On coming to power in 1948, the communist regime sought to transform Hungary into "a country of iron and steel." Industrialization and collectivization were made the order of the day; repressive police measures were necessary to force the project through. The effectiveness of this authoritarian regime has often been exaggerated by previous scholars. Drawing on archival documents, the "popular" press, and numerous contemporaneous interviews, I find instead that the communist administration was disorganized and ineffective, lending itself to manipulation by its subjects at all levels of the labor hierarchy from technocrats to factory workers to peasants. Its difficulties were further compounded by its clash with preexisting forms of social, economic, and cultural organization. In the countryside, peasants continued both traditional practices of resistance, such as wood theft, and cultural practices that were banned by the regime, such as pig-killing. Both of these forms of resistance persisted throughout the period; ironically, the products of these deviant practices were commodified as they found their way onto the black market. The party-state likewise proved unable to eradicate theft from work, black-marketeering, and 'cosmopolitan' forms of cultural consumption such as listening and dancing to American jazz. However, not all elements of society opposed the state at every turn; the limited successes the regime enjoyed were also due to these underlying forms of social organization. The patriarchal order that antedated communism carried through into the communist period, as is apparent in the regime's prostitution policy. Patriarchy's persistent influence was also a key factor in the nominal success of the regime's pronatalist policy in the early 1950s. Similarly, the regime's propaganda campaign against hooliganism resonated with a generational rift between the young generation coming of age under communism and its elders. Overall, though, most elements of society nursed numerous grievances against the authoritarian system. Although there is no direct linkage between outright rebellion and pig-killing, black-marketeering, or most of the other forms of criminal behavior I describe herein, their cumulative effect was the erosion of whatever fragile legitimacy the regime enjoyed and the society-wide normalization of anti-regime activity. In October 1956, the vox populi finally got its opportunity to talk back.

Through their influence on Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, Shakespeare’s plays had a formative influence on the development of Marxism and psychoanalysis and the methodology of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Marx and Freud quoted from or alluded to Shakespeare’s plays hundreds of times in their writings. Many of these instances occur at significant points in the development of Marxism and psychoanalysis. Marx used lines from The Merchant of Venice and Timon of Athens to develop his economic theory and his theory of consciousness. Freud used his reading of Hamlet to develop his theory of the Oedipus complex. He also personally identified with Hamlet the literary hero. Freud used his reading of the casket scene in The Merchant of Venice to begin to develop his notion of the death-drive; he rehearses his thinking about the death-drive in his essay about the casket scene, seven years before he publically presents the death-drive theory. Two methods that developed out of the influence of Shakespeare on Marx and Freud—inversions and the re-inclusion of the other/a method of relating to alterity—became the methodology of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The dialectic was the philosophical ground through which the influence travelled. In this manner, Shakespeare’s influence became the roots of the Frankfurt School’s dialectical aesthetic theory.

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published_or_final_version / History / Master / Master of Arts

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During the Sino-Japanese war of 1937 to 1945, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shandong Province in North China achieved an unnoticed but historically significant success in financial affairs. From that time onward, the CCP in Shandong not only controlled economic affairs within its territory, but also obtained access to territories under enemy occupation through manipulation of currency exchange rates and by controlling the trade in staple grains, cotton, salt and peanut oil. As a result, trade with occupied China and with the Japanese invaders became the principal source of revenue of the CCP in Shandong as early as the second half of 1943. By the time of Japan’s defeat in August 1945, about 80% of the CCP’s revenue in Shandong came from trade beyond the areas under its control. Moreover, the CCP in Shandong deliberately carried out a policy of controlled inflation to increase its financial power. The key to this achievement was the CCP’s success in establishing exclusive zones for its banknotes in August 1943. The exclusive use of CCP currency developed in the course of many years of armed conflict among Japanese, CCP and Nationalist (GMD) forces in the province. The CCP’s ii banknotes were backed by Communist military power and military success. From their first days, the banknotes were intertwined with the military power of the CCP in Shandong and the supporting administrative institutions that Party authorities established in the province. The establishment of exclusive currency zones reflected the maturity of the CCP’s party-state. Because external trade was their principal source of revenue, CCP leaders in Shandong lacked the incentive to carry out social reform in Shandong. Moreover, justifications for the CCP’s program of agrarian revolution as carried out elsewhere were not found in Shandong. Rather than seeking social and economic transformation, the CCP built up power with a view to achieving a favourable position vis-à-vis the GMD before the end of the war against Japan. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2008-10-02

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The thesis concerns the administration of a major French city by a Communist municipality working under the conservative governments of the Fifth Republic from 1965 to 1980. It tries to answer two main questions: how far French municipalities were free to produce their own policy outputs independently of central government, and what the French Communist Party (PCF) sought to gain from its successes in local government during the 1960s and 1970s. Particular (though not exclusive) attention is given to urban and regional planning because it shows the long-run effects of Communist municipal policy; the extent to which the municipality established an ongoing working relationship with its partners, including the State authorities; and the extent to which the PCF managed to integrate the urban environment, as a new political issue, into its local strategy. The official Communist approach to local government is examined through the Party's press, and compared with the work of the 'French school' of Marxist urban sociology that flourished in the early 1970s. There follows an historical introduction to Le Havre and an analysis of the PCF's sources of electoral strength; of the municipality's organisation and its relations with the Party apparatus and the public; of municipal finance under the Communists; and of the other main actors in the planning process. The planning outputs themselves - both structure plans and specific building projects sponsored by the municipality - are then analysed in the context of national legislation, market forces, and official Communist ideology. The originality of policy outputs is found to be real but limited. The limitations are due not only to legal and financial constraints but to the Communists' use of local office to prove their governmental credentials more than their revolutionary ones.