comparative perspective, this study used materials that emerged after the Cultural Revolution to document the dynamics of drafting the constitution.

Why a radical geography must be anarchist

Radical geographers have been preoccupied with Marxism for four decades, largely ignoring an earlier anarchist tradition that thrived a century before radical geography was claimed as Marxist in the 1970s. When anarchism is considered, it is misused as a synonym for violence or derided as a utopian project. Yet it is incorrect to assume anarchism as a project, which instead reflects Marxian thought. Anarchism is more appropriately considered a protean process that perpetually unfolds through the insurrectionary geographies of the everyday and the prefigurative politics of direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary association. Unlike Marxism’s stages of history and revolutionary imperative, which imply an end state, anarchism appreciates the dynamism of the social world. In staking a renewed anarchist claim for radical geography, I attend to the divisions between Marxism and anarchism as two alternative socialisms, wherein the former positions equality alongside an ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism, while the latter maximizes egalitarianism and individual liberty by considering them as mutually reinforcing. Radical geographers would do well to reengage anarchism as there is a vitality to this philosophy that is missing from Marxian analyses that continue to rehash ideas—such as vanguardism and a proletarian dictatorship—that are long past their expiration date.

Czy prawo Polski Ludowej było prawem słusznym?

The article discusses the issue of equitability of the law of the People’s Republic of Poland. The author bases the theory of equitable law on the following values: truth, good, justice and human dignity. Equity, thus understood, pertains to the processes of both making and applying law. The article defines the above-mentioned values. It adopts the basic classical understanding of truth as the adequation of intellect to things (veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei). Creating norms involves the truth about the reality, including the truth of the existential dimension of the human being that is to be (should be) the starting point for making equitable law. Good is understood as the good in the moral sense as the good of man and the common good. Justice is understood in the classical sense, i.e. it is about ‘rendering every man his due’ (ius suum cuique tribuendi). The dignity of man as one of the values constituting equity is understood as inherent (innate) inalienable and indestructible, i.e. the individual dignity. It is the basis of human rights. It is the basis and source of all human rights and their protection. The study undertaken indicates that the law of the Polish People’s Republic flagrantly violated each of the values that make up equity. Thus, it was not equitable law. In particular, the law was based on the reductionist concept of man (anthropological error), was of class character (the dictatorship of the proletariat, or actually the Marxist-Leninist party), and violated the common good and the good of man. Individual dignity (innate and inviolable) was negated (was not a legal category), the source of freedom and rights was the will of the authority (man did not have own rights – he only had as many rights as granted by the authority). It majorly violated justice, one manifestation of which was the political class character of the judiciary. Moreover, law was treated instrumentally. There was a discrepancy between the content of law and the practical application of norms (the divergence of the normative and the actual reality).

„Unicestwienie pasożyta-państwa”. Historyczno-prawna analiza ustroju Komuny Paryskiej z 1871 r.

This article contains the analysis of the regime of The Paris Commune of 1871 that is divided in two parts. The first part deals with the regime of the Commune in stricte legal way. The second one is about the influence of the Commune in creating the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat. Regime of The Paris Commune was a very interesting example of rupture with the separation of powers. The main thesis of the paper is that the Marxists used only selected elements of the legacy of the Commune to justify their idea of totalitarian state known as a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Paris Commune was the fourth big French revolution (the last one of the 19th century) and had a positive impact on the later forms of the French state.

The Marxist Theory of the State and National Identity

Nation-state identity has become a focus of theoretical discussion in academia home and abroad in recent years. Under the new historical conditions, the study of national identity should take the Marxist theory of the state as its theoretical basis and stick to the Marxist view of class and class analysis so as to properly understand, guide and enhance national identity. The Marxist theory of the state has analyzed in a scientific way the origin, nature, development, succession and decay of the state, and the innovative and transitional nature of the proletarian state. We should not stop at the level of “national identity in general,” but should instead use the Marxist view of class to look at and analyze specific people’s identification with specific states. As far as the developed capitalist states are concerned, the bourgeoisie and the working class differ dramatically in their views, attitudes, emotions and beliefs toward their state. When it comes to China that is still at the primary stage of socialism, national identity needs to be studied in depth and guided in a correct way, especially under the condition of reform and opening-up. The main subjects of national identity should get optimized at all levels.Meanwhile, measures should be taken to enhance conscious awareness of and cultivate right attitudes toward national identity.

