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This thesis examines the role played by intellectual dissidents in the French Communist Party from 1972 to 1981, focusing primarily on the philosopher Louis Althusser and the historian Jean Elleinstein, whose ideas in relation to the FCP were closer than previously thought. The introduction sets the background out in which the FCP evolved after the Second World War and brings us to the 1970s, the decade during which the FCP lost its steam against most expectations - as the thesis demonstrates it. The first chapter deals with the perception communist intellectual dissidents had of their Party’s internal organisation – an organisation which was deemed too rigid and too inflexible to encompass the plurality of opinion of its members. This rigidity was demonstrated by the Leadership’s refusal to recognise the right to create tendencies within the Party, as the second chapter of this thesis shows. In this context, the third chapter argues that communist intellectual dissidents felt suffocated by a Party which did not give them enough leeway, even more so since it claimed to be the Party of the working class – a position which threatened the Party’s adaptation to social change and which is developed in chapter four. However, this thesis also puts the criticisms expressed by Althusser and Elleinstein into perspective. Indeed, if these intellectual dissidents were free to express des idées libérales et avancées, this was not the case for the FCP leadership. The Soviet Union and its KGB had too strong a grip over the Party and its General Secretary, Georges Marchais, for the FCP leadership to be able to act freely. In that sense, if the FCP gave up the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat in 1976, as the fifth chapter shows, it could not criticise the Soviet Union too much, as chapter six demonstrates, nor get too close to the French Socialist Party as chapter seven shows, nor let its dissident intellectuals go on expressing des vues trop dérangeantes, as chapter eight concludes. Each chapter is set against the Party’s historical background and brings us to the modern times, which have seen the French Communist Party transform itself – a transformation which would have been welcomed by Althusser and Elleinstein back in the 1970s.

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This thesis investigates the politics of memory in the Austrian province of Carinthia between 1945 and 2002.  The thesis seeks to determine the extent to which a common collective memory was articulated in the political sphere in Carinthia and attempts to identify whether and in what ways this collective memory was distinctively Carinthian as opposed to generically Austrian. Drawing on sources including party newspapers, parliamentary speeches and speeches given at war veterans’ meetings, a series of chapters detail each of the three main Carinthian parties’ discourses on the Nazi era, the 1920 <i>Volksabstimmung</i> and the Austrian Civil War, and consider the extent to which the parties’ discourses differ from one another.  Each chapter looks at the ways in which memory can be thought of as having been instrumentalised by Carinthia’s political parties, focuses on the impact of generational change on memory in Carinthia, analyses the interaction between the parties’ discourses and considers the prominent role the province’s history of border conflict played in each party’s narrative of the past.

This thesis seeks to explain the organisational, programmatic and ideological renewal of the French Parti Socialiste (PS), employed as a test case to examine the veracity of the 'crisis of social democracy' literature. Chapter I reviews the crisis of social democracy literature, introducing a framework for the analysis of social democracy in general, and the PS in particular. Chapter 2 establishes the historical and institutional context of PS development. Chapter 3 demonstrates how organisational changes have altered the opportunity structures of the key actors, crucially affecting how the party articulates its electoral and policy strategy. Chapter 4 explores PS electoral strategists' attempts to resolve problems posed by the fragmentation of homogenous electoral blocs of support, increasing electoral volatility, and the competitive challenge of new parties. Chapter 5 analyses PS ideological evolution in the 1990s in the context of the collapse of 'actual existing socialism', the exhaustion of traditional social democratic means, the enforced peaceful co-existence with the new market orthodoxy, and the increasing relevance of supra-national co-ordination for social democracy. In Chapter 6 we will explore the implications of globalisation for social democracy. The thesis rejects the 'hyperglobal' interpretation of the relationship between social democracy and globalisation, which asserts that national economies are now subsumed into a 'borderless world', within which social democracy is an historically exhausted project. Analysis of the development and implementation of the PS's macro-economic policy, job creation policy, labour market policies, and 'structural adjustment' policies, such as the shift towards a 35 hour week, demonstrate enduring social democratic policy activism. Chapter 7 presents a comparative political economic analysis of the economic strategies of the PS and the British Labour Party which further illustrates the potential for social democratic policy activism. Finally, the conclusion summarises and draws together the arguments.

