New Political Science 2013
Thirty-two academics, intellectuals, and political leaders formed the international contingent organized by Global Learning for the Sixteenth International Conference on “New Political Science,” which was held at the University of Havana from November 20 to November 22, 2013. They represented the United States (16 participants), Germany (2), France (2), Finland (2), United Kingdom (2), Slovakia (2), El Salvador (2), India (1), the Philippines (1), Greece (1), and Brazil (1). You can find below the abstracts of their presentations.
Julian V. Advincula Jr
Professor of Political Science
University of the Philippines
Manila
US-ROTATIONAL FORCES IN THE PHILIPPINES: THE PHILIPPINE PERSPECTIVE ON US TWISTS, TURNS AND PIVOT IN ASIA
As a world superpower, the US does not hide its renewed interest in the Asia Pacific Region where it plans to strengthen its presence and forces. Notwithstanding the proposed US$500 billion defense cut in its 2013 budget, the US plans to increase its naval forces in Asia Pacific by 10%, a considerable increase from the current level of 50% to a desired level of 60%. Such consolidation of forces would be effected through deployment of more warships, submarines and troops in the region by 2020.
Being the former colony and strong ally of US, the Philippines has started negotiating for the terms, conditions and mechanics of US rotational forces in the country under the framework of Mutual Defense Treaty between the two nations. In its initial decision to allow US military forces to have access on a rotational basis to many if not all of its military bases including the former US military bases in Subic, Zambales and Clark, Pampanga, the Philippine government thinks that it would get additional US support in modernizing its armed forces and in counterbalancing any threats to its territorial integrity.
In view of this contemporary issue, this paper seeks to analyze its international dynamics and provide insights on its global implications by focusing on the Philippine perspective particularly the considerations, motivations and actions behind the twists, turns and pivot of US in Asia.
Alan Alanís
Texas State University
The Cosmic Latin American Race and its Mystical Global Citizenship
In 1925, José Vasconcelos, mexican academic, philosopher, Secretary of Public Education and candidate to the presidency of his country wrote the essay “The Cosmic Race” which expressed the ideology that different races from worldwide crowded in Latin America to generate what he called “the cosmic race”. Vasconcelos procured to raise cultural moral of the Latin American race which he considered oppressed and devaluated. In this paper I make an analysis of Vasconcelos´s essay. Furthermore I propose with solid bases a respect to patriotism leaving behind nationalist fanaticism and promoting a positive Latin American identity and global citizenship.
Andrew Apter
Professor of History and Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Shango’s Wrath and the New Materialism: Critical Methodologies from the Global South
Conventional Western epistemologies hold knowledge to higher standards than belief. If knowledge-claims must be falsifiable, we can nonetheless maintain irrational beliefs in the face of logical or empirical refutation; for example, we can believe that 2 + 2 = 5, or that the earth is flat, even when such propositions are patently false. What happens when we reverse this hierarchy of constraints, allowing us to know something that we do not believe? What kinds of truth-conditions govern such knowledge-claims, and with what methodological consequences for the social sciences?
In this paper I explore these questions by reflecting on my fieldwork among the Yoruba in Nigeria, where my western understanding of knowledge and belief was radically challenged. Making sense of a disastrous research experience caused by the violation of a ritual taboo, I reflect on how I attributed causal agency to Shango, a Yoruba orisha (deity), despite my epistemological materialism and resolute atheism. In brief, how did my understanding come to resonate so quickly with the collective dispositions of the Yoruba community in which I lived and worked? How did I come to “know” something that I did not (and do not) believe, and what is the epistemological status of such knowledge? The answer involves a radical rethinking of distributed agency, one that combines the social organization of cognitive dispositions with “the new materialism” in the philosophy of the social sciences, generating critical methodologies from the global South.
Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado
University of Nebraska Omaha
"Paradox of American Power in the 21st Century: Implications for Inter-American Relations."
This presentation will focus on the domestic incongruities of the American political and economic system and its affect and influence on US policy in Latin America. It is a critical perspective on the U.S. foreign policy apparatus and seeks to illuminate and offer insights on the analysis of U.S. prerogatives and actions in the Western hemisphere. Specifically, with reference to Richard Haass, Joseph Stiglitz and others, I argue that internal developments are eroding the foundations of U.S. power, including a prolonged debt crisis, a deteriorating infrastructure, second class schools, a broken immigration system, and, the poor long-term prospects for economic growth. These deficiencies are a direct threat to America’s ability to project power and influence internationally, to compete in the global marketplace, to generate the resources (intellectual, political and social) needed to maintain its interests abroad, and to set a compelling example of what will influence the thinking and behavior of others in the 21st century. It is to say that the ability of the US to act and lead in the world is diminishing owing largely to what the economist Jeffrey Sachs has termed a “crisis of values” directly emanating from the abovementioned internal developments. Finally, the presentation will detail the implications for Inter-American relations as they relate to the regional interests for economic growth, social development and political stability.
Ben Burgis
Philosophy Department
University of Miami
Rawls, Nozick and the Bolivarian Revolution
John Rawls was probably the most important Anglophone political philosopher of the 20th century. According to his theory of justice, economic inequalities are only justifiable if (a) the more privileged positions are open to everyone under conditions of equal opportunity, and (b) the people in less privileged positions are still better off than they would be in a more equal society. One of Rawls' most important critics was the right-wing libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who argued that inequalities could be morally permissible even if they failed to satisfy these conditions. Nozick thought that *any* distribution of wealth, no matter how severely unequal, could be just if it arose in an appropriately just manner. I will examine the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela in light of these theories. It will be relatively easy to show that the measures taken under the leadership of Hugo Chavez to redistribute the country's oil wealth for the benefit of workers and the poor can be justified in the terms of Rawls' theory. More surprisingly and controversially, I will show that this conclusion stands *even if *Nozick's criticisms of Rawls are correct. After all, the extreme levels of economic inequality that characterized pre-Bolivarian Venezuela arose from circumstances that even Nozick would find unjust. As such, I argue that the Bolivarian process would be just (according to *either* of the two theories in question) even if it deepened and continued in a much more robustly anti-capitalist direction.
Xavier CALMETTES
Laboratorio científico del CREDAL
Paris III- Sorbonne-Nouvelle
Francia
Corrupción y democracia formal en Cuba (1944-1952): Un método de control de una sociedad en crisis
La corrupción administrativa es uno de los más graves problemas que conoce la sociedad cubana en los años cuarenta y cincuenta. El soborno no es un fenómeno sui generis sino un proceso consciente de la élite cubana de esta época en su afán de encontrar un método de control de una sociedad que desea un cambio de las estructuras del poder.
El partido Auténtico logra tomar las riendas de la nación después del triunfo de las elecciones de 1944 gracias a la retórica revolucionaria de su jefe: Grau San Martín. Sin embargo, después de las elecciones, el programa de Grau no es implementado, y el Jefe de Estado pierde el sostén de las masas. Es justamente, en esta época, que numerosos grupos armados aparecen, y que la corrupción se torna aún mas intensa que antes. Incapaces de cambiar las estructuras económicas de la sociedad, los hombres políticos recurren a la violencia de los grupos de acción para eliminar a sus adversarios y hacer creer en un cambio político real. En realidad, llevan a cabo una política económica similar a la aplicada por Batista durante su primer mandato (1940-1944). De hecho, varios grupos de acción como el MSR de Rolando Masferrer o empresarios vinculados a los auténticos como Amadeo Barletta Barletta o Amleto Batisti se convierten en pilares del régimen del 10 de marzo. Nuestra presentación se propone explicar en qué la corrupción fue un método de control de la sociedad cubana de los años 40 y por qué, en Cuba, los fracasos de los gobiernos auténticos favorecieron la emergencia de un movimiento revolucionario.
Breve bibliografía temática :
Annie Dandavati
Professor and Chair of Political Science
Director of International Studies
Hope College
Holland, Michigan
Transitional politics and democratization
The purpose of this paper will be to expand on existing research in transitional politics and democratization. Several Latin American countries have negotiated sharply contested transitions to civilian governments after periods of military government. The existing literature is replete with examples of how these transitions have been accomplished and the manner in which the project of democratization continues. I will examine political changes in Egypt in light of these experiences. Egypt captured center stage with a very dramatic and peaceful transition of power with the Tahrir Uprising. It accomplished a transition from the Mubarak regime to some sort of limited democracy (or at least that is what was hoped). In my paper I will look at the period of political, economic and social transition that ensured in post-Mubarak Egyptian society. I will examine the political landscape consisting of the fragmented secular opposition groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the military, and women. In this constantly changing scenario, the presentation will focus on various political actors, electoral politics, the new Egyptian constitution, and the results of the elections. The paper will end with an assessment of the status of women in this rapidly changing society and consider the question whether the transition has opened opportunities for women’s participation or created further challenges.
Antoine Dolcerocca, PhD candidate in shared supervision at SUNY-Binghamton (sociology) and Université Paris 13 (economics).
The Commons as Alternative to Intellectual Property Monopolies? A Critique of Current Left Literature.
This paper aims to explore the fast expanding literature on the ‘commons’ as it relates to intellectual property for pharmaceuticals. In civil society, we have recently seen interesting endeavors a) to circumvent the current global intellectual property regime, with the mass production of generic drugs in some countries of the South, and b) to expand the reach of the public domain in matters of health, with NGOs researching drugs for neglected tropical diseases and releasing data on newly developed chemical compounds in the public domain. Although these reformist policies often imply significant short term improvements for public health in the South, these institutional arrangements are merely quick fixes to so-called ‘market failures’ and fall short of putting into question the existence of intellectual property monopolies and the vast South-North value transfer they enable. This issue is usually overlooked by a number of studies on the commons, in which we can distinguish two trends: first the Indiana school (Elinor Ostrom, Charlotte Hess, etc.) which advocates, under specific circumstances, for ‘commons’ as islands of common property regimes, only when this institutional arrangement organizes resource management more efficiently (in terms of production or allocation) than private property or other regimes. Another trend (David Bollier, Michael Bauwens, Silke Helfrich) points to the growing influence of the commons and analyzes it as a sign of a volte-face, in so far as it represents a reversal of the massive wave of privatization of the last 35 years and an alternative to the market/state duopoly. This paper aims at examining the successes and failures of these two important contributions to a leftist critique of intellectual property rights, through a study of related social movements and theoretical considerations.