Love, Erotic Art and the Moral in the Albanian Socialist Realism

During the centuries, the concept of eros has been modified and alongside this transformation was modified also the relationship it has with the art, but whereas in the world art, during each historical period, the examples of erotic art are multiple, in our native tradition, for the major part of it, this art remains in the limits of a taboo, both visually and spiritually. In Enver Hoxha’s Albania, the campaign for the “deportation” of old customs waged war to the format of patriarchal family and together with it, it waged war also to its conception. Similar to a massive propaganda campaign synchronized between all the media, the state chose to promote the youth’s love, as a promoter of the new man’s spirit, who at his basis would build the new family, the structure foundation of the socialist society. But in the socialist style love, certainly there was no place for the “supplementary” elements: eros and sensuality. As for the nature of the proletarian dictatorship itself, they remained foreign elements, because the state’s mission was the elevation of the new man who would put himself in the service of the ideological cause. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n3p613

Jose Yglesias: el cronista / dramaturgo de Ybor City (Tampa)

The literary legacy of Jose Yglesias (1919-1995) consists of eight novels, four nonfiction books, four plays, and a great number of essays, short stories, journalistic and academic articles, reviews, and translations. He was born in West Tampa and grew up in Ybor City. In 1937 he moved to New York City where he spent the rest of his life, which did not prevent him from being considered by his peers “the most important writer yet produced by Tampa.” We are concentrating here on his trilogy of plays based on his family and their cigarmaker neighborhood of Ybor City: Chattahooche , which takes place in 1912; The Dictatorship of the Proletariat , in 1920, after the Russian Revolution took place (hence its title); and You Don’t Remember? during the protagonic character / author’s last visit to his hometown in December, 1978. All his work, including his plays, was geared to make “American readers aware of Ybor City and its Latin cigarmakers,” seen from the point of view of the workers themselves, an insight he thought was missing from most fiction and theatre writing.

Jorge Amado:

Because exile, unlike nationalism, is fundamentally a discontinuous state of being. Exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, their past. They generally do not have armies or states, although they are often in search of them. Exiles feel, therefore, an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives, usually by choosing to see themselves as part of a triumphant ideology or a restored people.

VIOLENCIA POLÍTICA EN SINALOA: EL CASO DE LOS “ENFERMOS” 1972-1978 (LOS LUGARES Y MEDIOS PARA LA RADICALIZACIÓN)

El presente artículo analiza los espacios tales como los Comités de Lucha, Casas del Estudiante Universitario como lugares de sociabilidad estudiantil donde se gestó la radicalidad y legitimación del uso de la violencia como estrategia parala toma del poder en México por parte de un grupo estudiantil de la Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa denominados como “Enfermos”. Asimismo, se estudian las producciones textuales, periódicos, volantes, poesía o las prácticas de lecturaque en estos ámbitos de despliegue de dinámicas relacionales se llevaron a cabo como parte de un conjunto de estrategias empleadas para promover una educación política que concientizara a sus miembros en la necesidad de tomarlas armas contra el Estado Mexicano, destruirlo e instaurar la dictadura del proletariado. Este proceso de politización adquirido previo a la movilización y el combate armado les dio un cariz especial a los “estudiantes revolucionarios” en la entidad sinaloense, ubicada en el noroeste mexicano entre los años de 1972 a 1978. Se trabaja con la metodología de la historia política y cultural sustentado en fuentes primarias, orales y bibliográficas.

Historical Development of Penitentiary Legislation in Albania

This paper presents and analyzes the historical development of penitentiary legislation in Albania during the communist dictatorship and the period after the establishment of political pluralism and the victory of democracy in Albania. During the communist dictatorship from 1944–1991, the legal regulation of the system of imprisonment for crimes committed was defective, and this led to arbitrary and abusive conduct on the part of the authorities. Where there was regulation it was largely politicized and ideologized and was therefore a powerful weapon in the hands of the proletarian dictatorship. Also, during this time and up to the advance to democracy in Albania, a large number of prisons and labour camps were operated whose inmates were predominantly political prisoners. In the period after the establishment of political pluralism and the advent in 1991 of Albania's fragile democracy until today, a considerable number of legal acts governing incarceration as a punishment have been approved. Also several conventions and other international acts in the field of fundamental freedoms and human rights, including rights of convicted persons have been ratified. But despite some tangible results this legislation has not led to acceptable penitentiary practices.

