Revolutionary Ideology Research Articles

"To Raise Them to an Equal Participation": Early National Abolitionism, Gradual Emancipation, and the Promise of African American Citizenship

The first organized abolition movement in America championed black citizenship and incorporation into the greater body politic instead of colonization or exclusion from the civic sphere of the fledgling nation. The same natural rights Revolutionary ideology that made American antislavery possible also presented slaves themselves as the very antithesis of the independent, virtuous citizenry necessary to uphold representative government and maintain the new nation's experiment in republicanism; therefore making abolition itself a problematic process. Out of their quest to solve this paradox, early national abolition society members advocated gradual emancipation coupled with a program of free black uplift based on the tenets of environmentalism and the diffusion of republican educational mores. Through these reformist initiatives, abolition societies sought to prove black capacity for freedom by gradually integrating African Americans into the American republic and making them virtuous and independent citizens, fully capable of productively exercising their liberty within greater white society. Predicated on an enlightenment idealism that viewed white prejudices towards blacks as conquerable, antislavery societies believed that their abolitionist program would disprove a principle argument against slave emancipation: African Americans' alleged incapacity for freedom. Thus for early national antislavery activists the movement to abolish slavery and the cultivation of African American citizenship were inextricably interwoven. Although abolition societies of this period ultimately failed in overturning white prejudice and integrating former slaves into American society as equal citizens, they did establish several guiding principles of antislavery reform that later abolitionists would inherit long after Northern emancipation was achieved.

Revolution and Reform: the role of ideology and hegemony in Chinese politics

This paper aims to further an understanding of Chinese politics through a focus on ideology and hegemony. Drawing on the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Henri Lefebvre, the paper examines the nature of ideological domination held by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and generates three implications. First, Gramsci's theory of hegemony can be applied more broadly to build a socialist regime, particularly in China where the party of the proletariat and its allies have been in a quandary over how to consolidate its ruling position after capturing political power. Second, the party needs to incorporate mass consciousness into the battlefield of politics so as to attain or maintain its hegemony. Third, the ideologies of revolution and reform are formulated to embed the CCP's beliefs into people's consciousness and to acquire consensus which is essential for the CCP's hegemony in China.

Los desafíos de la libertad: Transformación y crisis del liberalismo en Europa y América Latina