Justin Felux
Graduate student
University of Texas at San Antonio
From Iron Girls to Little Flowers: Capitalism and the Resurgence of Patriarchy in China
This paper uses a Marxist methodological framework to analyze the changing status of women in the People’s Republic of China from its founding to today. Most Western political scholarship on the Maoist period in China operates under the “totalitarian model,” which portrays the masses of Chinese workers as hapless victims of an all-powerful dictator rather than historical agents in their own right. To counter this view, I employ a wide variety of primary sources to show that the Chinese revolution resulted in remarkable social and material gains for women, especially during the Cultural Revolution. With the establishment of Chinese socialism, new possibilities emerged for women in terms of organizing labor time, balancing work with child rearing, and getting equal pay for equal work. However, in the past three decades, China has pursued aggressive economic reforms geared toward the exploitation of free markets and capitalism. As a result, many of the pathologies of the “old society” are returning with force. The revival of traditional Confucian values, the beauty industry, plastic surgeries, and job discrimination are eroding the gains made by women in the Cultural Revolution. The conclusion my paper suggests that women’s liberation can be attained in a much more powerful way when linked to class struggle. Capitalism erodes the status of women, or at best pushes women into an upwardly-mobile, bourgeois kind of feminism that has little relevance to women in the Global South.
Jeremy Friedman
Associate Director
Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy
Lecturer, History Department
Yale University
La Vía Pacifica versus Class Warfare: Allende’s Chile and the Sino-Soviet Split
The years of the Unidad Popular government led by Salvador Allende in Chile were perhaps the closest the world came during the Cold War to seeing what a non-violent, democratic transition to Marxist socialism might look like. While this fascinating episode has certainly not been neglected by historians it has generally been treated from one of two perspectives, either solely in terms of domestic Chilean politics with a view towards the Pinochet dictatorship that succeeded it, or as an exercise in American imperialism. While these aspects are important, they tell us little about the interactions between the Unidad Popular experiment and other socialist movements and states around the world, thereby obscuring the importance of this episode for the ideology and practice of socialism. This paper seeks to examine precisely these connections between the complicated politics within the government and elsewhere on the Chilean Left and the politics of international socialism, particularly the Sino-Soviet split, using newly available archival sources from Russia, Germany, and Chile. I argue that the divisions between the Soviet Union and China represented organic and necessary struggles over issues central to the process of adapting Marxism to different economic and political contexts around the world, in particular in the developing and post-colonial world. Consequently, these divisions found echoes within the Unidad Popular coalition. While the divisions within the coalition might not have been fatal to the government on their own, their resonance with the dispute between the Soviet Union and China, led to both a deficit of international support and greater recriminations and distrust within the government, particularly between the Socialist and Communist parties. Given the determined opposition of the Nixon administration it is impossible to be certain that any government led by Allende in Chile could have remained in power for long, but it would have stood a much better chance in a situation of unity on the Left inside and outside Chile.
Professor Vasil Gluchman
UNESCO Chair in Bioethics
Institute of Philosophy and Ethics
University of Presov
Slovakia
[email protected]
Ethical and moral issues of slovak politics at the beginning of the 21st century
In this paper, I am going to deal with analysis of areas of ethical and moral issues which, recently (especially at the beginning of the 21st century), to a greater or lesser extent, stirred Slovak public opinion and attracted the significant attention of media. I mean especially issues concerning conscience and conscientious objection, national and universal moral values, ethics of government, and (im)morality of the MPs allowance. Regardless of individual problems I am going to contemplate, I consider their nature most important, as all four issues relate to problems or questions with universal validity, or a form which concerns values, including moral values of Slovak society and politics, or political representation. It does not matter where they took place, what exactly happened, who was the active subject or object. However, it can be stated that, in various forms, they can be found in the past as well as the present age, they were described in works of historians, as well as in belles-lettres (such as H. de Balzac, C. Dickens and many other authors), they can be found in present Slovakia, and also in Poland, the Czech Republic and other parts of the world.
Marta Gluchmanova, Ph.D.
Department of Humanities
Technical university of Kosice
Bayerova 1, Presov
Slovakia
Reflection on Dewey’s Philosophy of Education
I would like to research Dewey’s philosophy of education and its values in context of contemporary debates. Dewey pointed out many educational problems which are topical also nowadays (in Slovakia too). Education tends to socialize its members. Dewey focuses especially on the quality and value of the socialization which depends upon the habits and goals of the group. According to him, to have a large number of common values, it is necessary to offer to all the members of the group an equal opportunity to receive them. The commitment of society to education is a familiar fact. For the reason it is necessary to build connections among teachers, schools, parents, families and society. Dewey emphasizes necessity to look upon such moral values like honesty, loyalty, perseverance, amiability, as moral goods and also some rules for other values – balance, harmony, etc. They are very important as norms or criteria of judging the benefit of new experiences that parents and teachers are usually want to teach them to the youth. Values provide the norms and models that guide us to satisfaction and meaning. Dewey’s philosophy of education is expressive about the duty of the teacher in moral education of students. He emphasized the influence of intellectual environment the minds of young generation.
Jeffrey E. Green,
Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
Liberalism and the Problem of Plutocracy
Liberal values like non-violence and neutrality have undergone significant philosophical critique in recent years as many have argued that while these values may be more or less realizable, they are not absolutely so: the so-called paradox of founding means that even well-ordered liberal democratic states may be rooted in founding moments of violence and illegality, and some have made the claim that so-called neutral liberal discourse (i.e., public reason) is inescapably culturally-biased. What has faced less critique and analysis is the liberal ideal of a space of political equality uninfected by economic inequality. While there is substantial debate about how well given societies realize certain basic liberal norms like fair equality of opportunity (the principle that similarly talented and motivated children have roughly equal prospects of success in life) and the fair value of the political liberties (the principle that similarly talented and motivated citizens have roughly equal prospects of influencing elections), the notion that these values are in principle fully realizable—and not necessarily limited by economic inequality in civil society—has gone largely unquestioned. That is to say, the problem of plutocracy—conceived not so much as the coordinated rule of moneyed interests, as the power of inequalities in wealth to undermine equality of opportunity with regard to education and politics—has been downplayed either as no problem at all, or as a problem that might be satisfactorily corrected through social reform. Against this, I argue that plutocracy is in some sense inescapable, at least so long as institutions like the family and private property exist.
Chris Hesketh
Oxford Brookes University
UK
Dr. Adam David Morton
Associate Professor of Political Economy
Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
School of Politics and International Relations
University of Nottingham
Nottingham
Spaces of Uneven Development and Class Struggle in Bolivia: transformation or trasformismo?
This paper delivers a focus on class struggles in Bolivia, linking with one of the main themes of the conference in addressing the meaning of socialism in the twenty-first century in Latin America. Our paper engages with the politics of class struggle and state formation in modern Bolivia to examine how current forms of political contestation through the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) are shaped by the legacy of the Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent path of development. In so doing, we therefore explore spaces of uneven and combined development in relation to ongoing transformations in Bolivia linked to emergent class strategies of passive revolution, drawing from Antonio Gramsci. Passive revolution refers to processes of historical development marked by the overall exclusion of subaltern classes. With this in mind we argue that state formation in Bolivia can be read as part of the history of passive revolution in Latin America within the spatial conditions of uneven and combined development shaping the geopolitics of the region. However, the expansion of passive revolution in Bolivia as a mode of historical development has been and continues to be rigorously contested by subaltern forces creating further spaces of class struggle.
Dr, Tushar Eknath Jagtap
Dermatologist
Student of International Studies
University of Mumbai
INDIA
SUBALTERN IN INDIA: THE ROLE OF B.R. AMBEDKAR IN MODERN INDIA
The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship of B.R. Ambedkar’s (Economist, social Reformer, Constitutionalist, Political Thinker and revitalizer of Buddhism in India) immense contribution in uplifting the lives of subaltern classes in Indian sub-continent and to study the common thread running between ethos of Latin Americas and India.
Today the entire world is in a state of flux. Arab uprising, Occupy Wall Street, Economic crisis, Terrorism, Proliferation of Nuclear weapons, Global warming, crisis of morality and the struggle between prevailing dominant, oppressive global powers and indigenous spirits of subaltern people and their leadership in Latin America, Africa and Asia is going to be major points of contentions in near future.
There is a need to invoke the work of nation builders from these continents who struggled against injustice, inequalities and bestowed the path of justice, Rights, peace and progress for all the oppressed, suppressed, depressed, servile and tyrannized masses of people.
As this new political science conference seeks to find the answers for humanities in 21st century, one can dare to put forward the concept of 21st century being the century of subaltern classes, cultures and ideologies.
The rise of Subaltern India and rest of the world is an indicator of the forthcoming global order and ideal society envisioned by B.R. Ambedkar.
Uskali Mäki
University of Helsinki
[email protected]
Scientific imperialism: The good, the bad, and the ugly
‘Scientific imperialism’ is a term with multiple meanings and multiple normative associations. In order to proceed in normatively assessing it, one must first identify its relevant versions. Each version is likely to require its own appropriate set of normative criteria, and so a merely pejorative usage of the term is not compelled a priori (cf the contrasting views in Clarke & Walsh 2009, and Mäki 2009, 2013). [1] The first family of versions considers imperialism as an interdisciplinary relationship. One scientific discipline (eg physics, neuroscience, economics) makes intrusions into the domains and/or disciplinary practices of other scientific disciplines. Perhaps the most famous of these is economics imperialism: economic models and methods are increasingly applied beyond the traditional boundaries of economics to the domains of law, political science, sociology, even biology. In some cases this has consequences for the disciplinary conventions and practices in these receiving fields, replacing or modifying them. The appropriate criteria for normatively assessing such intrusions are the normal standards for judging scientific quality, those pertaining to ontology and epistemology (including, importantly, social epistemology that deals with the institutions of scientific practice). [2] The second family of versions is based on ways in which science may dominate our social lives, ways in which it may be seen and used as a privileged source of understanding and problem-solving capacity – at the expense of commonsense views, religions, political ideologies, etc. The notion of ‘scientism’ is often linked to these observations. Again, no a priori and merely negative judgement will be advisable. This is evident when considering recently emerged forms of ‘extra-academic transdisciplinarity’ that seek to combine the cognitive and practical contributions of scientific and extra-scientific agents. The latter may range widely, from indigenous people to multinational business corporations. Not all extraacademic interests serve the goals of scientific and moral improvement equally well. [3] Other versions involve geographical and geopolitical aspects. These include the exportation and importation of theories and styles of scientific inquiry dominant in the “North” to the universities in the “South”, and the exploitative use of poorly protected populations in the South by globally powerful medical companies as subjects for testing their newly designed drugs. Again, the standards of evaluation must be adjusted to the characteristics of such types of case.