The Fatal Politics of the PRC's Great Leap Famine: the preface to Tombstone

What follows is the Preface to Tombstone (), Yang Jisheng's two-volume investigative study of China's Great Famine that claimed some 36 million lives in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The book was published in Hong Kong in 2008 and was banned on the mainland. The death toll was unprecedented and remains unmatched in Chinese or world history. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has tried to cover up the terrible reality by classifying key information as secret and placing the blame elsewhere, as in the euphemism ‘the three years of natural disaster’. Yang Jisheng, an economist, journalist and Xinhua editor, has devoted more than two decades of his life to collecting data from official archives and interviewing survivors, witnesses and officials. The result is a thorough and powerful account of extraordinary inhumanity and magnificent courage that rivals Alexander Solzhenitsyn's study of the Soviet Gulag and Robert Conquest's history of Stalin's collectivization famine. Tombstone covers both diverse localities and the power center in Beijing to explain the dynamics of the catastrophe caused by CCP policies and practices under the leadership of Mao Zedong. Chief among these policies were the state monopoly of purchasing and marketing grain, the power of officials to seize grain from people's homes, compulsory collective mess halls that ‘imposed the dictatorship of the proletariat on every individual stomach’, and a full-scale collectivization that left villagers no means of saving themselves. Despite receiving reports of widespread famine and cannibalism, Mao touted alleged successes and attacked those who spoke the truth as counter-revolutionaries, thereby prolonging and intensifying the famine for another two years. On this basis Yang places the ultimate responsibility for 36 million deaths on China's political system. Tombstone is a monumental work that is also intended as a monument to Yang's own father (whose death by starvation is described in heartrending detail below) and to all the other 36 million innocent victims. At personal risk, Yang is trying to end ‘an amnesia imposed by those in power’. In the process he sheds unprecedented light on how a political system presented to the Chinese people as a ‘Road to Paradise’ instead turned into a ‘Road to Perdition’. Yang has condensed and updated the Chinese-language manuscript for foreign-language publication. The following Preface is part of an English translation currently in progress.

21st-Century Socialism and the Four Components of Sustainability

Socialism's survival strategy for the 21st century must place the highest priority on achieving sustainability. Sustainable socialism has four aspects: political, economic, cultural, and environmental. The characteristics of the four components are defined and the relationship between socialism and sustainability is explored. It is argued that five successful policies should be followed to achieve sustainable socialism. Threats to the five successful policies, and how to deal with them, are discussed. The relationship between sustainable socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat is also explored. Since the concept of the four components of sustainability complements Marx's enumeration of the Four Alls, it is clear that sustainable socialism and proletarian dictatorship are compatible. Sustainable socialism must be constructed on the basis of proletarian democracy guided by a communist party that works diligently to preserve the socialist orientation of development while resisting calls for the adoption of bourgeois democracy and private capitalism.