Writing in the 1930s, the Mexican philosopher Antonio Caso lamented the fact that individual rights, as the hallmark of the French Revolution, were being discarded in favor of increased state power. At the same time, Jorge Cuesta, in an attempt to vindicate Mexican constitutionalism, insisted that wherever antiliberalism dominated, one could observe an intellectual divorce between politics and high culture. Both figures, discussed by José Antonio Aguilar Rivera in a chapter on Mexican liberals, were emblematic of the time, as they attempted to propagate the values of liberalism while rejecting the excesses of democracy and distancing themselves from the more radical ideas of men such as Lázaro Cárdenas. As Mark Mazower stresses in The Dark Continent, the liberal politician was assaulted with revolutionary ideologies and the tactics of mass mobilization from both the Left and the Right in interwar Europe. Mazower argues that “Liberalism seemed too individualistic to cope with the demands of a more collectivist age” as new political programs arose which provided legitimate alternatives to nineteenth-century paradigms of constitutional governance. The edited collection Los desafíos de la libertad pushes forward similar claims, engaging with the multiple challenges faced by a generation of European and Latin American liberals from the turn of the century through the 1930s.Predominantly political in scope, the text offers exegesis of political theory and national historiographies as well as structural analysis of a wide range of countries from Italy and Portugal to Argentina and Mexico. The transformation of the state, the economy, and education, especially as witnessed by the foremost intellectuals of the epoch, occupies the majority of the 17 chapters. The editors begin by emphasizing that comparative historians, in moving away from insular national studies, have shown that fundamentally analogous processes of political development shaped fin-de-siècle Europe as well as Latin America. Thus nineteenth-century liberals’ distrust of the people vis-à-vis politics — what José Ortega y Gasset subsequently disparaged as the “rebellion of the masses” — frames much of this work. Even the novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, according to Scheherezade Pinilla Cañadas in the penultimate chapter, portrayed the people as an enigma, capable of horrible extremes. With the rise of social science and positivism, conservative liberals began to break with more radical interpretations of popular sovereignty as enshrined in the Constitution of 1812 in Spain or that of 1822 in Portugal. They embraced the notion that governance in an age of increasing specialization and bureaucratization must be the concern of a class of educated elites. Yet this was not a monolithic movement; a number of the contributors, including Dario Roldán and Rui Ramos, emphasize the plurality of liberalisms that appeared throughout the course of the nineteenth century, with influences ranging from Benthamite utilitarianism to the philosophies of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville.While the first two chapters take a broadly comparative approach, more might have been done to draw out the connections between the national case studies that follow. For example, the authors that cover Italy, Portugal, and Chile note that liberalism has been considered a failure, because weak state institutions inhibited a successful transition to democracy in the first third of the twentieth century. This is precisely the argument that has dominated the literature on nineteenth-century Spain, yet it is not mentioned by way of comparison. Furthermore, liberals in Spain as well as Portugal manipulated elections by relying on corrupt local bosses (caciques) and excluding mass-based political parties. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal, the political balance of power rotated between conservative and progressive liberal parties with the complicity of the monarchy. However, these fraudulent systems, known as trasformismo in Italy, rotativismo in Portugal, and the turno pacífico in Spain, are not compared explicitly until chapter 12; earlier in the book, they are discussed separately by Renato Camurri, Ramos, and Javier Moreno Luzón. Because some authors focus on specific nations while others compare and contrast, facts and figures are repeated in many of the chapters.In reassessing George Dangerfield and the decline of liberalism in England, María Jesús González Hernández hints at the blasé attitudes Europeans exhibited toward their empires. Dangerfield famously claimed that the English, always in favor of peace, preferred their wars to be fought as far away as possible and in the name of God (he also was a misogynist). Yet no chapters are devoted to women or to discourses on gender and imperialism as corollaries to liberal thought. In order to recover different histories of liberalism, scholars such as James Dunkerley and Florencia Mallon suggest building upon an expanded theoretical framework and decentering high politics. Methodologically focused on the state, this volume nonetheless makes the case that historians should embrace a transnational perspective, just as their cosmopolitan intellectual forebears did in the midst of the manifold crises of the early twentieth century.

The Phenomenon of the French NewWave. Technology or Ideology?

The article is devoted to the history of the French New Wave. The author tries to find out its sources and comes to the conclusion that it is impossible explain this phenomenon of French film art of the late 1950s-early 1960s by either technological or ideological revolution alone.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CUBA, 1959-62: THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES

The Catholic Church in Cuba faced unique challenges from 1959 through 1962 during the Cuban Revolution. This article examines the social and political roles of the Catholic Episcopal hierarchy and Catholic lay organisations during the Batista regime and the first months of the Cuban Revolution. The Church unsuccessfully attempted to compete with the revolutionary ideology through the use of religious and cultural symbolism, processions, mass meetings and pastoral circulars. The Cuban case served as a benchmark and a warning for the Catholic Church in other nations. The lesson of the Cuban Catholic Church's ambivalence and eventual fate under the Revolutionary regime was not lost on the Vatican hierarchy. What began as a call for an ecumenical council under Pope John XXIII, was transformed into a major shift of paradigms for the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council in the light of the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Le Neoliberalisme a L’Epreuve de la Crise des Subprimes

The aim of this article is to analyse the ideological impact of the current financial and economic crisis upon the neoliberal values which predominate since the end of the 70s. The specificity of this economic crisis leads to a process of questioning on these values. This is far from being insignificant because cultural hegemony is reached when value judgements transform into assertions perceived as unquestionable, universal and natural. Up to now, there is no such a thing as an ideological revolution because all the economic interventions are justified on the ground of pragmatism. But at least, the current crisis allows the fundamental assertions of neoliberalism to come back to their value judgment status. Another important consequence of the crisis is that alternative value judgements also gain in legitimacy and audience. These conclusions are reached through an analysis of the various interventions actually implemented by governments and central banks and through the presentation of a selection of representative alternative visions of the current financial capitalist order.