Charles McKelvey
Professor Emeritus
Presbyterian College
Clinton, South Carolina
The Unfinished Revolution of 1968
A revolution seeks to take power, either through armed struggle or electoral means, and to substitute a political class that represents bourgeois or corporate interests with an alternative political leadership that would seek to govern in the interests of the popular classes and sectors. The world-wide popular social movements of the late 1960s, which reached their peak in 1968, were characterized by both reformist and revolutionary tendencies. The diverse expressions included the concept of the taking of power by a vanguard that would represent the interests of the people.
The paper analyzes the currents of thought in the US manifestation of the revolution, focusing on anti-imperialist concepts in the black and anti-war movements. And it analyzes the contradictions and errors that contributed to the demise of the revolution by 1972, facilitating the restoration of the conservative agenda in 1979.
The paper maintains that current global conditions make possible and necessary a renewal of the Revolution of 1968 in the United States. These conditions include: the systemic crisis of the world-system, which has been unfolding since the 1970s and which reveals the unsustainability of the capitalist world-economy; and the post-1995 renewal of popular anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World, a process that is especially advanced in Latin America.
The paper proposes a plan for the renewal of the US revolution: the formation of a vanguard capable of leading the people in an alternative project that seeks the taking of power. Given the current confused and backward ideological conditions in the United States, the formation of a vanguard will require ten or twenty years to accomplish.
The vanguard ought to have anti-imperialist consciousness, with knowledge of the structures of neocolonial domination. It ought to have sentiments of solidarity with the peoples of the Third World, and it ought to have knowledge of the revolutions that they have formed. And it ought to have the capacity to explain to the people of the United States that North-South cooperation is the best option for the people, given the challenges that humanity confronts.
The vanguard will need to have the capacity to analyze global and national problems and to propose solutions and projects in a form that would be able to obtain the support of the majority, overcoming the ideological distortions that have confused the people. It will be necessary to find a discourse that avoids unnecessary divisions among the people and focuses on the formation of a popular consensus in regard to basic themes, such the protection of the social and economic rights of all people in the nation and the world, the protection of the environment, and respect for the sovereignty of all nations.
Alan McPherson
University of Oklahoma
Regional Integration against U.S. Empire:
Lessons from U.S. Military Occupations, 1912-1934
The paper asks how Latin American opponents of United States military occupations in Nicaragua (1912-1933), Haiti (1915-1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) succeeded and/or failed in creating regional integration. The paper will argue that the occupations prompted, perhaps for the first time in a century in the Americas, a vision for regional integration, both in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and in the rest of Latin America, a vision that was particularly strong in socialist circles. The paper will also demonstrate, however, that some internal factors—and not only the external factor of U.S. empire—hindered the creation of an anti-occupation unity among the nations of the hemisphere. It will focus on the role that racism played as a divisive element. I have spent the last decade researching anti-occupation movements, in five countries and three languages, and can report findings that trace the anti-occupation movement in a transnational fashion, not only out of these three occupied countries but also in Mexico City, Santiago de Cuba, Paris, New York City, and elsewhere. I believe that these findings, which indicate both successes and failures in early-20th-century integration, may prove of interest to those seeking regional integration today.
Isabella Duarte Pinto Meucci
Master’s Student of Political Science
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Brasil
[email protected]
The Cuban Revolution and Leftist Thought in Latin America: The case of the Trotskyite Movement (1959-1974)
The victory of the Cuban revolutionaries opened up a new historical moment for the left thought in Latin America, in which stagist models of revolution propagated until then by the Communist parties were reviewed at the same time that innovations arose as to the methods and actors involved in the revolutionary process. In this sense, the Cuban Revolution represented a theorethical and specially practical change, characterizing political and ideological definitions of Latin-American leftists who had the influence of the Cuban revolutionary model as one of the defining elements of their political projects. It can be said that this event has modified the history of many countries in this continent, and probably the left thought in each of them has had a turning point in its trajectory after the 1st of January of 1959. Among the different analysis influenced by the Cuban experience, there is the case of the trotskyist movement, which suffered not only revisions in their theoretical elaborations but also changes in their ranks. To understand the impact of the Cuban Revolution in the case of the trotskyist movement, this article will seek initially to make a brief note on the Latin American Marxism. Then we will seek to understand the formation, consolidation and ruptures of the Latin-American trotskyism, which had two active organizations in this period: the Latin-American Bureau (Bureau Latino-Americano - BLA) and the Latin-American Orthodox Trotskyism Secretariat (Secretariado Latino-Americano do Trotskismo Ortodoxo - SLATO). Finally, we will analyze the specificities of each interpretation of the Cuban Revolution inside the trotskyist movement. For that we will highlight the main moments of assimilation of the revolutionary model with the purpose of identifying in which period the Cuban influence presents itself as decisive and when is its moment of decline.
G. Cristina Mora
Asst. Professor of Sociology
UC Berkeley
[email protected]
Latino Panethnic Social Movements in Spain
Scholars have examined the conditions under which Latin American migrants have consolidated to form panethnic, “Latino” and “Hispanic” movements in the United States. Many have argued that this inter-ethnic solidarity arises from a common cultural history and a shared, Spanish language which distinguishes migrants from the mainstream. Yet how do panethnic, Latino coalitions arise when language is not a basis for shared distinction? This paper examines this question by analyzing the rise of Latino, panethnic coalitions in Spain. Drawing on archival sources and interview data with panethnic leaders in Barcelona, the paper argues that Latino panethnic coalitions face an inherent tension between having to balance subgroup differences and generating a sense of panethnic solidarity. This tension leads to subgroup favoritism and fundamentally shapes panethnic agendas. Implications for the understanding of panethnic social movements and racial and ethnic politics are discussed.
Dr. Uchenna Okeja
Department of philosophy/
Excellence Cluster "Normative Orders"
Grüneburgplatz 1
Hauspostfach EXC-5
Frankfurt am Main
IS CONSENSUS NON-PARTY DEMOCRACY A POSTCOLONIAL IDEAL FOR POLITICAL THEORY?
A renowned postcolonial African intellectual, Kwasi Wiredu, has suggested that a consensus driven non-party democracy is a viable and desirable alternative to the commonplace majoritarian democracy made imperative by the existence of political parties. According to him, the system of democracy based on the majority principle cannot be the ideal political theory, especially for postcolonial societies, because of its limitations. In a majoritarian democracy, political parties, Wiredu underscores, are solely interested in gaining power. This kind of political system is thus flawed because it deprives minorities the right of representation in its decision. Due to this and other limitations of majoritarian democracy, Wiredu suggests that a consensual form of democracy, based on the intuitions of his Akan African background, is a more viable alternative to pursue.
In this presentation, the debates about Wiredu’s consensual democracy will be explored. The first task undertaken is to provide a summary of Wiredu’s thoughts on consensual democracy. This will be followed by an outline of the arguments of the main objections against his proposal, especially those developed by Chukwudi Eze and Bernard Matolino. I will argue that their criticisms do not present enough grounds to disprove the viability of consensus democracy. My arguments will show how consensus democracy is a viable alternative political theory to majoritarian democracy due to its emphasis on getting the populace to “agree to a decision” rather than to identify completely with the decision.
Hannes Peltonen, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Lapland
PO Box 122
96101 Rovaniemi
FINLAND
Democracy, sorites puzzle, and conceptual boundaries
Language not only describes, but it also ascribes, structures and constructs the world around us. Meaning is constructed through the concepts we employ as well as how those concepts are delineated from others. Linguistics and cognitive psychology have abandoned classic theories of concepts that considered them as definitions, which is something that other fields should do as well. Modern linguistic theories consider that concepts have fuzzy boundaries. Yet, this paper argues that concepts do not "possess" fuzzy boundaries. Rather, at stake is the continuous re-drawing of conceptual boundaries in the act of giving meaning.
The paper illustrates the importance of this insight with the example of measuring democracy. Often, democracy measurement is based on the idea of a conceptual spectrum, whose one end is an ideal democracy and the other end is ideal autocracy. Allegedly, all states can be plotted along this spectrum. Yet, the very use of a conceptual spectrum like this results in a paradox. The paper suggests how to avoid that paradox.
Constantinos Pierides, PhD candidate
Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
Athens, Greece
Anti-Party, Anti-Parliamentary or Anti-Democratic Social Movements? The “Indignant” Citizens of Greece
Research team: Vassiliki Georgiadou, Associate Professor of Political Science, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens/Greece, Spyridoula Nezi, Phd candidate, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Anastasia Kafe, PhD candidate, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Constantinos Pierides, PhD candidate, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
On May 25th 2011 Greek citizens were gathered in the central squares of the major Greek cities, thus constructing what will be on time be named as the “movement of the indignant citizens”. This movement was the citizen’s reactions to Greece’s agreement on the EU/IMF bailout package and the stiff austerity measures that followed. Even if it emerged from the European South (Spain and Greece) and mostly thrived in the country that experienced the most serious economic divergences (Greece), the European movement of the indignants shared some distinctive common features: 1) non-party mobilization; 2) peaceful, anti-riot character (in contrast to modern Greece’s legacy of strikes and demonstrations with severe riots between protesters and the municipality police); and 3) the usage of new media, namely Facebook and Twitter for its organization, as well as, evolution. The daily rallies of the “indignant” citizens at Syntagma square, in the capital city of Athens, were the most vital ones due to the length and the massiveness of the movement.
During these rallies our research team conducted 100 face-to-face interviews with Syntagma square protesters. Hence, the central finding of our research is that the Greek movement of the “indignants” was not homogeneous. We distinguish among the “rank and file” protesters, those organizing the “general assembly” – the more politicized left-wing revolutionary perspective of the movement, and finally a salient number of participants inclining to the extreme right parties. Anti-party, anti-parliamentary, anti-democratic (from a right wing perspective) and to a great scale anti-capitalist sentiments belonged to the political discourse of the “indignants”. While rank and file protesters stood against the existing political parties and the political elites, those organizing the “general assembly” preferred a “referendum democracy”, rather than a parliamentary one. They acknowledged the current economic crisis as a general systemic crisis of capitalism and an opportunity for ruling elites to further expand their dominance, exploitation and profits. In addition, supporters of the extreme right stand stood against parliamentary democracy and the democratic system as a whole sighing for the remedies of the military coup era in Greece (“Junta” 1967-1974) as prosperous and ideal.
