Socialist Approach Research Articles

(e)Managing the uncertainty of tuberculosis in the post-Soviet limbo: Tracking prisoners' coerced mobility for treatment in Ukrainian prisons

The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered an escalation of the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic in many post-Soviet countries, including Ukraine. The main reasons for this situation include both the approach to TB care and the concentration of TB cases in prisons. The neoliberal approach to TB care system reform promises the optimization of treatment terms, "dehospitalization" and “despecialization” of the system of care, and a different type of control, established through digital technologies. One such technology is the “e-TB Manager”, which was designated as a national TB registry, including in the prison system in 2012.In prison, where everyone “is to be fixed” and isolated, the uncertainty of patients’ movements seems to be avoided by pre-existing conditions. In practice, however, the vertically aligned, centralized organizational structure of the post-Soviet prison implies a constant need to link its elements together through “coerced” mobility carried out in secrecy. Treatment in exile may not be the primary goal of such a practice, but it becomes the result when prisoners from numerous prison facilities are sent to a limited number of prison TB hospitals. The integration of the e-TB Manager as a tool to enable the tracking of patient movements and, consequently, improve the efficiency of diagnostic and treatment processes in prison, can be seen as both a purely technical measure and a “magic bullet”.In this article, we argue that, in the case of Ukrainian prisons, the neoliberal approach and the Soviet socialist approach to gaining control over TB indeed adapt and reinforce each other but fail to compete meaningfully. The fragmented implementation of one is absorbed by the fundamental and resilient nature of the other to produce and reproduce the state of “post-Soviet limbo”. We use the “post-Soviet limbo” as an overall framework aimed at conceptualizing the post-Soviet transformation as a combination of efforts to avoid and manage the uncertainty of TB treatment, especially in prison. We examine the empirical case of coerced mobility of prisoners who require TB treatment, seeking to trace how this process is reflected in the e-TB Manager. We provide a more in-depth picture of this journey with details gathered from qualitative research materials to situate numbers and variables in their contexts, deconstructing the way the data are recorded according to the logic of the system in which they are produced.

AN UNEXPECTED ALLIANCE: US POLICY REGARDING FORMATION OF THE CENTER-LEFT COALITION IN ITALY

The Cold War became a significant factor influencing not only the foreign, but also the domestic politics of Italy. The main problem of Italy as a member of NATO in the middle of the 20th century left pro-Soviet parties became popular, and the ruling Christian Democratic Party may lose power. The alliance of Christian Democrats with the Socialists became an unexpected means of solving the current problems, and the US, by supporting this alliance, demonstrated the ability to be flexible in conducting foreign policy towards its allies. The main thesis of the article is that such unexpected alliance between the Christian Democracy Party and the Socialist Party was not an improvised action, but a long-term strategy. The formation of the first center-left government in First Republic of Italy is referred to 1962. However, the idea of such alliance had emerged a few years before, in 1958, and it was discussed between Italian and American governments on numerous occasions. The main shift towards an adoption of coalition between Christian Democrats and Socialists was the failure of Fernando Tambroni’s government in 1960, the last government with the center-right and far-right parties at the power. From this moment for many, and for U.S. government as well, become evident the impossibility of sticking to the old strictly anti-left policy. The Socialist Party itself had gone through a long evolution process. Being a pro-Soviet party immediately after the WW2, it later cut off its ties to the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Italy, and even rejected revolution as the way to reform society, preferring the long way of step-by-step changes. A new Socialist approach to the parliamentary democracy allowed it to become a part of ruling coalition soon after the inner reforms of the Socialist Party. It was hard to imagine in the beginning of the Cold War that the U.S. government would ever seek the support from the Socialist Party of Italy. But in the beginning of 1960’s, considering the changes in electoral preferences, the question of Italian Socialists become the focal point in the U.S. policy towards the Italy.

‘Left-Kantianism’ and the ‘Scientific Dispute’ between Rudolf Stammler and Hermann Cohen

Abstract This paper argues that the ‘scientific dispute’ between Hermann Cohen and Rudolf Stammler is symptomatic of a philosophical movement of left-wing Kant interpretations at the turn of the twentieth century. By outlining influential predecessors that shaped Cohen’s and Stammler’s thinking, I show that their Kantian justifications of socialism differ regarding their conception of law, history, and the political implications that follow from their practical philosophies. Against scholars who suggest that the Marburg School’s view on socialism was a coherent school of thought, I introduce the concept of ‘left-Kantianism’ as an open term that includes a wide variety of novel socialist approaches to Kant at the time.

