The Political Misery of the Common Man of West Bengal

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharjee ◽  
Pramod Kumar
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Man

The Political Misery of the Common Man of West Bengal

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharjee ◽  
Pramod Kumar
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Man

Thomas Paine’s democratic linguistic radicalism: a political philosophy of language?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carine Lounissi
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Man

Carine Lounissi’s premise in this chapter is that characterising Thomas Paine’s radicalism is a challenge, which she takes up by focusing on his “democratic style” as a way to make his ideas accessible to the common man. The author thus studies Paine’s “democratic style”, for which he was harshly criticised, as being part and parcel of his inherently republican and democratic radicalism. She argues that in his writings Paine sought to deconstruct the discourse of the political elite of his time, associated with the trappings of royalty, and promoted the language of common sense instead as an instrument of resistance predicated on the universality of human nature. He invented a radical linguistics whereby he wished to go back to the roots of words.

What is a Complex? Freudian Resistances

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Morgan Wortham
Keyword(s):  
Value Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War

This chapter evaluates the question of the ‘complex’ in a range of scientific, political and psychoanalytic contexts, asking not only where lines of connection and demarcation occur among specific distributions of meaning, value, theory and practice; but also probing the psychoanalytic corpus, notably Freud’s writings on the notion of a ‘complex’, in order to reframe various implications of the idea that this term tends to resist its own utilisation as both an object and form of analysis. This section establishes connections between three sets of theoretical questions: the common practice of describing modernity and its wake in terms of a drive towards increasing complexity; the meaning and cultural legacy of phrases such as ‘military-industrial complex’ and sundry derivations in the political sphere; and the intricacies and ambiguities subtending the term ‘complex’ within psychoanalytic theory. As a concept that Freud both utilised and repudiated, the provocative power of the term ‘complex’ is linked to the way it thwarts various attempts at systemization (providing nonetheless an apparatus of sorts through which contemporary science, Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, Freud, Eisenhower, and post-war politics can be articulated to one another).

“There is such a situation that Comrade Svoboda is under pressure”. The Soviet leadership and the settlement of relations with Czechoslovakia. May 1969

2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.

Speaking for Islam

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-127
Author(s):  
Abdoulaye Sounaye
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Institutional Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Religion And State ◽  
Islamic Values ◽  
French Model

Unexpectedly, one of the marking features of democratization in Niger has been the rise of a variety of Islamic discourses. They focus on the separation between religion and the state and, more precisely, the way it is manifested through the French model of laïcité, which democratization has adopted in Niger. For many Muslim actors, laïcité amounts to a marginalization of Islamic values and a negation of Islam. This article present three voices: the Collaborators, the Moderates, and the Despisers. Each represents a trend that seeks to influence the state’s political and ideological makeup. Although the ulama in general remain critical vis-à-vis the state’s political and institutional transformation, not all of them reject the principle of the separation between religion and state. The Collaborators suggest cooperation between the religious authority and the political one, the Moderates insist on the necessity for governance to accommodate the people’s will and visions, and the Despisers reject the underpinning liberalism that voids religious authority and demand a total re-Islamization. I argue that what is at stake here is less the separation between state and religion than the modality of this separation and its impact on religious authority. The targets, tones, and justifications of the discourses I explore are evidence of the limitations of a democratization project grounded in laïcité. Thus in place of a secular democratization, they propose a conservative democracy based on Islam and its demands for the realization of the common good.

Searching for Political Parties in the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.

The Swiss and their Neighbours, 1460-1560

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Scott
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Buffer Zone ◽  
The Political ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Political Principle ◽  
Mutual Obligation ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Identity

Renewed interest in Swiss history has sought to overcome the old stereotypes of peasant liberty and republican exceptionalism. The heroic age of the Confederation in the fifteenth century is now seen as a turning point as the Swiss polity achieved a measure of institutional consolidation and stability, and began to mark out clear frontiers. This book questions both assumptions. It argues that the administration of the common lordships by the cantons collectively gave rise to as much discord as cooperation, and remained a pragmatic device not a political principle. It argues that the Swiss War of 1499 was an avoidable catastrophe, from which developed a modus vivendi between the Swiss and the Empire as the Rhine became a buffer zone, not a boundary. It then investigates the background to Bern’s conquest of the Vaud in 1536, under the guise of relieving Geneva from beleaguerment, to suggest that Bern’s actions were driven not by predeterminate territorial expansion but by the need to halt French designs upon Geneva and Savoy. The geopolitical balance of the Confederation was fundamentally altered by Bern’s acquisition of the Vaud and adjacent lands. Nevertheless, the political fabric of the Confederation, which had been tested to the brink during the Reformation, proved itself flexible enough to absorb such a major reorientation, not least because what held the Confederation together was not so much institutions as a sense of common identity and mutual obligation forged during the Burgundian Wars of the 1470s.

The Workers' Movement and Political Change in Spain, 1956–1977

2013 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 70-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Domènech Sampere
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Common People ◽  
Progressive Decline ◽  
The Common ◽  
Open The Doors ◽  
Young Researchers

“That the number of our Members be unlimited” … Today we might pass over such a rule as a commonplace: and yet it is one of the hinges upon which history turns. It signified the end to any notion of exclusiveness, of politics as the preserve of any hereditary elite or property Group … To throw open the doors to propaganda and agitation in this “unlimited” way implied a new notion of democracy, which cast aside ancient inhibitions and trusted to self-activating and self-organising processes among the common people.E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class The decline of labor history in the research agenda of senior Spanish scholars matches the surprising interest in it of young researchers as indicated by the opening of new lines of research and the explosion of studies on other social movements that also have a strong class character in their origins. Moreover, despite the progressive decline of published academic research on the quintessential social movement, the truth is that its history is still crucial for understanding the political and social dynamics of the late Franco regime and the first years of democracy for at least two reasons.

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