In this conference we will try to shed light on the evolution of massive “new-type” demonstrations in the contest of the severe European economic and systemic crisis. We focus on new trends of organization (social media) for social movements, as well as, on massiveness that might signify a more ideological diverse and to some extent even controversial protesting body. Thus, we elaborate on the convergences and divergences between the “indignants” citizens in respect to their political discourse. Taking this into account, we try to evaluate the validity of a mainstream public opinion according to which anti-parliamentary and anti-democratic sentiments became dominant among the protesters. Finally, this study focuses on the evolution of the Left within this new framework. This is to say that this study intends to examine how the Greek (and to some extend the European) Left tried to set itself in the core of a more massive and “of protesting nature” but shallow in a political level movement. In other words how the legacy of anti-capitalist forces intended to participate in a more vague social movement and to therefore “lead” it ideologically and set the path for a true political and social confrontation.
Steven C. Roach
Associate Professor of International Politics
Department of Government and International Affairs
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida
Situating Marxism within the Multicultural debate on Rights: Otto Bauer and the Socialist Implications of his Constitutional Initiative for the EU and African Union
It is widely believed that globalization has played an important role in fostering an increasing awareness of the plight of minorities and the need for a top-down program of cultural diversification. Yet, despite the integration of markets and increased foreign direct investment, globalization can also be treated as the cause of rising cultural tensions in many developed and developing countries. Theoretically, this points to how liberal multiculturalist theorists tend to downplay the role of class divisions within their conceptions of multicultural citizenship. This theoretical shortcoming raises a practical question: How does an equal distribution of economic and natural resources justify the expansion of national minority rights? In this paper, I address this question by situating the socialist ideas of Otto Bauer, an Austro-Marxist writing in the first half of the 20th century, within the broader practical framework of multicultural needs, equality, and rights. I argue that his theory effectively addresses the regressive consequences of special representational rights and globalization through his constitutional initiative aimed at promoting the equal rights of all minority groups. As such, I examine the relationship between a fair share of resources and secessionism and analyze the implications of Bauer’s constitutional initiative for the EU, specifically the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights and Social Cohesion Fund, and African Union law.
Anthony Rossodivito
Graduate student, Latin American History
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
The Struggle against Bandits: The Cuban Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1959-1963
The Cuban Revolution remains one of the most dynamic and inspiring political processes in the history of the developing world. For more than fifty years, the Cuban Revolution has survived almost constant attempts to derail it and turn back the clock to a time when foreign multinational corporations, organized crime and a former Cuban land-owning oligarchy held political power on the island. Though these efforts at destroying the Cuban Revolution on the part of the United States Government and the Miami-Based Cuban counter-revolutionaries are ongoing, it can be argued that the most explosive time period in this clandestine struggle stretched between the years of 1959-1963. In this period there was an invasion, multiple assassination attempts, sabotage, and acts of terrorism all perpetrated by different counter-revolutionary groups backed by the Central Intelligence Agency. This study will demonstrate the birth and evolution of one of these little known counter-revolutionary groups and their acts of aggression against the new Cuban Government and its people. Juxtaposed with the formation of this group, this project also describes the popular reforms of the Cuban Revolution and the mass-popular organizations of ordinary Cubans that successfully resisted that aggression.
Though this period of history is well documented, within academic circles in the United States, there is a lack of understanding of the popular nature of the Cuban Revolution. This project seeks to demonstrate two main ideas. One is how one of these counter-revolutionary groups known as the Commandos Mambises operated and how they can be viewed as a microcosm of the entirety of the U.S.-backed counter-revolution. This is the first time insider documentation on this group has been made available. The other is how unlike what is said in many academic circles, it was not simply mistakes on the part of Washington and the counter-revolutionaries that led the survival of the Cuban Revolution, but the popular nature of the movement and mass-organizations made up of ordinary Cubans that won the day. Most importantly this project seeks to return the Cuban people to their rightful place at the center of this amazing story of a clandestine struggle that they won very much in the open, giving the Cuban Revolution, true legitimacy. This is an amazing story of how mass-organizations made up of ordinary Cubans resisted aggression and terrorism.
Victor Silverman
Professor and Chair
Department of History
Pomona College
550 N. Harvard Ave.
Claremont, California
Obama's America: Who Governs?
Is the US moving to the left politically? After decades of conservative dominated politics, will it soon follow the model established by Latin American governing parties -- Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil -- of following a center-left path? To many commentators in the US media this shift seems to be the case--or at least would be. except that conservatives in Congress and state governments have created a political stalemate. Many commentators believe that Obama remains a man of the left, constrained from carrying out a left/liberal program by political forces beyond his control. In the realm of foreign policy the key evidence for this popular analysis flows from Obama's rhetoric --his call for the closing of the Guantanamo Bay Prison for example--and his plan for withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan. This paper raises questions about this analysis and suggests an alternative explanation of what to expect for the US in the next few years, an explanation based not on rhetoric but rather on an interpretation of how power actually operates in the US. The gap between the policy style and the substance of actions in the first Obama Administration is so far being duplicated in the second. US Foreign policy under Obama has differed in rhetoric but not in substance from the mainstream of US actions historically and has much more in common with George Bush's administration than many had hoped. The reasons for this continuity in both foreign and domestic policy, lie not only with the power of conservative politicians, but also with the nature of political rule in the United States. This paper will explore the interaction of the Obama administration with a "parallel system of power" in the United States that structures how the government operates. It concludes that the reasons the US is not moving left is both political and structural.
Troy Vettese
Ph. D. candidate, Modern European History
New York University
Greening Marx and Reddening Environmental History: Towards an Eco-Marxist Theory and History
Environmental historians seem to be searching for new means of synthesis for their sprawling sub-field, for example, there is much interest in the ‘Anthropocene’ as a concept that could provide a new meta-narrative. I argue that the Anthropocene and other suggested frameworks lack the rigor and profundity necessary for this task. Instead, I suggest a ‘Left turn’ for the field as the rigor of Marxist thinking can do much to provide structure and open new avenues of research for environmental historians. Furthermore, this would build upon an existing tradition of eco-Marxism within environmental historiography. Classics of the field, including William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis, Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature, and Donald Worster’s The Dust Bowl, were either were inspired or relied heavily upon a Marxist framework. In this paper, I will first review the frameworks are result provided by these three authors. Then I will summarise the works done by Marxists on environmental themes, including theorists from past generations, such as Karl Polyani and Karl Marx, to more recent thinkers, especially: David Harvey, John Bellamy Foster, Alfred Schmidt, and Otto Ullrich. In the last section, I will sketch how concepts from these thinkers could reshape topics studied by environmental historians.
Matthew C. Wilson
NSF Graduate Fellow
Pennsylvania State University
Department of Political Science
214 Pond Lab
University Park, Pennsylvania
[email protected]
Militarism and Dual-conflict Capacity
How is the relationship between domestic and interstate conflict moderated by institutional choice? Much literature discusses the relationship of domestic political institutions to interstate war and to civil war. Tying the empirical results of scholars of conflict studies is the finding that military dictatorships are more likely to fight both interstate and intrastate conflicts. Compared to other regimes, military regimes lack a broad societal front and therefore have a comparative advantage over the use of force. Compared to other regime types, however, they are also more fragile, because of their narrow bargaining range with societal actors and low levels of institutionalization. Thus, an unexplored question is the extent to which such regimes are prepared to initiate disputes or defend themselves internationally, in the presence of domestic conflict. What is the institutional feasibility of fighting international conflicts and domestic conflicts at the same time? I argue that the effects of domestic problems on international relations differ between regimes. Certain regimes--such as militarist regimes--are particularly ill-suited for handling multiple conflicts. I conduct an analysis of interstate dispute likelihood, controlling for levels of domestic armed conflict. I demonstrate that military dictators are more likely to use force, but that they are less likely to fight multi-level conflicts. Contributions of this study cover conflict and institutional choice, speaking to conflict theory, international dynamics, and the relationship between domestic and foreign policies. It combines theories on the determinants of interstate and intrastate conflict, thus regarding threats to institutions from above and below.
Mike Zapp
Universidad Koblenz-Landau
Facultad de Educación
[email protected]
La integración social en América Latina: Más profunda y más conflictiva?
El autor observe una integración regional latinoamericana intensificada desde la década pasada. Esta profundización se manifiesta en el interés creciente en la gestión transfronteriza de áreas de política que salen de los campos de actuación clásicos como son el libre comercio y la migración. Entre las más recientes iniciativas se puede identificar una incipiente política social en la región. A estos nuevos esfuerzos comunes, a menudo empujados por los actores gubernamentales, se juntan además nuevos actores como los bancos de desarrollo regionales y las agencias de desarrollo nacionales. En estas redes de “governance” transnacional cada vez más complejas emergen discursos teoréticos sobre la integración regional social que reflejan a veces conflictos ideológicos profundos, pero también una unanimidad en abundancia sorprendente. Poniendo el ejemplo de áreas de política educativa y de empleo, el autor compara las posiciones emergentes de las organizaciones regionales gubernamentales como la Organization of Eastern Carribbean States (OECS), el Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA), la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA), la Caribbean Community (CARICOM), la Comunidad Andina (CAN) y la Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA). Además se considera el creciente peso del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BIAD) y de la Agencia Brasiliera de Cooperación (ABC) en cuestiones sociales y educativas de la región. Pese a algunas variaciones ideológicas, el discurso analizado muestro una gran homogeneidad y refleja cambios culturales mundiales más amplios.
Professor of Political Science
University of the Philippines
Manila
US-ROTATIONAL FORCES IN THE PHILIPPINES: THE PHILIPPINE PERSPECTIVE ON US TWISTS, TURNS AND PIVOT IN ASIA
As a world superpower, the US does not hide its renewed interest in the Asia Pacific Region where it plans to strengthen its presence and forces. Notwithstanding the proposed US$500 billion defense cut in its 2013 budget, the US plans to increase its naval forces in Asia Pacific by 10%, a considerable increase from the current level of 50% to a desired level of 60%. Such consolidation of forces would be effected through deployment of more warships, submarines and troops in the region by 2020.
