In late 1927 the Communist Party of South Africa learned with surprise and shock that the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow had drafted a radical new policy for its distant affiliate in southernmost Africa, the only communist party south of the Sahara. The new policy, focused upon the slogan, “an independent native South African republic, as a stage towards a workers' and peasants' government with full, equal rights for all races, black, colored, and white” seemed to a majority of the small multiracial membership of the South African party to be directly counter to the old policy which, after a difficult process of internal disagreements and tactical reorientation, was bringing its first significant wave of recruits and support among the black majority of the country. The slogan proposed from Moscow, quenching dreams of socialism, generated widespread opposition within the party, but an unhearing Comintern decreed in October, 1928, that the South Africans must accept the new line. The consequences of the imposition of the new slogan and the subsequent bolshevization of the party shook the Communist Party of South Africa to its roots.

In the more than fifty years since the publication of Carl Mannheim's classic essay “Conservative Thought,” a sizable body of literature has come into being concerning the nature of modern European and American conservatism. In this article I propose to review and assess some of the more significant pieces of this literature, to indicate my own views on the nature of conservative thought, and to map out some areas I think students of conserivatism might want to explore further. Such a study of the problem of defining conservatism is, I believe, a worthwhile enterprise, not only because of the intrinsic historical importance of modern conservatism, but also because of the light which our understanding of conservative thought may shed on the development of political theory as a whole during the last two centuries.

About twenty-five years ago, the fields and methods of the different academic disciplines concerned with the study of man and his works, and the relations between these disciplines, were a favorite theme of discussion. At that time, the so-called social sciences were experiencing a spectacular expansion in scope simultaneously gaining depth through the constant refinement of their methods. Increasing division of labor in research focused attention on marginal areas, giving rise thereby to several new specialties which threatened to encroach upon already established disciplines. These sometimes heated discussions were, as a whole, a healthy sign of the progress made by the new science of man, which then went through the growing pains of its adolescence. They also meant a staking out of claims between professional groups, a search for new labels and standards, and a reshuffling and re-naming of college courses and text books. This process of reorientation resulted in the organizational structure within which both research and teaching in the American institutions of higher learning have been carried out ever since. Once the demarcation lines had been drawn, however, interest in problems pertaining to the logic of science decreased; and the scholars in the different fields settled down to putting in practice what had now been defined as their proper task.

On the cold, clear morning of March 4, 1897, William McKinley took the oath of office as president of the United States. The very air seemed to promise better times. The newspapers called it “McKinley weather,” and all Americans hoped “The Advance Agent of Prosperity” would fulfill his title and restore political peace and economic prosperity to a nation that had passed through years of depression, social strife, and party turmoil.

This article critically analyzes the work of Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer, three of the most important contemporary political philosophers writing on issues of multiculturalism. It uses the Rushdie affair, and each theorist's interpretation of it, as the basis for an immanent critique of “multicultural liberalism,” a theory defined by the dual commitment to cultural rights for minority groups and certain core liberal principles, defended in different ways by Kymlicka, Taylor, and Walzer. It is principally concerned with Kymlicka, whose work is one of the most influential attempts to respond to communitarian criticisms that “atomistic” liberalism is inhospitable to community and culture. The article argues that Kymlicka's defense of “multicultural citizenship” is deeply problematic from the perspective of the Rushdie affair. It then considers Taylor and Walzer similarly, as representatives of the communitarian strain of multicultural liberal argument, and likewise finds their positions unconvincing. The article concludes with the suggestion that the Rushdie affair points to a potentially unresolvable tension at the heart of all three attempts to defend multicultural liberalism.

Plato's Lysis addresses the problem of Plato's Republic—the tension between individual and communal good—by exploring the question of what or who is the friend. Friends, I argue, experience another as their own, and themselves as not wholly their own. Unlike the guardians of Plato's Republic, friends say both mine and not mine of one another. Grounded in both self-awareness and belonging, friendship serves as a model for philosophy, and demonstrates the possibility of associations that support our complex identity as human beings and citizens.

Since the early 1930's but especially during and since the war of 1941–1945, the Kremlin has made increasing use of symbols and terms designed to elicit “patriotic” responses in the population under its control. While never completely abandoned, the ideology of “proletarian internationalism” has receded ever further into the background in Soviet doctrine and propaganda. The concept of the “Soviet fatherland” was developed in connection with Stalin's program of “socialism in one country” and of rapid industrialization and the formation of a new Soviet bureaucracy. This process was expressed most vividly in connection with the adoption of the “Stalin Constitution” in 1936, and the claim, maintained ever since, that a new type of “socialist” democracy and citizenship had been established and embodied therein.

