Socialist Pluralism Research Articles

Class Struggle, Group Rights and Socialist Pluralism on the Lower East Side – Radical Lawyering and Constitutional Imagination in the Early Twentieth Century

Class Struggle, Group Rights and Socialist Pluralism on the Lower East Side – Radical Lawyering and Constitutional Imagination in the Early Twentieth Century

Labouring in the Shadow of the British Political Tradition: The Dilemma of ‘One Nation’ Politics in an Age of Disunification

AbstractThe British state is in flux and the Labour party is struggling to shape an effective response to the politics of disunification. This article reflects on the nature of Labour's governing project and its conception of modern statecraft which has evolved since the party became a serious contender for power in the aftermath of the First World War. We argue that Labour's initially pluralising instincts cultivated in opposition have been checked by the ongoing reality of a state‐centric mode of governing, in which the party continued to robustly defend the Westminster model operating within the parameters established by the British Political Tradition (BPT). Ed Miliband's conception of ‘One Nation’ Labour threatens to reinforce this historical pattern of reversion to the Westminster model, at precisely the moment when devolutionary forces are destabilising the existing political settlement. To break out of this impasse, Labour must look elsewhere in its ideological lexicon for inspiration, chiefly to the tradition of socialist pluralism and associationalism.

Diego Rivera: Painting and Partisanship

In using key texts of Marx and Engels against all dogmatic schools of Marxism, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez accomplished a major theoretical shift by revalidating ‘modern art’ from within the Marxist tradition, so that ‘socialist pluralism’, and not any single doctrine of ‘social realism’, seemed most consistent with the vantage point of Marx. Sánchez Vázquez wrote significant art criticism about the murals of Diego Rivera in which he deftly applied his concept of non-normative Marxism. Remaining focused on Rivera, in this article Sánchez Vázquez concentrates on the characteristics and deliberates the roles of political art. The author examines how and why Rivera's artwork is political in nature and cites a diverse range of evidence to make his point. Sánchez Vázquez also evaluates the aesthetic quality of Rivera's work and makes connections between the Mexican artist and Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya, Eugène Delacroix and Honoré Daumier.

Construction, reconstruction, deconstruction: The fall of the Soviet Union from the point of view of conceptual history

The fall of the Soviet Union is analysed in conceptual terms, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte. The author seeks to interpret the instrumental role of the concepts perestrojka, glasnost´, reform, revolution, socialist pluralism, and acceleration in the Soviet collapse. The semantics and pragmatics are related to a wider intellectual and political context, and the conceptual perspective is used to help explain the progress of events. The author argues that the common notion of the reform policy concepts as cliches is not valid.

Ideology and the Collapse of the Soviet System: A Critical History of Soviet Ideological Discourse

Contents: Preface 1. Bringing Ideology Back In: The Party and the Soviet Model of Politics 2. The Origins of Soviet Ideology and the Power of the Party 3. Ideology after Stalin: Khrushcev, Breshnev and the Revival of Communist Construction and the Resurrection of Party Power 4. Breaking the Ice: From Uskorenie to Perestroika. Gorbachevism, 1985-1987 5. The Second Phase of Perestroika: Socialist pluralism of opinions, the Socialist law-based state and socialist choice and the Party 6. The End of the Soviet Model of Politics: The Failure of the Party and the Collapse of Party Hegemony 7. Conclusion: Ideology and the Collapse of the Soviet System Bibliography Index

The Emergence and Meaning of Socialist Pluralism

Socialist pluralism grew between 1900 and 1925 within the British labor movement, notably around Harold Laski and the guild socialists such as G.D.H. Cole. Its criticisms of state monism and organized capitalism have roots in writers as different as Proudhon, Sorel, Lord Acton, James, Spencer, Gierke and Maitland. Socialist pluralism wanted to transcend the representative system by means of functional federalism. That led it to enter the debate over the creation of self-governing economic and political institutions in the 1960s.

Problems of conflict management in Russian politics

For attempting to identify the conditions for the institutionalized regulation of conflicts among group interests, and to assess the degree of fulfilment of those conditions in post‐Soviet Russia, the criteria for successful conflict management offered by Ralf Dahrendorf are useful. Marxist‐Leninist ideology traditionally blocked the recognition of the legitimacy of conflicts among the interests of groups in Soviet society. In the decades after Stalin's death there was a gradual tendency within the official ideology towards the acknowledgement of legitimate conflicts, and that tendency reached its culmination under Gorbachev with the acceptance of the ideal of ‘socialist pluralism’. However, political changes stimulated by Gorbachev encouraged the opening of channels for the expression of competing interests while failing to institutionalize adequate mechanisms for the management of conflicts among those interests. The legacy of Gorbachev's attempt to carry out limited democratization while preserving the...