La política de Guerreiro Ramos: nacionalismo, revolución y socialismo en el debate brasileño de la década de los sesentas

Este artículo tiene como objetivo rescatar el debate sobre la revolución brasileña teniendo como foco principal la crítica de Guerreiro Ramos al Partido Comunista Brasileño (PCB) y a la ideología marxista-leninista. Según Guerreiro, el PCB era una organización "alienada" y eso comprometía la constitución de un proceso revolucionario con bases nacionales. El artículo se divide en dos secciones: la primera trata de la ideología populista nacionalista revolucionaria de gran influencia en los países del Tercer Mundo, y que tuvo en Guerreiro Ramos una de sus principales expresiones en el pensamiento brasileño; la segunda sección aborda el análisis crítico de Guerreiro Ramos al programa ideológico revolucionario del PCB y su defensa del socialismo tercer mundista.

Whither Shi'ite Islam? Authenticating a Shi'ite Future based on Reading the Islamic Past

The Iranian Revolution is regarded as a major watershed in the post-World War II history of the Middle East, a transformative event which altered the rhythms of daily life and catapulted religious leaders to an unprecedented political position. Naturally, the revolution has been the subject of intense scrutiny of both academic and non-academic nature. Scholarly works on the subject tend to focus on a particular theme or period of modern Iranian history, rather then situate the Shiʿite revival generated by the revolution in the broader context of Islamic history. This article examines the early Islamic period's impact on the rise of Shʿisim, a period which defined the relationship between the Shiʿites and their Sunni rivals, and later affected Iran's revolutionary ideology and contemporary Shiʿite political thought.

After Khomeini: Iran under his successors

Introduction 1. Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution 2. Dual Leadership and Constitutional Developments after Khomeini 3. Thermidor at Last: Hashemi-Rajsanjani's Presidency and the Economy 4. Revolutionary Ideology and Its Transformation into Islamic Reformism 5. The Rise and Fall of President Khatami and the Reform Movement 6. Social and Political Consequences of the Integrative Revolution 7. Iran's Foreign Policy from the Export of Revolution to Pragmatism 8. Iran's New Political Class and the Ahmadinejad Presidency 9. Khomeini's Successor: Ayatollah Khamenei as the Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran 10. The Hardliners, Foreign Policy and Nuclear Development Conclusion Appendix: Two Models of Revolution Notes References Index

Rafael María de Labra and Ramón Labra: Two Generations of Revolution and Liberal Reform in Spain and Cuba

Rafael María de Labra (Havana 1841–Madrid 1918) was instrumental in the founding and eventual success of the parliamentary campaign to abolish slavery in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico (1873) and Cuba (1886). To what extent were his public politics and practices, his moral values, shaped by personal experiences and clan or family loyalties? As will become evident, the influence of his father, Ramón Labra, a military officer, was paramount in his intellectual formation. This is turn poses the question of whether a cross-generational case study might be paradigmatic of the transmission of liberal thought in nineteenth-century Spain. In The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling writes: 'As for the origin of ideas, we ought to remember that an idea is the formulation of a response to a situation'. With this insight in mind, this article focuses on the intellectual and political legacy of the Revolution of 1808, the crisis which prompted an astonishing collective response and a revolutionary ideology.

Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory

Third-generation theories of revolution pointed to the structural vulnerabilities of regimes as the basic causes of revolutions. In the last decade, critics of structural theories have argued for the need to incorporate leadership, ideology, and processes of identification with revolutionary movements as key elements in the production of revolution. Analyses of revolutions in developing countries and in communist regimes have further argued for incorporating these factors and for the inadequacy of structural theories to account for these events. Rather than try to develop a list of the “causes” of revolutions, it may be more fruitful for the fourth generation of revolutionary theory to treat revolutions as emergent phenomena, and to start by focusing on factors that cement regime stability. Weakness in those factors then opens the way for revolutionary leadership, ideology, and identification, along with structural factors such as international pressure and elite conflicts, to create revolutions.

