Axel Honneth - The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel's Social Theory

This is a penetrating reinterpretation and defense of Hegel's social theory as an alternative to reigning liberal notions of social justice. The eminent German philosopher Axel Honneth rereads Hegel's Philosophy of Right to show how it diagnoses the pathologies of the overcommitment to individual freedom that Honneth says underlies the ideas of Rawls and Habermas alike. Honneth argues that Hegel's theory contains an account of the psychological damage caused by placing too much emphasis on personal and moral freedom. Although these freedoms are crucial to the achievement of justice, they are insufficient and in themselves leave people vulnerable to loneliness, emptiness, and depression. Hegel argues that people must also find their freedom or "self-realization" through shared projects. Such projects involve the three institutions of ethical life family, civil society, and the state and provide the arena of a crucial third kind of freedom, which Honneth calls "communicative" freedom. A society is just only if it gives all of its members sufficient and equal opportunity to realize communicative freedom as well as personal and moral freedom.

Иван Бегтин - Метавселенные под контролем: почему новые технологии в России воспринимают как угрозу

Российские власти задумались о том, как регулировать метавселенные и виртуальную реальность. Чиновники видят риски не столько в технологиях, как таковых, сколько в распространении информации. Метавселенные дадут гражданам дополнительные возможности для коммуникаций и поэтому обязательно попадут в поле зрения российских контролирующих органов

https://www.forbes.ru/mneniya/455185-metavselennye-pod-kontrolem-pocemu-novye-tehnologii-v-rossii-vosprinimaut-kak-ugrozu

Douglas Kellner - Television and the Crisis of Democracy  

Douglas Kellner offers a systematic, critically informed political and institutional study of television in the United States. Focusing on the relationship among television, the state, and business, he traces the history of television broadcasting, emphasizing its socioeconomic impact and its growing political power. Acknowledging that television has long served the interests of the powerful, he points out that it has dramatized conflicts within society and has on occasion led to valuable social criticism.Kellner's examination of television in the 1980s and, in particular, its role in the 1988 presidential election yields the conclusion that in our time television has worked increasingly to further conservative hegemony. In so doing, Kellner argues, contemporary television has helped produce a crisis of democracy.But Television and the Crisis of Democracy goes beyond description and diagnosis. In a discussion that is both analytical and comparative, Kellner presents alternative models to the existing structure of commercial broadcasting and shows how new technologies might be used to create a more democratic future for television?one that could enhance political knowledge and participation.

Mariana Mazzucato - Larry Fink's Capitalist Shell Game

The chairman and CEO of the world's largest asset manager has once again made waves by exhorting his fellow corporate leaders to embrace "stakeholder capitalism." Unfortunately, their understanding of that concept is far too limited and stops well short of the radical reforms needed to transform capitalism in the interests of people and the planet.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stakeholder-capitalism-lip-service-fink-2022-letter-by-mariana-mazzucato-2022-02

Jon Schwarz - Elon Musk reveals jaw-dropping ignorance about social security

Musk’s blathering illustrates how the people at the top of U.S. society just repeat what are essentially billionaire urban legends.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and at current stock prices the richest person in history, made the below pronouncement on Twitter. To most people it probably sounded alarming; however, the reality behind Musk’s words is not alarming at all. And the fact that Musk does not understand this makes it clear that he’s stupendously ignorant about the U.S. economy and entitlement programs

https://theintercept.com/2022/02/11/elon-musk-social-security/

Сикевич З. В., Фёдорова А. А. «Мы» и «они»: динамика социальной дистанции «Россия – Запад» в реальном и виртуальном пространстве

Статья посвящена теоретическому и эмпирическому обсуждению символической шкалы социальной дистанции по признаку «мы» – «не-мы», выраженной в оппозициях «Россия» – «Запад», «русский человек – западный человек». По нашим наблюдениям, противопоставление имеет негативную коннотацию, которая выражается в системе геополитических и ментальных предубеждений. В рамках системного анализа феномена геополитического и ментального дистанцирования, предложена взаимодополняющая система оценки индивидуальных и коллективных представлений русскоязычных респондентов в реальном и виртуальном пространствах. Авторами проведён контролируемый интернет-опрос 600 человек на основе квотной выборки по полу, возрасту, уровню образования; структура выборочной совокупности позволила провести сравнительное исследование в форме нереактивного изучения 10 крупнейших русских сообществ социальной сети «ВКонтакте». В результате комплексного исследования установлено, в частности, что оппозиция «Россия – Запад» неизменна в исторической перспективе с 1995 по 2020 гг. и обнаруживает негативную динамику, с течением времени приобретая характер всё более жёсткого противостояния. Экономические оценки отношения Запада к России сменяются преимущественно геополитическим восприятием отношений, обусловленным доминирующими «державными» установками участников опроса. Как выяснилось на эмпирическом уровне, система традиционных ценностей, присущих российскому обществу, противопоставляется западным ценностям постмодерна, причём образ государства на уровне ценностных представлений напрямую соотносится с образом народа, на восприятие которого наряду с геополитикой влияют различные культурные нормы, отличающие русских от европейцев. Половозрастные характеристики участников опроса обусловливают содержание ответов в минимальной степени, что косвенно свидетельствует о целостности образа Запада на уровне национального самосознания русских.

