Socialism

Social democrats should look for a global left rather than global cosmopolitanism. Inconsistency over cosmopolitan ends matched with too much faith in its means hampers internationalism. Published here as Conflicts in Cosmopolitanism and the Global Left: http://www.policy-network.net/articles/4089/Conflicts-in-cosmopolitanism-and-the-global-left

This paper's object is to clarify the relationship between Alfred Russel Wallace's (1823-1913) socialism and evolutionism. This paper contends that although conflicts emerge between Wallace's socialism and Darwinism through the issues of the role of Malthusianism, the perfectibility of man and the role of individualism, he remained committed to the Darwinian Theory. Indeed, it will argue that, rather than undermining his belief in Darwinism, Wallace's socialism evolved within the new intellectual conditions created by the 'Darwinian Revolution.' This paper argues that intellectual exchange between political thought and science enriched both, and concludes that to erect any barrier between the two distorts the historical and intellectual reality.

The concept of autonomy as presented in the works of Cornelius Castoriadis offers the possibility of expressing the core aims of a radical politics in a manner divorced from a discredited Marxist or communist past. The concept occasions ongoing debate about its true meaning as well as its implications and consequences. Some people question the value and viability of autonomy as a political aim. This article attempts to elucidate and defend what I see as the central meanings and implications of the concept of autonomy, particularly in its political dimension. The concept of autonomy is considered in its relationship to the ideas of project, self-limitation, and democracy, and the socialist tradition.

"Why do languages disappear? Well, there are lots of reasons, some of them more ‘natural’ than others. Globalization and colonialization are good examples, but few people think about the way governments often contribute directly (and indirectly) to language death.

So I decided to write an article on exactly that: language and the government. I argue that governments necessarily incentivize bad language policy and support fewer languages rather than more. In economics, this inability to create policies that accurately address the needs of its citizens is called the socialist-calculation problem, and that’s what this article is about.

The article is published on Mises.org, the online arm of the Mises Institute, an organization dedicated to the advancement of Austrian economics. Over 40,000 people read the Mises Daily articles each day, and they are eventually read by hundreds of thousands. Since there is almost no overlap between linguistics and economics, I felt this article was just itching to be written."

"The present essay aims to investigate the influence that the German Social Democracy (SPD) exerted over the development of the Italian political system during the 1970s. Although recognizing the promising evolution that the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had undertaken under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, the SPD esteemed its participation to the government as especially dangerous for international reasons. The legitimization of “Western communism” would have raised the prospect of an international “frontist” cooperation between socialist and communist forces, thus jeopardizing the “autonomist” course that the SPD strove to spread through the whole Western European socialist movement. The appointment of Bettino Craxi as secretary of the PSI (Italian Socialist Party) in
1976 offered to the SPD the opportunity to cooperate in “Europeanising” the profile of the Italian socialism, questioning at the same time the democratic credentials of the PCI and challenging its “cultural hegemony” over the Italian left. The ultimate return of the PSI to a coalition of government with the moderate Christian Democracy (DC) was estimated in Bonn as the direct result of the renewed cooperation between German and Italian socialists."

""This book examines just what the European Union is, in the context of the ongoing structural transformation of the global system. The author develops an integrated approach to global transformations, drawing on geopolitics, political geography, international relations, economics, economic and political history, political economy and macro-sociology to discuss how this supra-state organisation, that shares and pools the sovereignty of some of the wealthiest states of the modern world, makes sense. The book:

. Interprets the ongoing transformation of west European public authority in the context of the global geopolitical economy of competition, cooperation and conflict

. Examines the consequences of west European integration for the global system in a longue-durée perspective, developing a new, geopolitical dialect within world-systems analysis, sharpening some of the conceptual tools developed by its paradigm-setters.

. Develops a new conceptualization for the EU’s global geopolitical strategy, which the author describes this strategy as the elasticity of size.

Developing a deeper understanding of global social change and west European strategies of global advantage-maintenance and power-management, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Politics, International Politics, International Relations Theory and Globalization Studies.

I have created a BLOG for this book. Please look it up here: http://globalsocialchange.blogspot.com .""