Parliamentary politics under Gorbachev: Opposition and the failure of socialist pluralism

Opposition in Gorbachev's reformed Soviet parliaments helped show the limits of political perestroika. Opposition came from the democratic Inter‐Regional Deputies’ Group (I‐RDG), whose actions in 1989–90 changed the political agenda by questioning the powers granted to the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet. The democratic opposition and the changes that it helped bring about therefore undermined the centre and its ideas on politics and contributed to Gorbachev's failure. Conservative opposition came from the Soyuz (Union) group, Soyuz however was a reactive force in 1990–91, as the centre of political action had shifted from the all‐Union parliaments to the new executive presidency and the republican parliaments, a shift facilitated by the actions of the I‐RDG.

Pluralism, socialism, and political legitimacy: reflections on opening up communism

1. Introduction 2. The Context 3. Socialist Pluralism and Pluralist Socialism 4. Ideological Differentiation under Socialism 5. Socialism and the Language of Sentiment 6. Socialism and the Language of Rationality 7. Socialism, Politics and Citizenship 8. Conclusion.

The birth, testing and results of the 1989 Hungarian electoral law

THE ELECTIONS in Hungary were a political event that gave the first signals that the country needed a democratic system of political power. The Electoral Law No. III/1983 provided a wider range of freedom, but was still only a product of Kaidarstyle political liberalism. Nevertheless, the effects of the law went far beyond the limits of the political concessions laid down in the law itself. What was brought into being was a potential 'Reform Legislature' within the one-party system. This Parliament, after the disappearance of the political barriers in 1988, fulfilled its historical task by contributing to the successful changing of the political system. It was during the nominating meetings of 1985, which were the first legally organised efforts of a civil society for many years, that the citizens became aware of their political power and of the possibilities for their effective participation in political life.1 The large number of spontaneous nominations of parliamentary candidates is outstanding evidence of this phenomenon. The 1985 elections taught many lessons, and the resulting experience was much appreciated by national as well as foreign sources.2 The evaluation of the elections originated quite a few national studies that projected plans for further reforms of the electoral system.3 Important efforts in this respect were made within the competent department of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP), and also in its Research Institute and by the section of the Ministry of Interior that had jurisdiction in electoral matters. By 1987 the main concerns for the further development of the electoral system were formulated, and these were continually amended by subsequent viewpoints. However, the official material produced in 1987 did not recommend fundamental changes in the electoral system. The basic deliberations of the 20-22 May 1988 MSZMP Conference centred only on the modification, not full reform, of the electoral system. This conference was of major importance in the dismantling of the one-party state; however, the theoretical basis of political power still remained the old ideology: 'the condition for the practice of the people's power is socialist pluralism built on the leading role of the party'.4 It was a logical consequence of this power theory that even the new ideas about the elections were kept within the existing political limitations, and were unable to surmount the obstacles and the shadows of the one-party system.

Democracy, Politics, and Pluralism of Opinions: Lenin's Lessons

The Nineteenth All-Union Party Conference emphasized the enormous role of the democratization of society, of the development of glasnost', which has as its indispensable prerequisites a socialist pluralism of opinions with respect to all questions of domestic and international politics, a free comparison and competition of various points of view, ideas, opinions, and debates. Correct solutions to social problems can be found only if every one of these problems is discussed comprehensively and every pro and con is considered. Naturally, this is possible only by observing openness, non-preconceived views, free creative initiative, criticism, and self-criticism. In sum, as M. S. Gorbachev stated in his report at the Nineteenth All-Union Party Conference, all of this requires a genuine revolution of consciousness 1 [italics mine—author]; without it, it is impossible to activate the intellectual and spiritual potential of society and create a new life.