https://www.jour.fnisc.ru/index.php/snsp/article/view/8608/8476

Нерешительный вызов монархизму

Фрагмент коллективной монографии «Русский республиканизм от Средневековья до конца XX века»

В «Новом литературном обозрении» вышла объемная коллективная монография, посвященная исследованию русского республиканизма во всех его аспектах. Как отмечают ее составители, само понятие «республика» сегодня достаточно размыто, и авторы книги ведущие российские историки и политологи конкретизируют и интерпретируют его на каждом рассматриваемом этапе истории. «Горький» публикует небольшой фрагмент подглавы «Республиканизм как политический язык» шестой главы книги, посвященной республиканизму в общественной мысли России первой половины XIX века.

https://gorky.media/fragments/nereshitelnyj-vyzov-monarhizmu/

5 Questions for Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin is a professor of history at Princeton and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of nine works of history, including the first two volumes of his planned three-volume history of Russian power and Joseph Stalin, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 and Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. The premise of this show is simple: Peter Robinson poses five questions to Dr. Kotkin: what Xi Jinping, the president of China believes; what Vladimir Putin believes; whether nuclear weapons are a deterrent in the 21st century; the chances of another American renewal; and Kotkin’s rational basis for loving the United States. It’s a fascinating conversation that delves deep into one of the country’s brightest minds.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ul1gsIdlJFs

Оппозиция хочет добиться изменений в России из-за границы. Это вообще возможно?

На этой неделе фемактивистку Дарью Серенко арестовали на 15 суток: на ее странице в инстаграме нашли пост с символикой «Умного голосования» — технологии, которую предлагали использовать сторонники Алексея Навального на выборах.

После того, как Навального отправили в колонию в 2021 году, а его штабы и Фонд борьбы с коррупцией признали в России экстремистскими и запрещенными, сотни его соратников и сторонников вынужденно уехали из страны, опасаясь преследований. По данным исследования «Если быть точным», всего за 20 лет из России уехали до пяти миллионов человек.

В новом эпизоде политического шоу «Перцев и Гаазе» ведущие рассказывают, можно ли добиться изменений в России в лучшую сторону из-за рубежа.

Таймкоды:
00:16 «Учите код, пока не поздно»
01:31 Первый важный анонс
04:11 Второе важное объявление
06:00 О чем говорим сегодня
09:53 Могут ли эмигранты спасти Россию
12:31 Два взгляда на Россию из-за границы
17:29 Первая идея, как обустроить Россию
26:47 Три пути для российской эмиграции
28:42 Чем политическая деятельность отличается от производства контента
36:07 Первый вывод этого выпуска
41:21 Почему расследования о коррупции уже не работают
49:53 Место Рамзана Кадырова в российской политической системе
53:06 Второй вывод этого выпуска
56:28 Почему взгляд на Россию из-за границы меняется
1:04:53 О рейтинге Алексея Навального
1:08:34 Раскол в эмиграции о видении государства
1:16:26 Какой есть выбор у эмигрантов
1:19:12 «Есть медиа “Россия Сегодня”, есть медиа “Россия в изгнании”»
1:20:52 Как страну спасать будем

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=38Emt4y5LEk

Olle Törnquist - In Search of New Social Democracy: Insights from the South . Implications for the North  

Why is the classical social democratic vision of development based on social justice by democratic means losing ground? Why was it so difficult to renew, even in the context of the third wave of democracy in the South? How does this matter in the North too, and how might it be reinvented? This accessible book brings to life major insights gained through interviews with a large range of activists and political protagonists in the southern cases of Indonesia, India, and the Philippines but also in the northern social democratic stronghold of Sweden. By considering the experiences in view of the basics of Social Democracy and a broader comparative framework, Olle Törnquist arrives at globally relevant conclusions. Olle Törnquist outlines the difficulties facing the Global North and South in achieving the renewal of Social Democracy, beginning with authoritiarianism and market-driven globalization. Crucially, Törnquist also puts forward suggestions for how to achieve this reinvention, namely through broad alliances in the Global South, supported by the Global North, for transformative rights and welfare reforms that are universal, participatory and impartially implemented which would serve as precursors to social economic growth pacts.

Bruce Dickson - The Party and the People  

Since 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has maintained unrivalled control over the country, persisting even in the face of economic calamity, widespread social upheaval, and violence against its own people. Yet the party does not sustain dominance through repressive tactics alone it pairs this with surprising responsiveness to the public. The Party and the People explores how this paradox has helped the CCP endure for decades, and how this balance has shifted increasingly toward repression under the rule of President Xi Jinping.