Feminism in India: Then and Now

Since Women Are Taught To Depend On Males Exclusively And Are Partnered With The State In Addressing Needs, Feminists Have A Particular Critique Of Social Security And State-Run Programmes. There Are Two Fundamental Principles For Designing Any Socialist Welfare Programme In A Capitalist Society: (1) Improvements Are Feasible; And (2) Breakthroughs That Would Disrupt The Relationship Between Capital And Labour Are Not Achievable Under Capitalism. The Feminist "Disaggregation" Campaign Is A Promising One In This Perspective. Men Should Understand That Feminist Demands Are At The Core Of Any Socialist Approach To Social Policy, And That Feminist Campaigns Require Labour Within And In Alliance With Many Existing Groups.

Why Not Happiness? Marx’s Notion of the Free Life

It has recently been claimed that Marx’s aspiration to achieve happiness by reducing human suffering makes it possible to dismantle the conceptual walls between his approach, contemporary socialist approaches, and Eastern and Western perceptions of happiness. In contrast, this essay argues that Marx’s notion of freedom not only cannot be conceived as a means of achieving happiness but actually contradicts the possibility of happiness. The essay instead interprets the dialectical negation of the ideal of happiness in a way intended not to reinforce the walls between Marx’s approach and different worldviews but to reveal a common denominator relevant to different streams of nineteenth-century thought on this subject. Marx’s own conclusion that satisfaction is not a natural purpose of human existence originates in a dialectical approach regarding human needs that expresses radical criticism toward the hierarchical binary conception of pleasure and pain and of physical and spiritual needs.

Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union by Christina E. Crawford

Reviewed by: Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union by Christina E. Crawford Iva Glisic (bio) Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union By Christina E. Crawford. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. xv + 385. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet Union sought to catch up with (and overtake) its economic rivals by undergoing a process of accelerated industrialization—an ambitious venture that quickly transformed the entire country into a mega construction site. With Spatial Revolution, Christina E. Crawford examines the relationship between this "hyperindustrialization drive" and the emergence of a distinctly socialist approach to architecture and urban design (p. 1). Focusing on major projects in "geographically peripheral" but economically significant Soviet [End Page 589] industrial centers (p. 2), Crawford positions these sites as critical "experimental enclaves" and argues that on-the-ground experience at these remote locations—rather than directives from above—were critical in articulating the socialist spatial practice (p. 9). At the heart of Spatial Revolution is a key question faced by early Soviet architects, planners, and administrators: How should the spatial relationship between an industry and its workers be optimized? To both foreground the centrality of this question and demonstrate the myriad ways in which it was answered, Spatial Revolution is organized around a series of case studies. The book opens with a compelling narrative on Soviet Azerbaijan's oil-rich capital, Baku, and the development of its general plan between 1924 and 1927, through which Soviet officials sought to reshape the city into a modern petro-hub. Subsequent chapters trace a pair of critical episodes in early Soviet planning: the 1929 design competition for the city of Magnitogorsk—planned as the centerpiece of the steel industry—and the simultaneous construction of a tractor factory and housing for its workers in Kharkiv between 1930 and 1932. Crawford makes good use of these case studies, which provide the foundation for an analysis that rhythmically shifts between large-scale urban developments, architectural solutions for industrial buildings, and individual housing units. Throughout these episodes, Crawford introduces contemporary debates on socialist versus capitalist urban layouts and explores various design solutions that have sought to reflect a collectivist ethos. This approach provides valuable insight into the evolution of Soviet spatial models, including the famous garden settlements and urban superblocks. Crawford is also interested in socialist modes of production, and her analysis offers a new understanding of Soviet approaches to improvement, innovation, and architectural standardization. Readers interested in industrial and cultural diplomacy will also find a wealth of engaging material concerning the influence of English garden cities, Weimar housing projects, and technologies developed for American oilfields on Soviet projects. Spatial Revolution intervenes in current academic debates in two important ways. First, it challenges the tendency to frame spatial projects from the early Soviet era as merely theoretical—perhaps innovative, yet often unrealized—which has in turn led to their persistent characterization as failures. By foregrounding a series of completed projects and recognizing the scope of what was accomplished amid the challenging economic circumstances of this period, Crawford complements recent efforts to correct the misperception of early Soviet creative ventures as having been largely unsuccessful. Second, by demonstrating the influence of Soviet avant-gardists on the development of these construction sites—from workers' housing projects in Baku to factory buildings and social infrastructure in Kharkiv—the study offers further evidence that the impact of avant-garde practices in the Soviet Union was broader and longer lasting than has traditionally been assumed. [End Page 590] Where Crawford departs from recent literature (including Kachurin's Making Modernism Soviet, 2013, and Utopian Reality, edited by Lodder, Kokkori, and Mileeva, 2013) is in treating ideology and pragmatism as mutually exclusive. The lack of systematic engagement with the notion of ideology lends a sense of tension to Crawford's discussion, especially in instances when the absence of an explicit mention of ideology is taken as evidence of its secondary or marginal place within these projects. Crawford's insistence on drawing a hard line of separation between theory and practice in her analysis is also problematic. Statements to the effect that "it was no longer the time for theories, manifestoes...