A Conduct Incompatible with Their Character: Patriots, Loyalists, & Spies: Espionage in the American Revolution and the Underlying Social & Ideological Revolution in the American Colonies

The American Revolution was a precarious and uncertain period in American history in which loyalties were tried, ideologies were tested, and identities shifted; the conflicted role of espionage in the American Revolution offers insight into this formative moment in the development of an American identity disparate from Britain. Espionage had a critical function in the American Revolution, both militarily and politically. Intelligence secured by spies affected the strategic outcome of the Revolutionary War and the public imagination was strongly influenced by the exposure of spies. However, experimentation in espionage during the Revolutionary War has been little examined by historians, especially in a social or ideological context. This paper will examine espionage in the context of colonial norms and conventions in order to reveal how it contributed to the underlying social and ideological revolution of the American Revolution and the emergence of a truly American identity.

Seymour Martin Lipset and political sociology1

Seymour Martin Lipset and political sociology¹

The American Archipelago

The American Archipelago Kenneth Weisbrode (bio) As any European schoolchild from the late 19th or early 20th century would have known, imperial rule had precise geographic expression. World maps were colored accordingly, the best known probably being that of the British Empire, with swathes of red stretching across Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. Political, military, and even economic authority, in other words, could be plotted visually. Maps and projections varied, of course, and the colors occasionally blurred along the margins; but the existential power of maps was indisputable. Imperial rule did not count for much unless it appeared on paper. To Americans the importance of maps presented a curious problem. The popular basis for American nationalism—not only in the United States, but throughout the Americas—was for much of the 19th century a renunciation of the “Old World” of Europe and an affirmation of a romantic conception of what had been known since the age of exploration as the “New World.” With the American revolutions, the New World obtained meaning as a political project alongside its earlier incarnations as a religious and social experiment. The New World was not only different, it was also superior; not only a refuge or sanctuary, but also, and more importantly, a source of geopolitical and ideological salvation. It was up to America, in other words, to preserve what was right, just, and powerful for the future of humankind. But this mission was less uniform or universal in practice than its rhetoric would suggest; in reality it evolved piecemeal and haphazardly over time, and came more to resemble a multicolored archipelago than a single tide. Yet there are few maps that show this vividly. The British, of course, had also once conceived of their empire as an integrated chain of islands, but this had much to do with Britain’s own place as “island Goddess” at the center of this particular constellation. By contrast, the United States, like its other larger American counterparts—notably Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico—emerged initially as a would-be continental empire, more like Russia or China than Britain. This fact makes its transformation into a global archipelago over the course of the late 19th and 20th centuries especially interesting. But, with the exception of D.W. Meinig’s four-volume history of the United States, a spatial perspective, particularly one that explores the intersection of geography and ideology, is underrepresented in the vast literature on American (here and subsequently meaning U.S.) power and influence in the world.1 It is worth revisiting. Click for larger view View full resolution “Columbia’s Easter Bonnet,” Puck, April 6, 1901. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZC4-6550]. The American power that spread globally after the Civil War could not be mapped in the traditional way. There was no color for mere influence or affinity, let alone for spiritual promise. America sought followers, adherents, and friends, but not, in principle, overseas territory. In this sense, American globalists not only promoted their vision as exceptional but also, by necessity, depicted their aims as superior to other forms of transnational penetration. In the United States the claim to superiority had long taken the dual forms of republicanism and imperialism. There was some early ambivalence, of course, over whether republicanism could apply to people besides citizens of the United States. The various views on this question, however much they borrowed from Montesquieu and other Enlightenment figures during the debates over the American Constitution, rarely challenged the desirability of republicanism itself. America had a few monarchists, but not many. Republicanism was regarded as so special, in fact, that many Americans promoted its exportation, joining with French and other ideologues in the 19th century to urge republican revolutions around the world. The movement was called Young Americanism. It came to have far more political impact at home than abroad.2 But that ought not to detract from its symbolic value as a proto-global phenomenon. The ideology of Young Americanism recognized few permanent geopolitical limitations; in theory it was applicable to any people, anywhere. Republicanism, at least in its latest American incarnation, became imperialistic. As its revolutionary ideology merged with the...