Delving into the tenuous binary of repression and responsivity, Bruce Dickson illuminates numerous questions surrounding the CCP’s rule: How does it choose leaders and create policies? When does it allow protests? Will China become democratic? Dickson shows that the party’s dual approach lies at the core of its practices repression when dealing with existential, political threats or challenges to its authority, and responsiveness when confronting localized economic or social unrest. The state answers favorably to the demands of protesters on certain issues, such as local environmental hazards and healthcare, but deals harshly with others, such as protests in Tibet, Xinjiang, or Hong Kong. With the CCP’s greater reliance on suppression since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, Dickson considers the ways that this tipping of the scales will influence China’s future. Bringing together a vast body of sources, The Party and the People sheds new light on how the relationship between the Chinese state and its citizens shapes governance.

Daria Frezza - The Leader and the Crowd: Democracy in American Public Discourse, 1880-1941  

Daria Frezza covers six tumultuous decades of transatlantic history to examine how European theories of mass politics and crowd psychology influenced American social scientists' perception of crowds, mobs, democratic "people," and its leadership. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the development of an urban-industrial mass society and the disordered influx of millions of immigrants required a redefinition of these important categories in American public discourse. Frezza shows how in the Atlantic crossing of ideas American social scientists reelaborated the European theories of crowd psychology and the racial theories then in fashion. Theorists made a sharp distinction between the irrationality of the crowd, including lynchings, and the rationality of the democratic "public."

However, this paradigm of a rational Anglo-Saxon male public in opposition to irrational mobs traditionally considered to be composed of women, children, "savages" was challenged by the reality of southern lynch mobs made up of white Anglo-Saxons, people who used mob violence as an instrument of subjugation over an allegedly inferior race. After World War I, when the topic of eugenics and immigration restrictions ignited the debate of exclusion/inclusion regarding U.S. citizenship, Franz Boas's work provided a significant counterbalance to the biased language of race. Furthermore, the very concept of democracy was questioned from many points of view.

During the Depression years, social scientists such as John Dewey critically analyzed the democratic system in comparison to European dictatorships. The debate then acquired an international dimension. In the "ideological rearmament of America" on the eve of World War II, social scientists criticized Nazi racism but at the same time stressed how racism was also deeply rooted in America. This is a fresh and provocative look at the parallels between the emergence of America as a world power and the maturing of the new discipline of social science.

Sungmoon Kim - Democracy after Virtue: Toward Pragmatic Confucian Democracy  

Is Confucianism compatible with democracy? Ongoing debates among political theorists revolve around the question of whether the overarching goal of Confucianism serving the people's moral and material well-being is attainable in modern day politics without broad democratic participation and without relying on a "one person, one vote" system. One side of the debate voiced by "traditional" Confucian meritocrats argues that only certain people are equipped with the moral character needed to lead and ensure broad public well-being. They emphasize moral virtue over civic virtue and the family over the state as the quintessential public institution. Moreover, they believe that a system of rule headed by meritorious elites can better handle complex modern public affairs than representative democracy. The other side voiced by Confucian democrats argues that unless all citizens participate equally in the public sphere, the kind of moral growth Confucianism emphasizes cannot be fully attained. Despite notable differences in political orientation, scholars of both positions acknowledge that democracy is largely of instrumental value for realizing Confucian moral ends in modern society. It would seem that Confucians of both types have largely dismissed democracy as a political system that can mediate clashing values and political views or even that Confucian democracy is a system marked by pluralism.  

In this book, Sungmoon Kim lays out a normative theory of Confucian democracy pragmatic Confucian democracy to address questions of the right to political participation, instrumental and intrinsic values of democracy, democratic procedure and substance, punishment and criminal justice, social and economic justice, and humanitarian intervention. As such, this project is not only relevant to the much debated topic of Confucian democracy as a cultural alternative to Western-style liberal democracy in East Asia, but it further investigates the philosophical implications of the idea and institution of Confucian democracy in normative democratic theory, criminal justice, distributive justice, and just war. Ultimately, Kim shows us that the question is not so much about the compatibility of Confucianism and democracy, but of how the two systems can benefit from each other.

Jacques Rancière - The Lost Thread: The Democracy of Modern Fiction  

In The Lost Thread, Rancière debunks the notion of Flaubert, Baudelaire, Conrad, Woolf and Keats as reactionary producers of bourgeois mythologies, and instead foregrounds the egalitarian and democratic impulses of modernist literature. Contrary to the canonical interpretation of the relation between modernism and capitalism via the commodification of everyday life, Rancière proposes a radical rethinking of our received ideas regarding the politics of aesthetics in the modern era. Through a complex and original stitching together of form and content, modernists strove to depict by embodying new forms and regimes of material and everyday life. Rancière articulates this substantial change in the politics of representation by explaining the shattering of the sacrosanct hierarchies of the genres and life-forms of classical literature. In the midst of the 19th century, poets, novelists and playwrights challenged the narrative staples of noble means and moral ends, and introduced an entirely new «structure of feeling»?. In this work, Ranciere continues his project of outlining an egalitarian «distribution of the sensible»? as the compelling linkage between politics and aesthetics in the modern age. The Lost Thread not only advances Rancière's commended work on aesthetics, it also offers the reader in depth analyses of the writers in question.