Esa obra explora las complejidades de la economía y la sociedad cubana ahora, después de las reformas económicas dramáticas de 2012. El fenómeno de la fuga de cerebros refleja un cambio dramático en la economía cubana, en que los salarios públicos y otros subsidios del gobierno ya no están suficientes y los trabajos lucrativos no necesariamente requieren un título avanzado. En un país conocido internacionalmente por su población educado, Cuba tiene una crisis demográfica en que muchas profesionales, particularmente los jóvenes educados, salen del sector público al sector privado o aún emigran del país. El sector privado da una ventaja a algunas personas, también, cuando algunos grupos marginados están desventajados en términos económicos. Para restaurar y proteger la esencia del socialismo cubano, que prometa un nivel de vida básica y la igualdad de oportunidades por las instituciones, el gobierno debe implementar algunas reformas educativas y económicas. El gobierno puede asegurar un futuro para los ideales del socialismo cubano por esas reformas. El crecimiento económico, si es inclusivo, puede lograr los objetivos del socialismo cubano aún mejor que el sistema económico del pasado, y tiene el potencio para mejorar el nivel de vida de todos los cubanos.

The main aim of this thesis is to analyse and explore the philosophical justifications for freedom of speech during the nineteenth century and their application as political praxis. In this work, specific types of free speech argument are identified and examined in the light of the ideological stance of those who sought to argue for freedom of speech, primarily from key ideological perspectives of the nineteenth century, utilitarianism, liberalism and socialism. Initially three types of free speech argument are identified: the accountability argument, the liberty argument and the truth argument. However, on an inspection of socialist arguments for freedom of speech, the author suggests that a fourth sufficiently distinct type of free speech argument is present, particularly within the more mature works of socialist radicals and agitators. Though the arguments for freedom of speech overlap within different ideological and historical contexts, a case is made for a relatively distinct type of free speech argument within the socialist political praxis of free speech. Furthermore, in examining key political and philosophical texts, and an analysis of the free speech arguments in nineteenth century political pamphlets and newspapers, the argument is made that in order to gain a thorough understanding of political history and philosophy a holistic approach should be adopted, one which looks at ideas, context, history, artefact, and political praxis.

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No description available.

Historians have shown how, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the language of patriotism and national identity was appropriated by the political right. It has been all too easily assumed that after this they held a monopoly on such language. However, the British left did not give up ideas about patriotism and the nature of Englishness after the revival of socialism in the 18805. Socialism was rather presented as the restoration of an English past lost to industrial capitalism. They therefore argued for a return to 'Merrie England'. Socialists frequently used radical patriotic vocabulary as a tool in their struggles for social transfotmation, particularly in defence of what they saw as traditional English liberties. But some socialists also used ideas of Englishness to legitimate their own form of socialism and to repudiate other forms, such as anarchism, syndicalism and Marxism, as 'foreign'. Central to this was a belief that Parliament stood at the centre of the national history. This Whiggish parliamentary view of history was essentially English, yet many who held it were Scottish, Welsh and Irish, and they played a full role in creating a 'British Socialism' . The First World War dealt a severe blow to radical patriotism. Pro-war sections of the labour movement were brought into the state, and this reinforced their belief in parliamentarism and a consensual patriotism. The anti-war left continued to use radical patriotic language in the early years of the war, for example against the 'foreign yoke' of conscription, but the war degraded patriotism generally and the Russian Revolution gave internationalism a new focus. It also threatened the concept of British Socialism, and the post-war years saw a bitter debate over forms of socialism, when it was argued that Bolshevism was not suited to 'British conditions'. Moderate Labour, convinced that office could only be achieved on terms set by the British Constitution, sought to prove their fitness to govern. This meant concentration on traditional patriotism and the national interest, rather than conceptions of oppositional Englishness. The left of the labolD' movement now looked to soviet Russia rather than the English past as a model for the future socialist society. Hence the hold of radical patriotism on the British left was broken, but that of patriotism was not. It would take another world war to re-unite the two.