Reinventando la rivoluzione. La tradizione khomeinista e il dibattito sulla democrazia in Iran

- Over the last thirty years, a constant work of reinvention of its revolutionary tradition has allowed the Islamic Republic of Iran to survive. The porosity of the institutional system and the flexibility of its revolutionary ideology have given way to the emergence of an intellectual debate which has become increasingly concerned about the question of democracy. The historiography is divided on the features of this debate and the reasons which have lead to its development. The author argues that the origin of the democratic discourse lies neither in the appropriation of the Western Liberal model; nor in a deviation from the revolutionary ideology, but rather in an original reinterpretation of the latter. The article explores the essence and the contents of the debate, taking into account its potentials and limits.Key words: Iran, Democracy, Debate, Revolution, Reformism, Reinvention.Parole chiave: Iran, democrazia, dibattito, rivoluzione, riformismo, reinvenzione.

Invisible hands: the making of the conservative movement from the New Deal to Reagan

Starting in the mid-1930s, a handful of prominent American businessmen forged alliances with the aim of rescuing America--and their profit margins--from socialism and the nanny state. Long before the culture wars usually associated with the rise of conservative politics, these driven individuals funded think tanks, fought labor unions, and formed organizations to market their views. These nearly unknown, larger-than-life, and sometimes eccentric personalities--such as GE's zealous, silver-tongued Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and the self-described revolutionary Jasper Crane of DuPont--make for a fascinating, behind-the-scenes view of American history. The winner of a prestigious academic award for her original research on this book, Kim Phillips-Fein is already being heralded as an important new young American historian. Her meticulous research and narrative gifts reveal the dramatic story of a pragmatic, step-by-step, check-by-check campaign to promote an ideological revolution--one that ultimately helped propel conservative ideas to electoral triumph.

Between revolution and reform: The future of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia

The rise of a self-proclaimed Islamic revolutionary movement, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) is critical to the future of Islamist movements in Indonesia. The Islamic state or shari'ah ideology has been advocated since the founding of the country but never gained majority support. Far from seeking an Islamic state, most Muslims in Indonesia are integrated in the opposed democratic system with its moderating consequences. In this context, the future of HTI will provide a critical test of the viability of Islamist ideology in democratic Indonesia. This paper discusses the challenge HTI faces in maintaining its revolutionary ideology and suggests a non-revolutionary direction for HTI. Despite its constant anti-systemic discourse, evidence indicates that HTI is moving toward a path between revolution and reform or what may be called ‘refolution.’

Freedom, Ideology, and White Supremacy: A Comment on Melvin Patrick Ely's Israel on the Appomattox

This commentary focuses on the discrepancies between the use of the concepts freedom and ideology in Ely's Israel on the Appomattox. Though the slippage between the two terms is pervasive in the historiography and not limited to Ely's book, Corey Capers argues that we need a more scrupulous accounting of their historical and historiographic use. Through contrasting the deployment of both concepts in discussions of American Revolutionary discourse and practice by Ely and Bernard Bailyn (among others), Capers demonstrates how freedom and ideology function differently for free African Americans and free whites in Ely's book. For example, in Ely's discussion, revolutionary ideology motivates Richard Randolph's action to liberate his slaves, while racist ideology supporting white supremacy is presented as distinct from actual behavior. Similarly, for American revolutionaries freedom meant some form of political sovereignty (republican or popular), whereas for formerly enslaved African Americans freedom is limited to freedom from enslavement. Finally, Capers takes issue with Ely's interpretation of the impact of the capriciousness of white supremacy, arguing that such capriciousness is itself endemic to power and terror.

Louis Althusser : mai 1968 et les fluctuations de l'idéologie

Louis Althusser, May 1968 and the Fluctuations of Ideology By examining the various statements made by Louis Althusser of his position on the student movement of May 69, the article seeks to reveal the remarkably complex and theoretically apposite character of his assessment. e article thus goes against usual interpretations of this issue. In particular, it points to the interest of the concepts of revolt and of mass ideological revolution, which were introduced in his writing of the period. By demonstrating that Althusser’s analysis of the function and status of ideology in the revolts of May validates the theses which he advanced in For Marx about the notion of overdetermination, the author’s intention is to assess the role played by this paradigmatic spectrum in the overall reconstruction of the problematic of ideology which Althusser was to formulate in the famous manuscript entitled On Reproduction. e principal interest of this manuscript is that, for the first time, it establishes a rigorously materialist conception of ideology and of the concrete mode of existence of ideas.