Making Sense of the Violent Past: War Veterans’ Organizations in Post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia

The article examines the de-Stalinization of war veterans’ organizations in Czechoslovakia. Building on testimonies and journalistic works concerning the victims of Stalinist purges and persecution and the attempts to rehabilitate them, the author elaborates her argument with the case study of the prominent war victims’ organization “Association of Antifascist Fighters”. During Stalinism, all veterans who had not fought side by side with the Soviet Union were treated with suspicion and often expelled from the veterans’ association. In the framework of the reform socialist experiment of the 1960s, the country's Stalinist heritage of violence was largely rejected. What made the Czechoslovak reform socialist approach unique was its distancing from the Soviet influence on Czechoslovak communist tradition. In this way, Stalinism, and the violence that accompanied it, was turned into a Soviet matter, while the national communist tradition was to be cured of the effects of this influence.

The Main Features of the System of Organization of State Power under the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China of 1982

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the fundamental components of the state constitutional system of the People’s Republic of China and its evolution. Based on the analysis of the works of famous foreign and domestic Chinese scientists, the traditions of the political system of the People’s Republic of China using general scientific and special methods (dialectical, comparative, logical, system-structural, functional, analysis and synthesis methods), the main characteristic features of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in the 2018 edition were studied years, related to changes in the state and social system of China during the second half of the 20th century, especially with the processes of the second decade of the 21st century. In particular, the essence of the system of organization of state power according to the 1982 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, amendments and changes to the norms of the constitutional legislation of the People’s Republic of China at various stages of its history, forms of state organization, contours of the system of higher and local state authorities of the People’s Republic of China, the sphere of competence of individual state authorities in the People’s Republic of China, their specific functions, which have a certain purpose, aimed at meeting the relevant needs of the state as a system. In addition, the main elements of the political system, including the structure of the party system, and state policy regarding national minorities are analyzed. Conclusions are made about the main stages of the history of the development of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the influence of the official ideology of Marxism and Maoism, the socialist system as the basis of the People’s Republic of China, the place of the Communist Party of China in the state and political system of the country. The issue of the socialist approach to the rights and responsibilities of the citizen, the lack of a real state guarantee of the declared right to work and the significant limitation of the realization of the right to education, the single right to social security in old age on a nationwide scale, is highlighted. The exceptional place of state property in the economy of the People’s Republic of China, the evolution of the form of state government, the principle of popular sovereignty as the core principle of the organization of political power is shown, and the counter-liberal and radical changes of 2018 associated with the strengthening of the power of the President of the People’s Republic of China are characterized.

Sosialisasi Pentingnya Bahan Pewarna Alam Untuk Benang Tenun di Desa Boti Kecamatan Kie Kabupaten Timor Tengah Selatan

Weaving is a work of Indonesian cultural heritage that has experienced development over time. As a form of answer to the above problems, the implementing team carried out outreach activities on the importance of natural dyes for woven yarn as well as providing training on dyeing techniques using naptol liquid for weaving craftsmen in Boti Village, providing dyeing technique training aimed at increasing knowledge about natural dyeing in the weaving process but still maintaining quality and quality of woven products. The implementation team will assist until partners can be independent. It is hoped that from this activity the weavers can increase their income level by selling quality woven products. The methods used in this activity are lectures, brainstorming and Focus Group Discussions (FGD). To understand the material, a discussion was formed accompanied by the facilitator. The implementation of this community service program (PKM) activity uses an anthropological and socialist approach, meaning that the approach in community service program activities (PKM) is carried out by means of kinship, kinship and humanism or an emic approach with the local community. This community service program (PKM) activity is incidental in nature, in the form of education for the community to strengthen people's understanding of the importance of natural dyes for weaving. This community service activity (PKM) was carried out on July 30, 2021. All material was well presented to participants according to the schedule. the facilitator or resource person delivers material in Indonesian and interspersed with local languages ​​so that it is easy for participants to understand and understand.