Being the former colony and strong ally of US, the Philippines has started negotiating for the terms, conditions and mechanics of US rotational forces in the country under the framework of Mutual Defense Treaty between the two nations. In its initial decision to allow US military forces to have access on a rotational basis to many if not all of its military bases including the former US military bases in Subic, Zambales and Clark, Pampanga, the Philippine government thinks that it would get additional US support in modernizing its armed forces and in counterbalancing any threats to its territorial integrity.
In view of this contemporary issue, this paper seeks to analyze its international dynamics and provide insights on its global implications by focusing on the Philippine perspective particularly the considerations, motivations and actions behind the twists, turns and pivot of US in Asia.
Alan Alanís
Texas State University
The Cosmic Latin American Race and its Mystical Global Citizenship
In 1925, José Vasconcelos, mexican academic, philosopher, Secretary of Public Education and candidate to the presidency of his country wrote the essay “The Cosmic Race” which expressed the ideology that different races from worldwide crowded in Latin America to generate what he called “the cosmic race”. Vasconcelos procured to raise cultural moral of the Latin American race which he considered oppressed and devaluated. In this paper I make an analysis of Vasconcelos´s essay. Furthermore I propose with solid bases a respect to patriotism leaving behind nationalist fanaticism and promoting a positive Latin American identity and global citizenship.
Andrew Apter
Professor of History and Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Shango’s Wrath and the New Materialism: Critical Methodologies from the Global South
Conventional Western epistemologies hold knowledge to higher standards than belief. If knowledge-claims must be falsifiable, we can nonetheless maintain irrational beliefs in the face of logical or empirical refutation; for example, we can believe that 2 + 2 = 5, or that the earth is flat, even when such propositions are patently false. What happens when we reverse this hierarchy of constraints, allowing us to know something that we do not believe? What kinds of truth-conditions govern such knowledge-claims, and with what methodological consequences for the social sciences?
In this paper I explore these questions by reflecting on my fieldwork among the Yoruba in Nigeria, where my western understanding of knowledge and belief was radically challenged. Making sense of a disastrous research experience caused by the violation of a ritual taboo, I reflect on how I attributed causal agency to Shango, a Yoruba orisha (deity), despite my epistemological materialism and resolute atheism. In brief, how did my understanding come to resonate so quickly with the collective dispositions of the Yoruba community in which I lived and worked? How did I come to “know” something that I did not (and do not) believe, and what is the epistemological status of such knowledge? The answer involves a radical rethinking of distributed agency, one that combines the social organization of cognitive dispositions with “the new materialism” in the philosophy of the social sciences, generating critical methodologies from the global South.
Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado
University of Nebraska Omaha
"Paradox of American Power in the 21st Century: Implications for Inter-American Relations."
This presentation will focus on the domestic incongruities of the American political and economic system and its affect and influence on US policy in Latin America. It is a critical perspective on the U.S. foreign policy apparatus and seeks to illuminate and offer insights on the analysis of U.S. prerogatives and actions in the Western hemisphere. Specifically, with reference to Richard Haass, Joseph Stiglitz and others, I argue that internal developments are eroding the foundations of U.S. power, including a prolonged debt crisis, a deteriorating infrastructure, second class schools, a broken immigration system, and, the poor long-term prospects for economic growth. These deficiencies are a direct threat to America’s ability to project power and influence internationally, to compete in the global marketplace, to generate the resources (intellectual, political and social) needed to maintain its interests abroad, and to set a compelling example of what will influence the thinking and behavior of others in the 21st century. It is to say that the ability of the US to act and lead in the world is diminishing owing largely to what the economist Jeffrey Sachs has termed a “crisis of values” directly emanating from the abovementioned internal developments. Finally, the presentation will detail the implications for Inter-American relations as they relate to the regional interests for economic growth, social development and political stability.
Ben Burgis
Philosophy Department
University of Miami
Rawls, Nozick and the Bolivarian Revolution
John Rawls was probably the most important Anglophone political philosopher of the 20th century. According to his theory of justice, economic inequalities are only justifiable if (a) the more privileged positions are open to everyone under conditions of equal opportunity, and (b) the people in less privileged positions are still better off than they would be in a more equal society. One of Rawls' most important critics was the right-wing libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who argued that inequalities could be morally permissible even if they failed to satisfy these conditions. Nozick thought that *any* distribution of wealth, no matter how severely unequal, could be just if it arose in an appropriately just manner. I will examine the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela in light of these theories. It will be relatively easy to show that the measures taken under the leadership of Hugo Chavez to redistribute the country's oil wealth for the benefit of workers and the poor can be justified in the terms of Rawls' theory. More surprisingly and controversially, I will show that this conclusion stands *even if *Nozick's criticisms of Rawls are correct. After all, the extreme levels of economic inequality that characterized pre-Bolivarian Venezuela arose from circumstances that even Nozick would find unjust. As such, I argue that the Bolivarian process would be just (according to *either* of the two theories in question) even if it deepened and continued in a much more robustly anti-capitalist direction.
Xavier CALMETTES
Laboratorio científico del CREDAL
Paris III- Sorbonne-Nouvelle
Francia
Corrupción y democracia formal en Cuba (1944-1952): Un método de control de una sociedad en crisis
La corrupción administrativa es uno de los más graves problemas que conoce la sociedad cubana en los años cuarenta y cincuenta. El soborno no es un fenómeno sui generis sino un proceso consciente de la élite cubana de esta época en su afán de encontrar un método de control de una sociedad que desea un cambio de las estructuras del poder.
El partido Auténtico logra tomar las riendas de la nación después del triunfo de las elecciones de 1944 gracias a la retórica revolucionaria de su jefe: Grau San Martín. Sin embargo, después de las elecciones, el programa de Grau no es implementado, y el Jefe de Estado pierde el sostén de las masas. Es justamente, en esta época, que numerosos grupos armados aparecen, y que la corrupción se torna aún mas intensa que antes. Incapaces de cambiar las estructuras económicas de la sociedad, los hombres políticos recurren a la violencia de los grupos de acción para eliminar a sus adversarios y hacer creer en un cambio político real. En realidad, llevan a cabo una política económica similar a la aplicada por Batista durante su primer mandato (1940-1944). De hecho, varios grupos de acción como el MSR de Rolando Masferrer o empresarios vinculados a los auténticos como Amadeo Barletta Barletta o Amleto Batisti se convierten en pilares del régimen del 10 de marzo. Nuestra presentación se propone explicar en qué la corrupción fue un método de control de la sociedad cubana de los años 40 y por qué, en Cuba, los fracasos de los gobiernos auténticos favorecieron la emergencia de un movimiento revolucionario.
Breve bibliografía temática :
- AGUIAR RODRÍGUEZ, Raúl, El bonchismo y el gangsterismo en Cuba, La Habana, Ed. Ciencias Sociales, 2000.
- CIRCULES, Enrique, El imperio de La Habana : la mafia en Cuba, Madrid, Ed. Chavín, 2008.
- DE LA OSA, Enrique, En Cuba : Primer tiempo 1943-1946, La Habana, Ed. Ciencias Sociales, 1990.
- DE LA OSA, Enrique, En Cuba : Primer tiempo 1947-1948, La Habana, Ed. Ciencias Sociales, 2004.
- LÓPEZ ROJAS, Luis, La mafia en Puerto Rico : las caras ocultas del subdesarrollo (1940-1972), San Juan (Porto Rico), Isla Negra, 2010
- VÁSQUEZ GARCÍA, Humberto, El gobierno de la Kubanidad, Santiago de Cuba, Ed. Oriente, 2005.
- VIGNIER, Enrique, ALONSO, Guillermo, La corrupción política y administrativa en Cuba: 1944-1952, La Habana, Instituto Cubano del Libro,
Annie Dandavati
Professor and Chair of Political Science
Director of International Studies
Hope College
Holland, Michigan
Transitional politics and democratization
The purpose of this paper will be to expand on existing research in transitional politics and democratization. Several Latin American countries have negotiated sharply contested transitions to civilian governments after periods of military government. The existing literature is replete with examples of how these transitions have been accomplished and the manner in which the project of democratization continues. I will examine political changes in Egypt in light of these experiences. Egypt captured center stage with a very dramatic and peaceful transition of power with the Tahrir Uprising. It accomplished a transition from the Mubarak regime to some sort of limited democracy (or at least that is what was hoped). In my paper I will look at the period of political, economic and social transition that ensured in post-Mubarak Egyptian society. I will examine the political landscape consisting of the fragmented secular opposition groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the military, and women. In this constantly changing scenario, the presentation will focus on various political actors, electoral politics, the new Egyptian constitution, and the results of the elections. The paper will end with an assessment of the status of women in this rapidly changing society and consider the question whether the transition has opened opportunities for women’s participation or created further challenges.
Antoine Dolcerocca, PhD candidate in shared supervision at SUNY-Binghamton (sociology) and Université Paris 13 (economics).
The Commons as Alternative to Intellectual Property Monopolies? A Critique of Current Left Literature.
This paper aims to explore the fast expanding literature on the ‘commons’ as it relates to intellectual property for pharmaceuticals. In civil society, we have recently seen interesting endeavors a) to circumvent the current global intellectual property regime, with the mass production of generic drugs in some countries of the South, and b) to expand the reach of the public domain in matters of health, with NGOs researching drugs for neglected tropical diseases and releasing data on newly developed chemical compounds in the public domain. Although these reformist policies often imply significant short term improvements for public health in the South, these institutional arrangements are merely quick fixes to so-called ‘market failures’ and fall short of putting into question the existence of intellectual property monopolies and the vast South-North value transfer they enable. This issue is usually overlooked by a number of studies on the commons, in which we can distinguish two trends: first the Indiana school (Elinor Ostrom, Charlotte Hess, etc.) which advocates, under specific circumstances, for ‘commons’ as islands of common property regimes, only when this institutional arrangement organizes resource management more efficiently (in terms of production or allocation) than private property or other regimes. Another trend (David Bollier, Michael Bauwens, Silke Helfrich) points to the growing influence of the commons and analyzes it as a sign of a volte-face, in so far as it represents a reversal of the massive wave of privatization of the last 35 years and an alternative to the market/state duopoly. This paper aims at examining the successes and failures of these two important contributions to a leftist critique of intellectual property rights, through a study of related social movements and theoretical considerations.