Cobbsian Historiography Takes on the Revolutionary State

Cobbsian Historiography Takes on the Revolutionary State Julia Douthwaite Howard G. Brown , Ending the Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006). Pp. xii, 461. $45.00. Joseph Clarke , Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France: Revolution and Remembrance, 1789–1799 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Pp. x, 306. $99.00. Richard Cobb—long considered the lone wolf of revolutionary historiography—is back with a vengeance. Although Cobb passed away in 1996, his legacy continues in two recent books by Howard Brown (State University of New York, Binghamton) and Joseph Clarke (Trinity College, Dublin). Like their forebear, Clarke and Brown have spent years mining the riches of archives; and both focus systematically on le menu peuple and profess to reveal how politics touched their lives. Or, more precisely, how it accidentally battered their lives. Neither Clarke nor Brown has much patience for revolutionary enthusiasts, rather they emphasize the devastating toll the tumult took on the families and communities left in its wake. Both downplay the long-term advances wrought by the Revolution in the domains of education, jurisprudence, or human rights, and instead stress the hypocrisy and failings of the First Republic and its various post-Thermidorian successors. [End Page 468] By ending the Revolution in 1802 or 1799 instead of 1794, they demonstrate the powerful way that periodization molds history. Educators should take care to balance the harsh appraisals provided here with the more equitable assessment of the period by scholars such as James Livesey or Martyn Lyons. Although the erudition of Clarke and Brown is laudable, the bitterness expressed in these books is cause for caution. Clarke's Commemorating the Dead is a feisty tome. The topic—bereavement and memory—is of perennial human import, and the approach is promising. Focusing on the rituals, commodities, and oratory associated with the victims of the turmoil and warfare that marked the years 1789–1799, Clarke proposes to explain why those practices and objects emerged in their historical moment and what ends they served. Although his claims to originality are sometimes exaggerated—one need only conjure up John McManners's writings on funereal practices or Carol Blum on revolutionary virtue—Clarke nevertheless affects an independence of spirit that is invigorating. Emphasizing the importance of Catholicism in the lives of French people even under the Terror, Clarke refuses to believe that words like saint, martyr, or sacrilege were irrelevant or could be reinvented to serve the ends of revolutionary ideology as readily as historians such as Lynn Hunt and Mona Ozouf have claimed. Like Cobb, who famously debunked republican populism by studying the tax records of wealthy sans-culottes, Clarke has a keen eye for the telling detail. This attentiveness to the hidden meanings of words and ritual allows for some surprising interpretations, including the deconstruction of the Marat cult (185–209). Citing French sources in the original makes the claims persuasive, as demonstrated in his analysis of the artful use of pronouns tu, vous, and especially nous in Abbé Fauchet's sermons (54–86). These passages do a masterful job of revealing the mixed motives—of worshipful sorrow as well as fear and opportunism—that drew crowds to memorials, parades, and other public shows of remembrance. Commemorating has some rough patches. The introduction will raise hackles by dismissing contemporary cultural history as the work of historians who "prefer the firm and reassuringly familiar ground of ideological engagement to the shifting sands of individual emotion" (6). Clarke claims to reintroduce agency into history by eschewing the "fashionable effusions of sentimental literature" in favor of "real tears shed by real families" (6). This assertion shocks by its naive assumption that some forms of textual evidence are more "real" than others. Just as the funerary practices so beautifully described by Clarke are rooted in a specific sense of time, place, and the sacred, so the memoirs of widows and common folk he relies on to tell this story are rooted in literary genres of almanac, breviary, and saints' lives, not to mention local legend. Clarke's impatience with literature seems hard to reconcile with his dedication to nuance. But there is much to admire in Commemorating. Clarke...