Behind the Red Curtain: Environmental Concerns and the End of Communism

Twenty years ago, the edifice of Communism collapsed constructed over the preceding three-quarters of a century from Berlin to Vladivostok and from Murmansk to Addis Ababa. Suddenly, between 1989 and 1991, all of the Communist states in Europe collapsed, as well as some Communist states in Asia and Africa, while most of the surviving Communist states largely abandoned Communist economic systems. While the crumbling edifice still hangs on, at least in vestigial forms, in some parts of the world, the collapse of the wall serves as an apt metaphor for the destruction of that edifice. The two years between 1989 and 1991 saw the long-cherished Communist dream fulfilled — a proletarian workers’ revolt that spread from country to country to topple an exploitive economic and political system, ironically directed at the world’s Communist governments rather than their opponents. Various explanations have been advanced for these events. The most common theme, in both scholarly and popular accounts, is the growing yearning for democracy and human rights, as well as the desire for higher standards of living. Yet these various explanations seem to leave hanging the question of why then, given the persistent failure of earlier efforts to liberalize or overthrow Communist regimes. Something had to crystallize the sentiment that the regimes not only had to go but could be overthrown. In many of these countries, the something more turned out to be the environment. Communism had a dismal record on the environment. By 1989, sulfurous skies were killing people across the Soviet bloc. Immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation classified one-sixth of its territory as uninhabitable because of pollution — yet the inhabitants had nowhere to go. Rivers were poisoned beyond anything found in western countries. The Aral Sea, in Central Asia, had become the prime example of “ecocide.” Communism performed so conspicuously poorly regarding the environment for six reasons. First, Marxism carried forward the western tradition of treating nature solely as providing resources for human consumption, particularly as expressed in the “labor theory of value.” A second feature of Marxism reinforced the effect of the labor theory of value — its denial of individual responsibility — leading to reckless disregard of environmental consequences. Thirdly, the socialist goal of “transforming the world” led easily to “gigantomania” — a desire for the largest and most grandiose technological feats. Gigantomania is also found in western countries, but structural features of Communism prevented effective counter-pressure that, at least sometimes, stopped some of the most substantial excesses in the west. This introduces a fourth factor — structural features rooted in Marxist ideology and the conspiratorial nature of Communism’s rise to power — that are perhaps the most important. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” brooked no countervailing power centers. The Communist obsession with secrecy often kept problems hidden from both the public and the central authorities until catastrophe made the problem obvious to all. Fifth, the determination to keep environmental problems secret was reinforced by the belief that such problems could not arise under Communism, which, after all, represented the most progressive ordering of society and the economy; to admit to environmental failings was to admit that Communism had failed in at least one important respect. Finally, there was the importance of “fulfilling the plan.” Success and promotion for officials — and all major economic decisions were made by officials — came only from fulfilling the plan, which generally was measured solely through quantitative achievements, resulting in pervasive poor quality production. New construction is what the plan called for, not maintenance, while cost, in any rational sense, simply was not a factor.

Democracy and The New Haggadah

Democracy and The New Haggadah* Deborah Dash Moore (bio) On Friday, February 16, 1940, Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, American philosopher and founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, confided to his diary: “Utilizing in part Sun Yat Sen’s words in his famous will, I would say: Our one end in view should be the elevation of the Jewish people to a place of freedom and equality among the nations.” Kaplan’s comparison of the Jewish people with the nations of the world avoided any mention of states, the predominant political form adopted by nations in 1940. As he continued to contemplate Sun Yat Sen’s political testament first articulated in a 1923 speech as “Three Principles of the People,” Kaplan moved deftly from questions of power toward religious aims. “To attain this goal” of freedom and equality, he wrote, “we must bring about a thorough awakening of our own people and ally ourselves in a common struggle with all individuals and groups that labor to bring self-determination and self-fulfillment within reach of all human beings.”1 Kaplan’s reflection on the famous Chinese nationalist leader’s ideas occurred at a moment when Nazis were rounding up Jews in Poland and forcing them into ghettos. The Nazi assault on Jews had just begun (the German conquest of western Europe would not start until the spring), but Kaplan was well aware of Nazism’s identification of democracy as a degenerate political form with Jews as a degenerate race. At this vulnerable moment for Jews, Kaplan pondered the importance of allies in a struggle for self-determination and self-fulfillment—the first a national political goal and the second an individual religious one—for all men and women. While his political consciousness remained firmly wedded to his religious commitment, Kaplan was no parochial Jewish thinker. He was always willing to seek inspiration from diverse non-Jewish sources and to adapt ideas to fulfill his goals of reviving Judaism and the Jewish people in the modern world. [End Page 323] On that cold February day, Kaplan continued to mull over Sun Yat Sen’s goals: “I would even adopt his ‘three Principles of the People’ as applying to us,” Kaplan wrote. Nationhood, Democracy, and Livelihood all addressed Jews as well as Chinese. “Nationhood calls for the establishment of a center in Palestine where Jews can live entirely by their own civilization and the fostering of Judaism as a secondary civilization in countries where they constitute minorities.”2 Kaplan succinctly summarized both his interpretation of Zionism and his program of Judaism as a civilization. More than a religion, Judaism involved all aspects of human culture, including, of course, politics. Nationhood, an aspect of Jewish civilization, embraced political dimensions of self-governance, although Kaplan avoided language linking nation and state, in part because of the havoc European nation states were wreaking on Jews.3 As a spiritual Zionist who was opposed to what historian Noam Pianko has called “the sovereign mold,” Kaplan championed the establishment a Jewish national home, not a Jewish state, in the land of Israel, where Jews would be a majority free to shape their own culture.4 Where Jews lived as minorities, as Kaplan anticipated they would continue to do, they perforce had to participate in two civilizations, the majority non- Jewish one as well as their own Jewish one. In the United States, Jews were fortunate to live in a democratic society.5 “Democracy,” Kaplan wrote, “calls for the application of the ideals of freedom, justice and peace in all human relationships from those of the family to those between nations.”6 This was a tall order in 1940. Not only did Germany’s Nazi Reich and Italy’s fascist government malign democracy as a political system and social ideal, but Stalin’s dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union also derogated democratic values as bourgeois and antirevolutionary. Kaplan, however, sought to identify Jews with democracy because he understood it as a moral ordering of [End Page 324] human relations as well as a political system. He aimed, in addition, to “make space for minority national groups” within American democracy.7 Kaplan also adopted Livelihood, Sun-Yat Sen’s third...

