热话题与冷思考(十七)--关于二十世纪社会主义与中国的对话

历史的选择1956年我国完成社会主义改造之后,建立了社会主义制度,算起来至今已有45年了.倘若从李大钊等人传播马克思主义算起,这个运动至今已有80多年的历史.我们知道,无论是80多年的运动,还是40多年的社会制度,都经历了在风雨中发展,在挫折中前进的过程.记得10年前您曾出版了一本书,名为<历史的选择>,论证中国共产党的领导地位是历史的选择.这当然也就等于说马克思主义和社会主义道路是中国历史的选择.     

Secrecy,Fear and Transaction Costs: The Business of Soviet Forced Labour in the Early Cold War

What does it cost to do business under a dictator? In 1949 the Soviet state had entered its most secretive phase. One of the Gulag's most important secrets was the location of its labour camps. As this secret was guarded more closely, camps found it increasingly difficult to do business without disclosing a state secret: their own location. For months and then years Gulag officials worked around this dilemma, expending considerable efforts. Rather than resolve it, they eventually normalised it. This study of the transaction costs of an autocratic regime raises basic questions about how Soviet secrecy was calibrated.     

History and Institutions in the Rebuilding of Social Capital after Forced Resettlement in the Philippines and Indonesia

Resettlement results in the loss of social capital from which poor households can draw resources for sustenance, survival and wellbeing. While Putnam deems social capital formation as pre-determined by a community’s history of civic engagement, the institutional view argues that social capital is generated through the institutions’ interventions. Utilising a comparative approach involving two resettlement sites, one in the Philippines and one in Indonesia, this article presents findings on the explanatory power of these two perspectives. The Philippine case is greatly influenced by the institutional interventions while the Indonesian case testifies to the validity of the theoretical perspective of Putnam.     

抗美援朝与20世纪后半叶的中国和世界--专家学者对一些反常动向和错误言论的剖析

半个世纪以前,在朝鲜半岛发生了一场局部的世界战争.1950年6月25日,朝鲜北南双方在一系列军事摩擦之后爆发了大规模内战;随即,美国打着联合国的旗号悍然出兵干涉朝鲜内政,同时封锁我台湾海峡、轰炸我东北边疆;10月下旬,中国人民志愿军在朝鲜民主主义人民共和国的请求下跨过鸭绿江,抗美援朝,保家卫国.     

From the Cradle of the Nation to the Most Expensive Serbian Word: Changes in Serbian Public Language in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century

Russian National Unity (Russkoe Natsionalnoe Edinstvo—RNE) is the largest militant fascist group in Russia today. The founder and leader of the RNE, Aleksandr P. Barkashov, speaks of himself as a national‐socialist, and praises Hitler's deeds for Germany. The RNE has pledged to establish a system of ethnic segregation in Russia were it to come to power.     

20世纪的法兰西玫瑰潮--法国社会党100周年札记

以"拳头和玫瑰"为标记的法国社会党于2005年4月22日和23日,在巴黎举行了盛大的纪念活动,庆祝法国社会党成立100周年。回眸20世纪的法国史,我们可以看到,法国社会党是法国和西欧社会主义运动的一支重要力量,其百年史是一部玫瑰潮在法兰西大地涌动的历史,是一部不断探索社会主义理论和实践的历史。     

Encountering the Other: The Challenge for the 21st Century

In this section, NPQ takes a look at the history of relations with the Other and how that has changed with globalization. Ryszard Kapuscinski writes of the moral imperative of embracing the Other. Tariq Ramadan speaks urgently of the Muslim Other in Europe. Taking the New Orleans calamity as a point of departure, Richard Sennett reminds us that stupidity for the Greeks meant ignorance of the Other.     

The Fourth Revolution: Reinventing the State and Democracy for the 21st Century

Historically, liberal democracy was born as a means to curb the power of kings and tyrants through mechanisms that would ensure accountability and consent of the governed. A system of checks and balances—two legislative chambers, executive and independent courts—were instituted to ensure power did not become too concentrated. Today's highly diverse, mass consumer societies, however, have presented another set of challenges. Power is so diffused governance is becoming ineffective. The short‐term mentality of voters and the lobbying of special interests undermine the ability of democracies to focus on the long‐term and the common interest. Because there are more checks than balances, gridlock has supplanted consensus. In this section, we compare Chinese and Western systems on their ability to deliver good governance. The editors of the Economist magazine put the debate in historical context.     

Labour involvement in national and regional transformation processes: The case of Chile

This article argues that regionalisation should be analysed as a multi-layered process. Such an analysis shows the complexities of current transformation processes at the global, regional and national level. A perspective on labour issues is especially useful as it provides a focus on one of the most important aspects of globalisation-changes in production structures across borders. It also points to how labour movements are affected by these changes and how they readjust their strategies. The case of Chile is chosen as an early example of the so-called neoliberal model. Furthermore, regionalisation and strategies of integration into the world economy are central to Chile's economic model. This article intends to show the interconnections between national and regional processes of transformation in a global perspective, with a focus on the issue of labour and trade unions .     

Girl Farm Labour and Double-shift Schooling in The Gambia: The Paradox of Development Intervention

This article examines the intensification of Gambian girls’ domestic and farm labour contributions as a result of the introduction of double-shift schooling. Drawing on fieldwork among female farmers and their daughters in Brikama the article puts forth the following arguments: doubleshift schooling facilitates the intensification and increased appropriation of surplus value from girls’ household and farm labour because girls are more readily able to meet gendered labour obligations that are central to the moral economy of the household and to the demands of agrarian production; secondly, double-shift schooling highlights the paradoxical nature of development intervention where, on the one hand, legislation and policy call for a reduction in child labour by increasing access to school and, on the other, neo-liberal educational policy serves to facilitate the intensification of girls’ domestic and farm labour. This paper maintains that the intensification of girls’ workmust be placed within a wider context where children’s — particularly girls — cheap, flexible and/or unremunerated labour is central to the functioning of local and global processes of accumulation.     

The global governance of informal economies: the International Labour Organization in East Africa

This article develops a Gramscian approach to the governance of ‘informal’ economies through a historical study of International Labour Organization (ILO) programmes in East Africa. Drawing on Gramsci’s conception of the ‘subaltern’, the article highlights the ways in which the articulation of ‘informality’ in policy documents is coloured by broader struggles over the political organisation of labour. The article develops this argument through two case studies. The first examines the World Employment Programme mission to Kenya in the 1970s that popularised the concept of ‘informal’ labour. The second is a contemporary programme on apprenticeships in the informal economy that originated in Tanzania.     

Labour and Its Discontents: The Consequences of Orthodox Reform in Venezuela and Mexico

The negative impacts of orthodox liberalisation policies on labour in Venezuela and Mexico were representative of outcomes elsewhere in Latin America. Untheorised increases in precarious informal work, unemployment, and emigration as well as a growing breech between wages and productivity followed trade, capital, and labour market reforms and the prescribed macro stabilisation policies. Orthodox reforms in both countries paradoxically facilitated market failures given the forms or modes taken by foreign direct investment (FDI), which introduced ever more increasing scale economies with their attendant information imperfections. In addition, the growing competition from tradeable goods faced by domestic producers in both countries and the decision to buy rather than make technologies by way of FDI undermined job creation and induced inter-sectoral flows toward service sector and informal work.