Justin Felux
Graduate student
University of Texas at San Antonio
From Iron Girls to Little Flowers: Capitalism and the Resurgence of Patriarchy in China
This paper uses a Marxist methodological framework to analyze the changing status of women in the People’s Republic of China from its founding to today. Most Western political scholarship on the Maoist period in China operates under the “totalitarian model,” which portrays the masses of Chinese workers as hapless victims of an all-powerful dictator rather than historical agents in their own right. To counter this view, I employ a wide variety of primary sources to show that the Chinese revolution resulted in remarkable social and material gains for women, especially during the Cultural Revolution. With the establishment of Chinese socialism, new possibilities emerged for women in terms of organizing labor time, balancing work with child rearing, and getting equal pay for equal work. However, in the past three decades, China has pursued aggressive economic reforms geared toward the exploitation of free markets and capitalism. As a result, many of the pathologies of the “old society” are returning with force. The revival of traditional Confucian values, the beauty industry, plastic surgeries, and job discrimination are eroding the gains made by women in the Cultural Revolution. The conclusion my paper suggests that women’s liberation can be attained in a much more powerful way when linked to class struggle. Capitalism erodes the status of women, or at best pushes women into an upwardly-mobile, bourgeois kind of feminism that has little relevance to women in the Global South.
Jeremy Friedman
Associate Director
Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy
Lecturer, History Department
Yale University
La Vía Pacifica versus Class Warfare: Allende’s Chile and the Sino-Soviet Split
The years of the Unidad Popular government led by Salvador Allende in Chile were perhaps the closest the world came during the Cold War to seeing what a non-violent, democratic transition to Marxist socialism might look like. While this fascinating episode has certainly not been neglected by historians it has generally been treated from one of two perspectives, either solely in terms of domestic Chilean politics with a view towards the Pinochet dictatorship that succeeded it, or as an exercise in American imperialism. While these aspects are important, they tell us little about the interactions between the Unidad Popular experiment and other socialist movements and states around the world, thereby obscuring the importance of this episode for the ideology and practice of socialism. This paper seeks to examine precisely these connections between the complicated politics within the government and elsewhere on the Chilean Left and the politics of international socialism, particularly the Sino-Soviet split, using newly available archival sources from Russia, Germany, and Chile. I argue that the divisions between the Soviet Union and China represented organic and necessary struggles over issues central to the process of adapting Marxism to different economic and political contexts around the world, in particular in the developing and post-colonial world. Consequently, these divisions found echoes within the Unidad Popular coalition. While the divisions within the coalition might not have been fatal to the government on their own, their resonance with the dispute between the Soviet Union and China, led to both a deficit of international support and greater recriminations and distrust within the government, particularly between the Socialist and Communist parties. Given the determined opposition of the Nixon administration it is impossible to be certain that any government led by Allende in Chile could have remained in power for long, but it would have stood a much better chance in a situation of unity on the Left inside and outside Chile.
Professor Vasil Gluchman
UNESCO Chair in Bioethics
Institute of Philosophy and Ethics
University of Presov
Slovakia
[email protected]
Ethical and moral issues of slovak politics at the beginning of the 21st century
In this paper, I am going to deal with analysis of areas of ethical and moral issues which, recently (especially at the beginning of the 21st century), to a greater or lesser extent, stirred Slovak public opinion and attracted the significant attention of media. I mean especially issues concerning conscience and conscientious objection, national and universal moral values, ethics of government, and (im)morality of the MPs allowance. Regardless of individual problems I am going to contemplate, I consider their nature most important, as all four issues relate to problems or questions with universal validity, or a form which concerns values, including moral values of Slovak society and politics, or political representation. It does not matter where they took place, what exactly happened, who was the active subject or object. However, it can be stated that, in various forms, they can be found in the past as well as the present age, they were described in works of historians, as well as in belles-lettres (such as H. de Balzac, C. Dickens and many other authors), they can be found in present Slovakia, and also in Poland, the Czech Republic and other parts of the world.
Marta Gluchmanova, Ph.D.
Department of Humanities
Technical university of Kosice
Bayerova 1, Presov
Slovakia
Reflection on Dewey’s Philosophy of Education
I would like to research Dewey’s philosophy of education and its values in context of contemporary debates. Dewey pointed out many educational problems which are topical also nowadays (in Slovakia too). Education tends to socialize its members. Dewey focuses especially on the quality and value of the socialization which depends upon the habits and goals of the group. According to him, to have a large number of common values, it is necessary to offer to all the members of the group an equal opportunity to receive them. The commitment of society to education is a familiar fact. For the reason it is necessary to build connections among teachers, schools, parents, families and society. Dewey emphasizes necessity to look upon such moral values like honesty, loyalty, perseverance, amiability, as moral goods and also some rules for other values – balance, harmony, etc. They are very important as norms or criteria of judging the benefit of new experiences that parents and teachers are usually want to teach them to the youth. Values provide the norms and models that guide us to satisfaction and meaning. Dewey’s philosophy of education is expressive about the duty of the teacher in moral education of students. He emphasized the influence of intellectual environment the minds of young generation.
Jeffrey E. Green,
Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
Liberalism and the Problem of Plutocracy
Liberal values like non-violence and neutrality have undergone significant philosophical critique in recent years as many have argued that while these values may be more or less realizable, they are not absolutely so: the so-called paradox of founding means that even well-ordered liberal democratic states may be rooted in founding moments of violence and illegality, and some have made the claim that so-called neutral liberal discourse (i.e., public reason) is inescapably culturally-biased. What has faced less critique and analysis is the liberal ideal of a space of political equality uninfected by economic inequality. While there is substantial debate about how well given societies realize certain basic liberal norms like fair equality of opportunity (the principle that similarly talented and motivated children have roughly equal prospects of success in life) and the fair value of the political liberties (the principle that similarly talented and motivated citizens have roughly equal prospects of influencing elections), the notion that these values are in principle fully realizable—and not necessarily limited by economic inequality in civil society—has gone largely unquestioned. That is to say, the problem of plutocracy—conceived not so much as the coordinated rule of moneyed interests, as the power of inequalities in wealth to undermine equality of opportunity with regard to education and politics—has been downplayed either as no problem at all, or as a problem that might be satisfactorily corrected through social reform. Against this, I argue that plutocracy is in some sense inescapable, at least so long as institutions like the family and private property exist.
Chris Hesketh
Oxford Brookes University
UK
Dr. Adam David Morton
Associate Professor of Political Economy
Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
School of Politics and International Relations
University of Nottingham
Nottingham
Spaces of Uneven Development and Class Struggle in Bolivia: transformation or trasformismo?
This paper delivers a focus on class struggles in Bolivia, linking with one of the main themes of the conference in addressing the meaning of socialism in the twenty-first century in Latin America. Our paper engages with the politics of class struggle and state formation in modern Bolivia to examine how current forms of political contestation through the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) are shaped by the legacy of the Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent path of development. In so doing, we therefore explore spaces of uneven and combined development in relation to ongoing transformations in Bolivia linked to emergent class strategies of passive revolution, drawing from Antonio Gramsci. Passive revolution refers to processes of historical development marked by the overall exclusion of subaltern classes. With this in mind we argue that state formation in Bolivia can be read as part of the history of passive revolution in Latin America within the spatial conditions of uneven and combined development shaping the geopolitics of the region. However, the expansion of passive revolution in Bolivia as a mode of historical development has been and continues to be rigorously contested by subaltern forces creating further spaces of class struggle.
Dr, Tushar Eknath Jagtap
Dermatologist
Student of International Studies
University of Mumbai
INDIA
SUBALTERN IN INDIA: THE ROLE OF B.R. AMBEDKAR IN MODERN INDIA
The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship of B.R. Ambedkar’s (Economist, social Reformer, Constitutionalist, Political Thinker and revitalizer of Buddhism in India) immense contribution in uplifting the lives of subaltern classes in Indian sub-continent and to study the common thread running between ethos of Latin Americas and India.
Today the entire world is in a state of flux. Arab uprising, Occupy Wall Street, Economic crisis, Terrorism, Proliferation of Nuclear weapons, Global warming, crisis of morality and the struggle between prevailing dominant, oppressive global powers and indigenous spirits of subaltern people and their leadership in Latin America, Africa and Asia is going to be major points of contentions in near future.
There is a need to invoke the work of nation builders from these continents who struggled against injustice, inequalities and bestowed the path of justice, Rights, peace and progress for all the oppressed, suppressed, depressed, servile and tyrannized masses of people.
As this new political science conference seeks to find the answers for humanities in 21st century, one can dare to put forward the concept of 21st century being the century of subaltern classes, cultures and ideologies.
The rise of Subaltern India and rest of the world is an indicator of the forthcoming global order and ideal society envisioned by B.R. Ambedkar.
Uskali Mäki
University of Helsinki
[email protected]
Scientific imperialism: The good, the bad, and the ugly
‘Scientific imperialism’ is a term with multiple meanings and multiple normative associations. In order to proceed in normatively assessing it, one must first identify its relevant versions. Each version is likely to require its own appropriate set of normative criteria, and so a merely pejorative usage of the term is not compelled a priori (cf the contrasting views in Clarke & Walsh 2009, and Mäki 2009, 2013). [1] The first family of versions considers imperialism as an interdisciplinary relationship. One scientific discipline (eg physics, neuroscience, economics) makes intrusions into the domains and/or disciplinary practices of other scientific disciplines. Perhaps the most famous of these is economics imperialism: economic models and methods are increasingly applied beyond the traditional boundaries of economics to the domains of law, political science, sociology, even biology. In some cases this has consequences for the disciplinary conventions and practices in these receiving fields, replacing or modifying them. The appropriate criteria for normatively assessing such intrusions are the normal standards for judging scientific quality, those pertaining to ontology and epistemology (including, importantly, social epistemology that deals with the institutions of scientific practice). [2] The second family of versions is based on ways in which science may dominate our social lives, ways in which it may be seen and used as a privileged source of understanding and problem-solving capacity – at the expense of commonsense views, religions, political ideologies, etc. The notion of ‘scientism’ is often linked to these observations. Again, no a priori and merely negative judgement will be advisable. This is evident when considering recently emerged forms of ‘extra-academic transdisciplinarity’ that seek to combine the cognitive and practical contributions of scientific and extra-scientific agents. The latter may range widely, from indigenous people to multinational business corporations. Not all extraacademic interests serve the goals of scientific and moral improvement equally well. [3] Other versions involve geographical and geopolitical aspects. These include the exportation and importation of theories and styles of scientific inquiry dominant in the “North” to the universities in the “South”, and the exploitative use of poorly protected populations in the South by globally powerful medical companies as subjects for testing their newly designed drugs. Again, the standards of evaluation must be adjusted to the characteristics of such types of case.