Must the Communist Hypothesis Be Abandoned?

Must the Communist Hypothesis Be Abandoned? Alain Badiou (bio) My beginning will be a provocative conviction: concerning the becoming of Humanity, communism is the right hypothesis. In fact, there is no other; in any case, I know no other. Whoever abandons this hypothesis must immediately be resigned to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy (which is the form of State appropriate to capitalism), and to the inevitable, 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities. What does 'communism' mean? As Marx argues in the Manuscripts of 1844, communism is an idea related to the destiny of generic humanity. We must absolutely distinguish this use of the word, from the sense of the adjective 'communist' in expressions such as communist parties,' 'the communist world,' the communist camp and so on. Even if, as we shall see, these uses of the word are part of the step by step historical development of the hypothesis. In its generic sense, 'communist' first signifies negatively, as we can see in the canonic text, Manifesto of the Communist Party. It signifies that the logic of classes, of the fundamental subordination of real workers to a dominating class, can be surmounted. This structure, which is that of History since Antiquity, is not inevitable. [End Page 79] Consequently, the oligarchic power, crystallized in the power of States, of those who detain the wealth and organize its circulation, is not ineluctable. The communist hypothesis is that another collective organization can work, which will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of work: each and every one will be a "polyvalent worker." In particular, people will circulate between manual work and intellectual work, as well as between the city and the country. The private appropriation of monstrous fortunes and their transmission within families by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive State apparatus protected by the military and the police, separate from civil society, will no longer appear to be an obvious necessity. There will be, Marx tells us, considering this point as his major contribution, after a brief sequence of a "proletarian dictatorship," charged with destroying what remains of the old world, a long sequence of reorganization on the basis of the "free association" of producers and creators, which will support a "decline of the State." 'Communism' only designates this very general set of intellectual representations. This set is the horizon for any initiative, as local and limited in time as it may be, which, breaking with the order of established opinions (or the necessity of inequalities and a state instrument for their protection), composes a fragment of a politics of emancipation. It is, in short, an Idea whose function is regulatory and not a program. It is absurd to qualify the communist principles (in the sense I have just given) as a utopia, as is often done. They are intellectual schemes, always practiced in different ways. They serve to produce, between different politics, lines of demarcation. Overall, for a given political sequence, it is either compatible with these principles, and is emancipating in the wide sense, or else it is opposed to them and it is reactionary. 'Communism' is, in this sense, a heuristic hypothesis frequently used in polemics, even if the word does not appear. Maybe you know this violent sentence of Sartre, in the fifties of the last century: "any anticommunist is a dog." If we correctly read this sentence, it's true. For any political sequence that, in its principles or its [End Page 80] absence of any principle, appears formally contradictory with the communist hypothesis in its generic sense, must be judged as opposed to the emancipation of the whole of humanity. And so it's opposed to the properly human destiny of humanity. Whoever does not enlighten the development of humanity by the communist hypothesis reduces it, for what concerns its collective development, to animality. As we know, the contemporary, that is to say, capitalist, name of this animality, is 'competition.' That is to say, it's the war of interests and nothing else. But the war of interests is the infra-human part of Humanity. As pure Idea of equality, the communist hypothesis has existed in practice probably since the...