Socialist Pluralism

Socialist Pluralism

A Socialist Pluralism of Opinions: Glasnost and Policy-Making under Gorbachev

Alexander Herzen, attempting to explain the sensation occasioned by the publication of Peter Chaadaev's famous "Philosophical Letter" in 1836, characterized it as a "shot that rang out in the dark night." The scandal, he records in his memoirs, testified to the power of the word in a country, shaped by Nicholas I's policies of "official nationality," that had grown disaccustomed to open, independent speech. The essay appeared after a decade in which many of Russia's boldest intellectual spirits had been exiled, a time when "to speak was dangerous-and there was nothing to say anyway." Glasnost' has demonstrated the continuing power of the word in Russia. From the leadership's standpoint, glasnost' is a principal fulcrum in a massive effort at social engineering directed as much at reconstructing Soviet political culture as at reforming the structures of power. As its architects have formulated the matter, glasnost' is narrowing the "gap between words and deeds"-a formula widely used in the late 1970s and early 1980s by both reformist and orthodox wings of the political elite to deplore the disparity between commonly accepted norms of public and private behavior, and the pieties of party-mindedness and collectivism to which everyone was expected to pay obeisance. Alluding to Orwell's famous concept of double-think, the venerable Soviet scholar Igor' Kon analyzed this gap as a problem of social psychology. Double-think he regards as a condition in which "a different meaning is imputed to the same words; and the same person, depending on the situation (for example, at a meeting or at home) with equal sincerity affirms diametrically opposing things."2 This discrepancy was in fact less between "words and deeds," or, in social-scientific terms, culture and behavior, than between two interdependent but opposed codes of language and behavior: one for the realm of the unsanctioned-private, whether collective (such as dissident activity, religion, small-scale graft and illicit enterprise, and large-scale organized crime), or individualistic (including various forms of private rebellion and

Editor's Introduction

Along with other Soviet publications, Soviet philosophy journals are opening their pages to a greater variety of points of view as part of the campaign for perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost' (openness) in the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev has personally criticized Soviet journals for limiting themselves to like-minded contributors, and has urged the introduction of new voices in the interest of what he calls "socialist pluralism."

On Barriers to Pluralism in Pluralist Poland

Having crushed the Solidarity movement’s unprecedented attempt to pluralize postwar Polish society, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the first secretary of the Polish United Workers’ party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza or PZPR) ordered a special commission of the party’s Central Committee to study the causes of the political crises that have repeatedly convulsed Poland during forty years of Communist rule and have resulted in the downfall of successive first secretaries and their principal associates. After several months of labor, the commission declared that one of the main causes was that the authorities ignored popular opinion and discouraged local initiatives for independent action and reforms. To show that it had learned its lesson, the PZPR adopted “socialist pluralism” as one of the principal points of its program for “normalization” and “renewal” soon after martial law was lifted in 1982.

Les Johnston, Marxism, Class Analysis, and Socialist Pluralism: a Theoretical and Political Critique of Marxist Conceptions of Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986) pp. 155. $28.50 (pb).

Les Johnston, Marxism, Class Analysis, and Socialist Pluralism: a Theoretical and Political Critique of Marxist Conceptions of Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986) pp. 155. $28.50 (pb).

Left Realism: a defence

Can anything be said in conclusion on the essence of the realist approach? It is important to end by restating that realism originates as a reaction, in current social and political conditions to the absences in radical criminology. These are the absence of a discourse about crime and a refusal to talk about the constructive as opposed to the destructive role of institutions of criminal justice. Realism rejects a utopian strategy of waiting for the state to whither away, knowing that we would only have to reinvent it if it did. The starting point for realism is the strategy of democratization. The maximization of democratic participation is ultimately the solution both to the problem of what is crime and to the problem of how to deal with it. The solution to the problem of criminal justice is the democratization of its institutions while at the same time recognising their necessary functions. The realist programme is concerned with the redrawing of the boundaries between and the transformation of the character of institutionsand communities in accordance with the values of socialist pluralism.

Socialist Pluralism and Pluralist Socialism

The English school of ‘socialist pluralists' of the early twentieth century pictured socialism as an order in which maximum autonomy of social and economic functions coexisted with a minimum of political functions. The ‘pluralist socialists' among the Czech reformers of the 1960s, by contrast, insisted that such autonomy can be realised and sustained only in conjunction with effective political modalities. The pluralization of socialist regimes entailed for them, therefore, not ‘the withering away of the state’ but its invigoration as a space for contesting general ends. Such contestation was envisaged principally in terms of competition between political parties which could give expression to ideological differentiation even within the confines of socialist belief, the implication being that agreement on fundamental societal values does not pre-empt diversity over political ends.

Socialist Pluralism

Socialist Pluralism