- Clarke, Steven, and Adrian Walsh. 2009. Scientific imperialism and the proper relations between the sciences. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23: 195–207.
- Mäki, Uskali (2009) “Economics imperialism: Concept and constraints”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 39 (3), 351-380.
- Mäki, Uskali (2013) “Scientific imperialism: Difficulties of definition, identification and assessment”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science
Charles McKelvey
Professor Emeritus
Presbyterian College
Clinton, South Carolina
The Unfinished Revolution of 1968
A revolution seeks to take power, either through armed struggle or electoral means, and to substitute a political class that represents bourgeois or corporate interests with an alternative political leadership that would seek to govern in the interests of the popular classes and sectors. The world-wide popular social movements of the late 1960s, which reached their peak in 1968, were characterized by both reformist and revolutionary tendencies. The diverse expressions included the concept of the taking of power by a vanguard that would represent the interests of the people.
The paper analyzes the currents of thought in the US manifestation of the revolution, focusing on anti-imperialist concepts in the black and anti-war movements. And it analyzes the contradictions and errors that contributed to the demise of the revolution by 1972, facilitating the restoration of the conservative agenda in 1979.
The paper maintains that current global conditions make possible and necessary a renewal of the Revolution of 1968 in the United States. These conditions include: the systemic crisis of the world-system, which has been unfolding since the 1970s and which reveals the unsustainability of the capitalist world-economy; and the post-1995 renewal of popular anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World, a process that is especially advanced in Latin America.
The paper proposes a plan for the renewal of the US revolution: the formation of a vanguard capable of leading the people in an alternative project that seeks the taking of power. Given the current confused and backward ideological conditions in the United States, the formation of a vanguard will require ten or twenty years to accomplish.
The vanguard ought to have anti-imperialist consciousness, with knowledge of the structures of neocolonial domination. It ought to have sentiments of solidarity with the peoples of the Third World, and it ought to have knowledge of the revolutions that they have formed. And it ought to have the capacity to explain to the people of the United States that North-South cooperation is the best option for the people, given the challenges that humanity confronts.
The vanguard will need to have the capacity to analyze global and national problems and to propose solutions and projects in a form that would be able to obtain the support of the majority, overcoming the ideological distortions that have confused the people. It will be necessary to find a discourse that avoids unnecessary divisions among the people and focuses on the formation of a popular consensus in regard to basic themes, such the protection of the social and economic rights of all people in the nation and the world, the protection of the environment, and respect for the sovereignty of all nations.
Alan McPherson
University of Oklahoma
Regional Integration against U.S. Empire:
Lessons from U.S. Military Occupations, 1912-1934
The paper asks how Latin American opponents of United States military occupations in Nicaragua (1912-1933), Haiti (1915-1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) succeeded and/or failed in creating regional integration. The paper will argue that the occupations prompted, perhaps for the first time in a century in the Americas, a vision for regional integration, both in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and in the rest of Latin America, a vision that was particularly strong in socialist circles. The paper will also demonstrate, however, that some internal factors—and not only the external factor of U.S. empire—hindered the creation of an anti-occupation unity among the nations of the hemisphere. It will focus on the role that racism played as a divisive element. I have spent the last decade researching anti-occupation movements, in five countries and three languages, and can report findings that trace the anti-occupation movement in a transnational fashion, not only out of these three occupied countries but also in Mexico City, Santiago de Cuba, Paris, New York City, and elsewhere. I believe that these findings, which indicate both successes and failures in early-20th-century integration, may prove of interest to those seeking regional integration today.
Isabella Duarte Pinto Meucci
Master’s Student of Political Science
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Brasil
[email protected]
The Cuban Revolution and Leftist Thought in Latin America: The case of the Trotskyite Movement (1959-1974)
The victory of the Cuban revolutionaries opened up a new historical moment for the left thought in Latin America, in which stagist models of revolution propagated until then by the Communist parties were reviewed at the same time that innovations arose as to the methods and actors involved in the revolutionary process. In this sense, the Cuban Revolution represented a theorethical and specially practical change, characterizing political and ideological definitions of Latin-American leftists who had the influence of the Cuban revolutionary model as one of the defining elements of their political projects. It can be said that this event has modified the history of many countries in this continent, and probably the left thought in each of them has had a turning point in its trajectory after the 1st of January of 1959. Among the different analysis influenced by the Cuban experience, there is the case of the trotskyist movement, which suffered not only revisions in their theoretical elaborations but also changes in their ranks. To understand the impact of the Cuban Revolution in the case of the trotskyist movement, this article will seek initially to make a brief note on the Latin American Marxism. Then we will seek to understand the formation, consolidation and ruptures of the Latin-American trotskyism, which had two active organizations in this period: the Latin-American Bureau (Bureau Latino-Americano - BLA) and the Latin-American Orthodox Trotskyism Secretariat (Secretariado Latino-Americano do Trotskismo Ortodoxo - SLATO). Finally, we will analyze the specificities of each interpretation of the Cuban Revolution inside the trotskyist movement. For that we will highlight the main moments of assimilation of the revolutionary model with the purpose of identifying in which period the Cuban influence presents itself as decisive and when is its moment of decline.
G. Cristina Mora
Asst. Professor of Sociology
UC Berkeley
[email protected]
Latino Panethnic Social Movements in Spain
Scholars have examined the conditions under which Latin American migrants have consolidated to form panethnic, “Latino” and “Hispanic” movements in the United States. Many have argued that this inter-ethnic solidarity arises from a common cultural history and a shared, Spanish language which distinguishes migrants from the mainstream. Yet how do panethnic, Latino coalitions arise when language is not a basis for shared distinction? This paper examines this question by analyzing the rise of Latino, panethnic coalitions in Spain. Drawing on archival sources and interview data with panethnic leaders in Barcelona, the paper argues that Latino panethnic coalitions face an inherent tension between having to balance subgroup differences and generating a sense of panethnic solidarity. This tension leads to subgroup favoritism and fundamentally shapes panethnic agendas. Implications for the understanding of panethnic social movements and racial and ethnic politics are discussed.
Dr. Uchenna Okeja
Department of philosophy/
Excellence Cluster "Normative Orders"
Grüneburgplatz 1
Hauspostfach EXC-5
Frankfurt am Main
IS CONSENSUS NON-PARTY DEMOCRACY A POSTCOLONIAL IDEAL FOR POLITICAL THEORY?
A renowned postcolonial African intellectual, Kwasi Wiredu, has suggested that a consensus driven non-party democracy is a viable and desirable alternative to the commonplace majoritarian democracy made imperative by the existence of political parties. According to him, the system of democracy based on the majority principle cannot be the ideal political theory, especially for postcolonial societies, because of its limitations. In a majoritarian democracy, political parties, Wiredu underscores, are solely interested in gaining power. This kind of political system is thus flawed because it deprives minorities the right of representation in its decision. Due to this and other limitations of majoritarian democracy, Wiredu suggests that a consensual form of democracy, based on the intuitions of his Akan African background, is a more viable alternative to pursue.
In this presentation, the debates about Wiredu’s consensual democracy will be explored. The first task undertaken is to provide a summary of Wiredu’s thoughts on consensual democracy. This will be followed by an outline of the arguments of the main objections against his proposal, especially those developed by Chukwudi Eze and Bernard Matolino. I will argue that their criticisms do not present enough grounds to disprove the viability of consensus democracy. My arguments will show how consensus democracy is a viable alternative political theory to majoritarian democracy due to its emphasis on getting the populace to “agree to a decision” rather than to identify completely with the decision.
Hannes Peltonen, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Lapland
PO Box 122
96101 Rovaniemi
FINLAND
Democracy, sorites puzzle, and conceptual boundaries
Language not only describes, but it also ascribes, structures and constructs the world around us. Meaning is constructed through the concepts we employ as well as how those concepts are delineated from others. Linguistics and cognitive psychology have abandoned classic theories of concepts that considered them as definitions, which is something that other fields should do as well. Modern linguistic theories consider that concepts have fuzzy boundaries. Yet, this paper argues that concepts do not "possess" fuzzy boundaries. Rather, at stake is the continuous re-drawing of conceptual boundaries in the act of giving meaning.
The paper illustrates the importance of this insight with the example of measuring democracy. Often, democracy measurement is based on the idea of a conceptual spectrum, whose one end is an ideal democracy and the other end is ideal autocracy. Allegedly, all states can be plotted along this spectrum. Yet, the very use of a conceptual spectrum like this results in a paradox. The paper suggests how to avoid that paradox.
Constantinos Pierides, PhD candidate
Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
Athens, Greece
Anti-Party, Anti-Parliamentary or Anti-Democratic Social Movements? The “Indignant” Citizens of Greece
Research team: Vassiliki Georgiadou, Associate Professor of Political Science, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens/Greece, Spyridoula Nezi, Phd candidate, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Anastasia Kafe, PhD candidate, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Constantinos Pierides, PhD candidate, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
On May 25th 2011 Greek citizens were gathered in the central squares of the major Greek cities, thus constructing what will be on time be named as the “movement of the indignant citizens”. This movement was the citizen’s reactions to Greece’s agreement on the EU/IMF bailout package and the stiff austerity measures that followed. Even if it emerged from the European South (Spain and Greece) and mostly thrived in the country that experienced the most serious economic divergences (Greece), the European movement of the indignants shared some distinctive common features: 1) non-party mobilization; 2) peaceful, anti-riot character (in contrast to modern Greece’s legacy of strikes and demonstrations with severe riots between protesters and the municipality police); and 3) the usage of new media, namely Facebook and Twitter for its organization, as well as, evolution. The daily rallies of the “indignant” citizens at Syntagma square, in the capital city of Athens, were the most vital ones due to the length and the massiveness of the movement.