This article deals with the evolving role of the Greens (Die Grünen) in the West German political system. It focuses on the “parliamentarization” of the Greens in the Bundestag (federal parliament) and in the Landtage (state parliaments) of Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, and Hamburg. Utilizing personal interviews, parliamentary archives, opinion polls, and party documents, it considers both the impact of the Greens upon the parliamentary system and the impact of the system upon the Greens. The study finds that, despite serious situational and organizational constraints, the Greens in these parliaments have generally been a “creative” oppositional force. However, parliamentary learning experiences have contributed inevitably to the classical dilemma confronting the Greens: How can the “alternative” party become more influential in parliamentary politics without also becoming more like the established parties?

Political theory is not an independent realm of thought. Ultimately it must always refer back to some metaphysical presuppositions of Weltanschauung that is not in itself political. This does not imply that every metaphysical position entails logically necessary political consequences. But it does mean that implicitly or explicitly political theories depend on more general religious, epistemological, and moral considerations. This condition of political thinking serves to explain much of the narrowness of contemporary political theory. For the dominant currents of philosophy neither can, nor wish, to provide a basis for political speculation, which is increasingly regarded as an undisciplined form of self-expression. On the other hand, the naive hope that political studies might fruitfully emulate the methods of the natural sciences, and so share their success, has all but evaporated. The result is that political theory is now concerned to insist on its own limitations, to be critical and even negative in character. This is not a new thing. The lack of philosophical inspiration combined with the decline of “scientific” aspirations has plagued politically sensitive minds at least since the very beginning of the present century. And, from the first, one of the responses to this frustration has been the effort to escape philosophical difficulties by grasping at intuitive short-cuts to truth. The most remarkable of these flights to intuition was political Bergsonism. Moreover, this is not an entirely closed chapter in the history of ideas. Even if Bergson no longer enjoys his earlier popularity, he is still widely read, especially in America. Again, the recent vogue of existentialist “politics” points to an analogous trend, while the penchant for “action,” which is inherent in intuitive politics, is as strong as ever among French intellectuals.

In recent years two ideas concerning America's republicanism have gained fairly general currency. First, there is now a growing recognition that a shift in understanding occurred in the decade after the revolution over the nature of republicanism and the political, social, and moral prerequisites necessary for establishing such a government. In particular, the notion of the absolute necessity of “virtue” or “public spiritedness” as the operative principle of republicanism became, for most American political thinkers, not only problematic but nearly indefensible. Second, there is a growing body of literature, journalistic and popular as well as scholarly, calling upon us to reopen the question of civic virtue and to reexamine anew its connection with republican health. After briefly reviewing the theoretical and practical connections made in the revolutionary era between virtue and self-government, this article will attempt to trace the causes for the early declension of the necessity of virtue in America's understanding of the foundations of republicanism. This accomplished, concerned citizens might then be able to evaluate more carefully the contemporary rediscovery of the links between moral character and modern republicanism by contemporary scholars and public men.

This article explores the writings of Michel Chevalier, a contemporary of Alexis de Tocqueville, on America. Despite widespread praise, Chevalier's text Lettres sur l'Amérique du Nord has been largely ignored in the scholarly literature. This article, therefore, reveals the nature of the account of America provided by Chevalier and, thereby, compares and contrasts his account with the more famous account penned by Tocqueville. In particular, it shows that Chevalier, viewing America from a Saint-Simonian background, was more aware of the economic dimensions of American culture and society than was Tocqueville. However, both recognized the differences that separated a democratic America from an aristocratic Europe and that the future lay with the former. The article concludes by examining the views of both Tocqueville and Chevalier on America in the wake of the Revolution of 1848, showing how America now figured as the model of a moderate republic for both authors.

It is widely claimed that Mencius's account of punitive expedition can be understood as a Confucian justification of humanitarian intervention and thus has the potential to play the role of constraining China's imperial ventures abroad. This paper challenges this optimism, by drawing attention to internal and external obstacles—the problem of virtue's self-indulgence and the problem of justification to non-Confucians—that prevent Mencius's virtue-based political theory of punitive expedition from developing into a modern theory of humanitarian intervention. It argues that for the Mencian theory to be relevant in the modern world marked most notably by moral pluralism, it must be transformed into a democratic theory, at the center of which is the stipulation that humanitarian intervention be morally justified internally, that is, to the people of the intervening state, as well as externally, first to the people to be intervened state, and second to international society.

While it may not be surprising that Mill's proposal for a “plural voting” scheme that would award more votes to citizens with more education has few contemporary supporters, it is surprising that so many interpreters take him to regard plural voting as merely a temporary measure meant to ease the transition from restricted to universal suffrage. Contra Amy Gutmann, Maria Morales, Wendy Donner, David Brink, Wendy Sarvasy, Bruce Baum, and Jonathan Riley, I argue that Mill believes that plural voting should always accompany universal suffrage and thus that it should be in place indefinitely.

