‘Wandering Jews’? British Jewry,outdoor recreation and the far-left, 1900–1939

During the early twentieth century, scores of second and third generation migrant Jews became deeply involved and interested in outdoor recreation (cycling, camping and rambling) associated with the political far-left in Britain. Amongst politically inspired organisations such as the Clarion Cycling Club, the British Workers' Sports Federation and the Young Communist League, Jews were keen consumers of opportunities for recreation in the British outdoors. This was a growing leisure habit which was zealously protected when threatened and had a significant impact on many Jews' lifestyles and ethnicities. This article will demonstrate that many Jews ‘wandering’ on organised rambles in the Peaks or Chilterns were also ‘wandering’ away from their Jewishness by moving closer, in terms of social, cultural and political lifestyles and identity, to their non-Jewish working-class peers.     

Stepping in the same river twice: Stability amidst change in Eastern European party competition

Party competition in Eastern Europe faces a seeming paradox. On the one hand, research finds increased political volatility in these countries, while, on the other, some authors demonstrate inherent ideological stability in the region. This research note presents a new methodological approach to adjudicating between these two findings, and suggests that while political organisations come and go, the ideological structure of party competition in Eastern Europe is strikingly steady. By developing a number of different measures of the dimensional structure of party competition, the consistency of the measures across countries, as well as their relative stability within countries over time, is demonstrated. The findings speak to current developments in Eastern Europe, and have implications beyond the region. The conclusion that even volatile party systems can be underpinned by stable ideological oppositions points to two different types of party system structure: one related to parties as organisations, and the other related to parties as expressions of political divides.     

Social history, (Neo-)revisionism and mapping the 1930s Spanish left*

Revisionist historians and their Neo-Revisionist/conservative fellow travellers identify the Spanish left as the main cause of the civil war (1936–1939) that culminated in the establishment of the Franco dictatorship. Such claims are possible because these historians distort both the history of the left and the nature of social protest and mass mobilisation during these years. In part, the reliance of Neo-Revisionist/conservative historians on the methods of traditional political history – combined with their stubborn aversion to social history – makes it impossible for them to understand the left. This article argues that only through social history is it possible to comprehend the complex and shifting nature of protest dynamics in the 1930s. Indeed, many of the conflicts that played out in the political arena during these years were conditioned by structural economic problems and social tensions that resulted in diverse forms of radical contestation among the grassroots of leftist movements. Social, and indeed cultural history, are, therefore, central to any analysis of the myriad forms of these protest energies that flowed from the bottom up to shape the orientation of the leftist organisations.     

Love and Communism: Jean-Luc Nancy’s Shattered Community

This paper takes as is its point of departure Jean-Luc Nancy’s argument that the occidental idea of community in the modern era has always meant a kind of project or work whose intention was to glorify death in order to redeem and make it meaningful. It does so in order to return the community to its self-identity; to inter or assimilate what intrudes. In so doing, it also produces us as beings who cast this glorious lost past retrospectively. Recalling a lost original communalism, then, is not only politically dangerous, it is a symptom: it operates as a kind of compensatory reinstatement of an imaginary lost unity. On this view, casting ‘back’ to a glorious communal past must not only be resisted on political grounds, it also provides, as a symptom, a way to undertake that resistance. In this paper, I investigate a narrow dimension of Nancy’s strategy for resisting this lure: Nancy’s notion of shattering reveals that the ‘lost object’ of community is a melancholically interred, narcissistically invested retroactive creation of the very work of mourning he resists and re-thinks. The work of mourning on this view, can itself only be resisted by a certain disouevrement or unworking.     

Rewriting and remembering Romanian communism: some controversial issues

This article examines the dynamic relationship between the two major dimensions of memory and justice in the context of post-communist countries: truth-telling and retroactive justice. This interdependent and uneasy relationship is illustrated by recent attempts at constructing a new historical narrative of the communist past in Romania in the wake of the de-secretization of the files of both the Communist Party and the communist secret police (Securitate). A systematic analysis of the activity of institutions that have been directly involved in research and public education about the recent past – the National Archives, the National Council for the Study of Securitate's Archives, and the Institute for the Investigation of Crimes of Communism – is undertaken. The work of these three institutional actors shows a direct relationship between truth-telling in its various forms (access to archives, opening the files and exhumations) and any subsequent retroactive justice and restitution. The main argument of the paper is that while deep-seated dichotomies between former communist and anti-communists in addressing the past still persist, a more nuanced way of seeing the regime that explores the ambiguous line that divides outright repression from cooptation is emerging.     

国际共产主义运动史纲（从19世纪中叶到21世纪初）（连载之一）－马克思主义人的解放科学第一次应运诞生

马克思主义诞生的客观条件是科学三大发现惊人,技术三大发明震世,资本主义三大矛盾凸显,工人运动三大浪潮叠起,思想理论三大成果凝聚;马克思主义诞生的主观条件是马克思、恩格斯两位亲密战友参加三种社会实践,实现三个根本转变,批判三个思想来源,进行三场理论斗争,构建科学三大组成部分。当今对马克思主义、社会主义、共产主义要有新认识、新理解和新表述。     

浅析马克思主义无产阶级学说的若干问题

马克思和恩格斯一生致力于无产阶级的革命斗争,对资本主义进行了深刻的揭露与分析,并坚信社会主义必将代替资本主义,无产阶级必将战胜资产阶级取得社会主义革命的胜利,勾画了令人憧憬的共产主义图景。在马克思主义理论成为了举世瞩目的科学理论的同时,马克思主义也不乏反对者和攻击者,本文列举了其中的四个问题并且阐述了个人对马克思主义无产阶级学说的理解。     

赫斯：马克思接受社会主义思想的中介人

在1843年9月之前，马克思就已经了解了当时流行的社会主义思潮。但是从马克思与《奥格斯堡总汇报》的论战与他当时发表的文章来看，这些社会主义思想对马克思并没有产生太大的影响。而到了1844年之后，社会主义思想则成为马克思论述问题的一个根本维度。造成这种情况的原因何在?在过去的研究中，这个问题并没有提出来，实际上也就造成了马克思思想研究中的一个很大的空白。本文认为，造成这种情况的主要原因是英法社会主义思想同马克思开始转向费尔巴哈哲学后的思想具有话语上的异质性，只是在赫斯将英法社会主义思想转换为德国哲学的本土思想后，才为马克思从人本学出发接受社会主义思想创造了前提性条件。可以说，赫斯是马克思从德国哲学出发接受英法社会主义思想的中介人。     

论马克思在《1844年经济学哲学手稿》中的共产主义思想

马克思在《1844年经济学哲学手稿》中,第一次初步阐述了共产主义思想。他立足于人类主体上,批判地考察了粗陋的共产主义,按政治性质是民主或专制的共产主义等等,提出了共产主义是以扬弃私有财产为主题,人性回归为目的的运动和原则。马克思从哲学语境到经济学语境对共产主义进行描述,为通向唯物史观和科学社会主义开辟了道路。他对共产主义、社会主义的论述带着浓厚的人本主义色彩和浪漫主义气息。     

人的解放:马克思全部思想的宗旨

人的解放是马克思毕生为之奋斗的崇高理想。这一思想不仅构成马克思全部思想的出发点、目的和归宿,而且也渗透在他的全部思想体系之中。马克思全部思想的宗旨就是人的解放。在马克思那里,人的解放思想是通过哲学、历史、政治经济学这几个主要方面的研究,得到论证、确立和不断深化的。这几个方面不能截然分开,总是彼此联系着。