During these rallies our research team conducted 100 face-to-face interviews with Syntagma square protesters. Hence, the central finding of our research is that the Greek movement of the “indignants” was not homogeneous. We distinguish among the “rank and file” protesters, those organizing the “general assembly” – the more politicized left-wing revolutionary perspective of the movement, and finally a salient number of participants inclining to the extreme right parties. Anti-party, anti-parliamentary, anti-democratic (from a right wing perspective) and to a great scale anti-capitalist sentiments belonged to the political discourse of the “indignants”. While rank and file protesters stood against the existing political parties and the political elites, those organizing the “general assembly” preferred a “referendum democracy”, rather than a parliamentary one. They acknowledged the current economic crisis as a general systemic crisis of capitalism and an opportunity for ruling elites to further expand their dominance, exploitation and profits. In addition, supporters of the extreme right stand stood against parliamentary democracy and the democratic system as a whole sighing for the remedies of the military coup era in Greece (“Junta” 1967-1974) as prosperous and ideal.
In this conference we will try to shed light on the evolution of massive “new-type” demonstrations in the contest of the severe European economic and systemic crisis. We focus on new trends of organization (social media) for social movements, as well as, on massiveness that might signify a more ideological diverse and to some extent even controversial protesting body. Thus, we elaborate on the convergences and divergences between the “indignants” citizens in respect to their political discourse. Taking this into account, we try to evaluate the validity of a mainstream public opinion according to which anti-parliamentary and anti-democratic sentiments became dominant among the protesters. Finally, this study focuses on the evolution of the Left within this new framework. This is to say that this study intends to examine how the Greek (and to some extend the European) Left tried to set itself in the core of a more massive and “of protesting nature” but shallow in a political level movement. In other words how the legacy of anti-capitalist forces intended to participate in a more vague social movement and to therefore “lead” it ideologically and set the path for a true political and social confrontation.
Steven C. Roach
Associate Professor of International Politics
Department of Government and International Affairs
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida
Situating Marxism within the Multicultural debate on Rights: Otto Bauer and the Socialist Implications of his Constitutional Initiative for the EU and African Union
It is widely believed that globalization has played an important role in fostering an increasing awareness of the plight of minorities and the need for a top-down program of cultural diversification. Yet, despite the integration of markets and increased foreign direct investment, globalization can also be treated as the cause of rising cultural tensions in many developed and developing countries. Theoretically, this points to how liberal multiculturalist theorists tend to downplay the role of class divisions within their conceptions of multicultural citizenship. This theoretical shortcoming raises a practical question: How does an equal distribution of economic and natural resources justify the expansion of national minority rights? In this paper, I address this question by situating the socialist ideas of Otto Bauer, an Austro-Marxist writing in the first half of the 20th century, within the broader practical framework of multicultural needs, equality, and rights. I argue that his theory effectively addresses the regressive consequences of special representational rights and globalization through his constitutional initiative aimed at promoting the equal rights of all minority groups. As such, I examine the relationship between a fair share of resources and secessionism and analyze the implications of Bauer’s constitutional initiative for the EU, specifically the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights and Social Cohesion Fund, and African Union law.
Anthony Rossodivito
Graduate student, Latin American History
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
The Struggle against Bandits: The Cuban Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1959-1963
The Cuban Revolution remains one of the most dynamic and inspiring political processes in the history of the developing world. For more than fifty years, the Cuban Revolution has survived almost constant attempts to derail it and turn back the clock to a time when foreign multinational corporations, organized crime and a former Cuban land-owning oligarchy held political power on the island. Though these efforts at destroying the Cuban Revolution on the part of the United States Government and the Miami-Based Cuban counter-revolutionaries are ongoing, it can be argued that the most explosive time period in this clandestine struggle stretched between the years of 1959-1963. In this period there was an invasion, multiple assassination attempts, sabotage, and acts of terrorism all perpetrated by different counter-revolutionary groups backed by the Central Intelligence Agency. This study will demonstrate the birth and evolution of one of these little known counter-revolutionary groups and their acts of aggression against the new Cuban Government and its people. Juxtaposed with the formation of this group, this project also describes the popular reforms of the Cuban Revolution and the mass-popular organizations of ordinary Cubans that successfully resisted that aggression.
Though this period of history is well documented, within academic circles in the United States, there is a lack of understanding of the popular nature of the Cuban Revolution. This project seeks to demonstrate two main ideas. One is how one of these counter-revolutionary groups known as the Commandos Mambises operated and how they can be viewed as a microcosm of the entirety of the U.S.-backed counter-revolution. This is the first time insider documentation on this group has been made available. The other is how unlike what is said in many academic circles, it was not simply mistakes on the part of Washington and the counter-revolutionaries that led the survival of the Cuban Revolution, but the popular nature of the movement and mass-organizations made up of ordinary Cubans that won the day. Most importantly this project seeks to return the Cuban people to their rightful place at the center of this amazing story of a clandestine struggle that they won very much in the open, giving the Cuban Revolution, true legitimacy. This is an amazing story of how mass-organizations made up of ordinary Cubans resisted aggression and terrorism.
Victor Silverman
Professor and Chair
Department of History
Pomona College
550 N. Harvard Ave.
Claremont, California
Obama's America: Who Governs?
Is the US moving to the left politically? After decades of conservative dominated politics, will it soon follow the model established by Latin American governing parties -- Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil -- of following a center-left path? To many commentators in the US media this shift seems to be the case--or at least would be. except that conservatives in Congress and state governments have created a political stalemate. Many commentators believe that Obama remains a man of the left, constrained from carrying out a left/liberal program by political forces beyond his control. In the realm of foreign policy the key evidence for this popular analysis flows from Obama's rhetoric --his call for the closing of the Guantanamo Bay Prison for example--and his plan for withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan. This paper raises questions about this analysis and suggests an alternative explanation of what to expect for the US in the next few years, an explanation based not on rhetoric but rather on an interpretation of how power actually operates in the US. The gap between the policy style and the substance of actions in the first Obama Administration is so far being duplicated in the second. US Foreign policy under Obama has differed in rhetoric but not in substance from the mainstream of US actions historically and has much more in common with George Bush's administration than many had hoped. The reasons for this continuity in both foreign and domestic policy, lie not only with the power of conservative politicians, but also with the nature of political rule in the United States. This paper will explore the interaction of the Obama administration with a "parallel system of power" in the United States that structures how the government operates. It concludes that the reasons the US is not moving left is both political and structural.
Troy Vettese
Ph. D. candidate, Modern European History
New York University
Greening Marx and Reddening Environmental History: Towards an Eco-Marxist Theory and History
Environmental historians seem to be searching for new means of synthesis for their sprawling sub-field, for example, there is much interest in the ‘Anthropocene’ as a concept that could provide a new meta-narrative. I argue that the Anthropocene and other suggested frameworks lack the rigor and profundity necessary for this task. Instead, I suggest a ‘Left turn’ for the field as the rigor of Marxist thinking can do much to provide structure and open new avenues of research for environmental historians. Furthermore, this would build upon an existing tradition of eco-Marxism within environmental historiography. Classics of the field, including William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis, Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature, and Donald Worster’s The Dust Bowl, were either were inspired or relied heavily upon a Marxist framework. In this paper, I will first review the frameworks are result provided by these three authors. Then I will summarise the works done by Marxists on environmental themes, including theorists from past generations, such as Karl Polyani and Karl Marx, to more recent thinkers, especially: David Harvey, John Bellamy Foster, Alfred Schmidt, and Otto Ullrich. In the last section, I will sketch how concepts from these thinkers could reshape topics studied by environmental historians.
Matthew C. Wilson
NSF Graduate Fellow
Pennsylvania State University
Department of Political Science
214 Pond Lab
University Park, Pennsylvania
[email protected]
Militarism and Dual-conflict Capacity
How is the relationship between domestic and interstate conflict moderated by institutional choice? Much literature discusses the relationship of domestic political institutions to interstate war and to civil war. Tying the empirical results of scholars of conflict studies is the finding that military dictatorships are more likely to fight both interstate and intrastate conflicts. Compared to other regimes, military regimes lack a broad societal front and therefore have a comparative advantage over the use of force. Compared to other regime types, however, they are also more fragile, because of their narrow bargaining range with societal actors and low levels of institutionalization. Thus, an unexplored question is the extent to which such regimes are prepared to initiate disputes or defend themselves internationally, in the presence of domestic conflict. What is the institutional feasibility of fighting international conflicts and domestic conflicts at the same time? I argue that the effects of domestic problems on international relations differ between regimes. Certain regimes--such as militarist regimes--are particularly ill-suited for handling multiple conflicts. I conduct an analysis of interstate dispute likelihood, controlling for levels of domestic armed conflict. I demonstrate that military dictators are more likely to use force, but that they are less likely to fight multi-level conflicts. Contributions of this study cover conflict and institutional choice, speaking to conflict theory, international dynamics, and the relationship between domestic and foreign policies. It combines theories on the determinants of interstate and intrastate conflict, thus regarding threats to institutions from above and below.
Mike Zapp
Universidad Koblenz-Landau
Facultad de Educación
[email protected]
La integración social en América Latina: Más profunda y más conflictiva?
El autor observe una integración regional latinoamericana intensificada desde la década pasada. Esta profundización se manifiesta en el interés creciente en la gestión transfronteriza de áreas de política que salen de los campos de actuación clásicos como son el libre comercio y la migración. Entre las más recientes iniciativas se puede identificar una incipiente política social en la región. A estos nuevos esfuerzos comunes, a menudo empujados por los actores gubernamentales, se juntan además nuevos actores como los bancos de desarrollo regionales y las agencias de desarrollo nacionales. En estas redes de “governance” transnacional cada vez más complejas emergen discursos teoréticos sobre la integración regional social que reflejan a veces conflictos ideológicos profundos, pero también una unanimidad en abundancia sorprendente. Poniendo el ejemplo de áreas de política educativa y de empleo, el autor compara las posiciones emergentes de las organizaciones regionales gubernamentales como la Organization of Eastern Carribbean States (OECS), el Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA), la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA), la Caribbean Community (CARICOM), la Comunidad Andina (CAN) y la Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA). Además se considera el creciente peso del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BIAD) y de la Agencia Brasiliera de Cooperación (ABC) en cuestiones sociales y educativas de la región. Pese a algunas variaciones ideológicas, el discurso analizado muestro una gran homogeneidad y refleja cambios culturales mundiales más amplios.