Berlin is often taken to have exaggerated his case against positive liberty, since contrary to what he seems to argue, several versions of it do not logically justify coercion. A more historical interpretation of his warnings may save him from this accusation, yet on the other hand suggests his message is of little relevance for contemporary liberalism. In contrast to both these approaches, this essay considers a third and largely neglected aspect of “Two Concepts of Liberty,” that speaks more directly to the challenges facing liberalism today: Berlin's warning that positive liberty invites the specific kind of coercion that parades as liberation, and that it does so according to a psychologically predictable pattern. After reconstructing this undercurrent in Berlin's critique of positive liberty, this essay also considers the relevance of Berlin's warnings to contemporary European debates on banning the Muslim veil in the name of liberation.

Rousseau first glimpsed the principle of the natural goodness of man in the so-called “Illumination of Vincennes,” and he made it his mission as an author to persuade his readers of the truth of that vision. Rousseau must persuade his readers that they are deceived by what they see before their own eyes and that they must learn to see anew—through his eyes. In order to educate his reader, Rousseau consistently uses rhetorical and literary techniques that are meant to change the reader's perspective. His use of these techniques is particularly pervasive in Emile. The present analysis examines Rousseau's education of the reader of his pedagogical treatise, especially through comparisons he draws between his imaginary pupil, Emile, and actual children that are meant to persuade the reader of the truth of what first appears to be imaginary and the falsity of what the reader previously believed was real.

Tradition has it that upon returning from his first Sicilian voyage in 388/387 B.C. Plato founded the Academy. It is also commonly held that, following the example of the Pythagorean brotherhoods with which he had come in contact in Southern Italy, he intended to make the Academy a center of philosophicor scientific studies, as well as a cult society (thiasos) dedicated to the worship of the Muses. Plutarch points out that “in his writings Plato advanced some excellent arguments concerning the laws, the government and the commonweal. But even more important is the fact that he inspired his pupils to positive political action.“ This suggests the further possibility, hardly ever considered, that the Academy itself was indeed a school for aspiring statesmen — perhaps the first organized “institute of political science” in the Western world.

Communitarian thinkers have counterposed their views to those of liberalism as providing a more adequate basis for a political morality—a morality that deals with issues relevant to a political unit, such as liberty, equality, and fairness. Communitarians face the difficulty that the common understandings they rely on to back up a political morality are not easy to find in the form they need. This is because social units fracture along various lines, giving rise to diverse and often conflicting discourses. Where, despite such fractures, common understandings emerge as a result of either desperation or the manufacture of consent, they do not seem appropriate as a basis for a valid political morality. To avoid the weaknesses of communitarianism, it is not necessary to abandon the importance of social context for political morality. Instead, one can make use of a social theory that stresses social divisions in order to lay the base for political morality. A political morality appropriate to a group can be developed on the basis of the interests associated with such divisions.

The view of Rousseau as a romantic for whom history is a fatal acquisition negating what is most essential and valuable in human nature has been powerfully renewed in many recent interpretations. It remains possible, however, to reinterpret Rousseau's view of history as both the key to the whole of his work and his most important contribution to the tradition of radical political thought. The identification of history with fatality is insufficient and misleading in as much as it misunderstands both the substance and the import of his philosophical anthropology. Rousseau's critique of liberalism and the Enlightenment rests not simply upon an intuitive transcendence of civilized artifice, but upon the first major attempt to construct a historical anthropology which, by undoing the identification of man with bourgeois man, poses the problem of human historicity as a social process entailing increasing alienation and repression.

Anarchy is rarely or never upheld with consistency. In the pedagogy of Rousseau, there is a set purpose to let the child be guided by natural necessity rather than by human command, and to let him learn from the experience of physical facts rather than by obedience. “Keep the child solely dependent on things; you will have followed the order of Nature in the process of his upbringing. Never oppose to his unreasonable wishes any but physical obstacles or punishments resulting from the actions themselves — he will remember these punishments in similar situations. It is enough to prevent him from doing evil without forbidding him to do it …” (Emile, II). Remarkably, the theory that the method of authority is a poor substitute for the pedagogical power of nature has been accepted, in varying degree of enthusiasm or reluctance, by most schools of pedagogy and has demonstrated lasting power. Yet the authority of parents and tutors is present throughout pedagogical theories, even when it is passed over in silence. Childhood is the domain where the suppression of all authority is obviously impossible. The most radical constructs of anarchy, as soon as they rise above the level of idle rhetoric, admit of qualifications so far at least as the immature part of mankind is concerned. Anti-authoritarian theorists, with few exceptions if any, do not mean that authority should disappear or that it can ever cease to be a factor of major importance in human affairs. What thinkers opposed to authority generally mean is that authority can never be vindicated except by such deficiencies as are found in children, in the feeble-minded, the emotionally unstable, the criminally inclined, the illiterate, and the historically primitive.