Ibsen, Power and the Self: Postsocialist Chinese Experimentations in Stage Performance and Film

Ibsen, Power and the Self: Postsocialist Chinese Experimentations in Stage Performance and Film

Socialism, Heritage and Internationalism after 1945. The Second World and Beyond.

ABSTRACT The international histories of cultural heritage protection have been commonly focussed on the Eurocentric trajectories of heritage evolution in the twentieth century and trace the Western roots of cultural globalisation in the field of conservation and preservation of monuments. The current theme section offers the first examination of the contribution of socialist states, institutions and experts to the evolution of heritage concepts and policies in the postwar world. In what ways have socialist countries approached the conservation, handling and exhibition of cultural heritage differently to nonsocialist countries? How have tangible and intangible heritages been mobilised in support of socialist political agendas? What role did actors from socialist states play in the development of international heritage protection policies that proliferated in the wake of the Second World War? And to what extent did the Soviet Union and the wider Second World of the Cold War export and shape the development of socialist approaches to heritage in Third World? The collected articles in this themed section not only demonstrate the similarity of heritage policy formation in the so-called First and Second worlds but show the role that socialist states played in world geographies of cultural heritage.

‘Traditions of American “Democracy”’ by Fedor Kapelusz

Abstract The following is an account of an early Socialist approach to American historiography, including a biographical note on Fedor Kapelusz (1876–1945).

Moral Education for Sustainable Development: Comparison of University Teachers’ Perceptions in China and Pakistan

Sustainable development is promoted when the system of education provides the learners with an opportunity to equip themselves with moral values, skills, and competences that assist them in effecting personal and community positive changes. For this purpose, teachers play an important role as moral agents, and students consider the teacher a role model. Therefore, the understanding and beliefs of teachers regarding moral education play a pivotal role in grooming the personality of the learners. This comparative study aimed to assess the practices and beliefs of university teachers regarding moral education in China and Pakistan. A mixed-method approach was used and data analysis was performed by using an interactive model and ANOVA. Responses of twelve tertiary teachers were collected from Pakistan and China for qualitative analysis. Seven themes were constructed that categorized teachers’ practice in the classroom and their beliefs regarding moral education. For quantitative analysis, 300 teachers’ responses were collected using a validated questionnaire. The results showed that the majority of Pakistani teachers hold a conservative mindset. According to the Pakistani teachers’ perspective, sovereignty of divine laws, loyalty to the constitution of the state, and a sense of serving society were the ultimate aims of moral education. Chinese teachers were promoting a political ideology that stressed collectivism in a socialist approach, with family and social values being most relevant. Not a single teacher reported using a theoretical or research-based approach while teaching in the class. In the light of the dearth of literature, this study has implications for future research in the field of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and Islamic Studies in higher education, as it is a longitudinal study that provided insight into how teachers’ beliefs and attitudes are shaped over time and from moral educational experiences.

Slow Down! Digital Deceleration Towards A Socialist Social Media

Hartmut Rosa argues that three systems of social acceleration (technical acceleration, the acceleration of social change and the acceleration of the pace of life) have emerged as fundamental to the human experience of late modernity. It is here argued that the digital imaginary, specifically curated by the “universal” social media platforms causes what Dominic Pettman has dubbed the “hypermodulation” of the subject, which contributes to the reproduction of the capitalist status quo. Consequently, I here argue that a socialist approach to the digital must commit to what Rosa would term an ideological (oppositional) deceleration to counteract such tendencies.

Varieties of Entrepreneurial Function under Totalitarian (dis)Orders

Communist’s collectivistic approach to social order is based upon the premise that private means of production should be abolished, and instead be managed by a centralized power representing the people as a whole. As such, it defies one of the most inherent characteristics of human condition, the innate, creative, subjective, and perennial search for a better condition in life expressed by the entrepreneurial function. Thispaper uses the Austrian School’s praxeology to show how entrepreneurs, as motors of the market system, end up being also the most relevant and widespread challengers to the socialist approach to economics. The real exercise of entrepreneurship defies the unreal socialist economic system in three basic ways: by exercising this latent entrepreneurial function in the most unfavorable conditions creating secondary markets in order to correct an official planned scarcity; by escaping the widespread statist mentality in socialist societies; and by actually exercising economic calculation in spite of the politburo calculus. The paper shows that as much as there are varieties of social order there is a on the kind of entrepreneurial function, which is impossible to eradicate from individuals. Therefore, even when totalitarian regimes take place, entrepreneurship finds ways to exist and emerges albeit of a different lacunar kind, in the shadows, supplying for consumer’s wellbeing under the limits of such societal disorder and, more importantly, bringing to light the intrinsic impossibility of the socialist economic arrangement.

Making the Social Work: toward a Functionalist View of Social Governance

This paper is situated in the normative discourse on the society building in China, seeks to go beyond the various ideological discourses, such as the liberal, the socialist, and neo-Confucian approaches, and develops a functionalist view of social governance. The functionalist approach maintains that the political vision is to build a Chinese-style “active society” that rises above the “under-organized society” of traditional China and the “over-organized society” of contemporary China simultaneously. An active society has three principal sociopolitical functions: inhibiting “state fetishism,” and defending the public sphere to promote the legitimation of state power; resisting “market society,” creating a market (re-)embedded in society and ensuring nonmarket supply of public goods; and rising above “the differential mode of association” (chaxu geju), accumulating social capital and nurturing civil virtues.

Socialist Feminism in Postsocialist China

Since around 2010, a new theoretical strand within Chinese feminism has been forming, which, for lack of a programmatic label, the author calls “socialist feminism.” Broadly speaking, Chinese socialist feminism shows an interest in political economy and attributes women’s status to their place in the economic structures of Chinese society. Productive and reproductive work (past and present) are therefore main fields of research. The distinctive terminological mark of socialist feminism, however, is its emphasis on China’s socialist past as a legacy and resource for today’s society. Differing from its Western counterpart, Chinese socialist feminism derives its profile not from theoretical debates on the relation between class and gender or capitalism and patriarchy and their empirical manifestations in Western industrialized societies, but from the very fact that socialism and a socialist approach to women’s problems have been a reality on Chinese soil that deserves recognition for feminist theory building. Socialism as a historical legacy and memory is indicative of China’s postsocialist situation, which, as the author argues, has a deep impact on the epistemological, theoretical, and political outlook as well as the identity of socialist feminists in today’s China.

‘Socialising’ primary care? The Soviet Union, WHO and the 1978 Alma-Ata Conference

In September 1978, the WHO convened a momentous International Conference on Primary Health Care in Alma-Ata, capital of the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. This unprecedented gathering signalled a break with...

An alternative imaginary of community engagement: state, cancer biotechnology and the ethos of primary healthcare in Cuba

This paper analyzes a form of community engagement that differs from the way it is usually conceived and practiced in the domain of global health. This story takes place in the Cuban context and more specifically in a recent programme of oncology clinical trials implemented in primary healthcare (PHC) centres. By considering both the genealogy of this program and local interactions between PHC professionals and patients and their close relatives, I show that, in the context of Cuban socialist biomedicine, community engagement emerges as an implicit practice that forms part of the PHC professional ethos. I explore the ways cancer biomedicine is adapted in order to address specific needs and demands related to public acceptance of cancer in the Cuban society, diagnostic communication and palliative care. I argue that the way community engagement is enacted within Cuban socialist biomedicine is alternative to the global health dominant paradigm since it does strengthen existing relations between citizenry, health professions and public health infrastructures. Finally, by questioning the specificity of such socialist approach to community engagement, I suggest it greatly contributes to global health literature, because it creates continuity within existing state infrastructures rather than bypasses them, and, furthermore, offers a unique vantage on the treatment of chronic disease.

Reviving the Dragon: Social Ideas and Social Policy Development in Modern China

Social policy development in China is closely related to the generation and diffusion of social knowledge through which political and social elites define social problems and elaborate policy solutions. Drawing on theoretical insights from the ideational institutionalism, this paper seeks to trace the origin and evolution of the social ideas in order to map common threads spanning different phases of modern Chinese history. It argues that the “social” idea has been essentially shaped by the continuous desire for national resurgence in response to China’s perceived existential crisis triggered by Western imperialism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting from the late Qing dynasty, the majority of the Chinese intelligentsia advocated for the restraint of individual rights in the service of promoting a strong statehood able to pursue commonweal and restore national pride. Social policy and social rights appeared more as a means to achieve other elevated goals than as an end in itself. In this light, the contemporary People’s Republic of China represents political undertakings that initially addressed the “national question” using a socialist approach, and later switched to market economic reforms. In various phases, the social ideas have been constantly reframed to accommodate changing political and economic circumstances with profound implications for social welfare developments with a clear disposition in favor of the statist approach.