Roland Boer's Blog, page 46

The Origin of the Modern Approach to the State: Weber or Engels?

As part of my research on the socialist state, I have found that many indeed cite, rely upon and try to modify the influential definition given by Max Weber: ‘the state is the form of human community [Gemeinschaft] that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence [Gewalt] within a particular territory’ (The Vocation Lectures, p. 33). From Charles Tilly, through Norbert Elias, to Pierre Bourdieu, many assume that Weber inaugurated the modern tradition of the analy...

Social-Democratic support for the European Union

By and large the Social-Democratic parties (and I include here the ‘socialist’ parties) in Europe support the EU. The reasons vary, but the underlying justification is that the EU is in part a social-democratic project. It seeks to encourage liberal economic policies, while trying to ameliorate some its worse effects – largely to keep the system running.

This position has certain implications in relation to Eastern Europe and ‘former’ communist countries.

A wholesale denial that the economic...

Reading Xi Jinping

Over a quiet stretch in Beijing, I was able to read Xi Jinping’s first volume as president of China. As one would expect, it is a series of selected statement on key issues, called The Governance of China (Tan zheguolizheng), published in 2014.

It is, I must admit, an extraordinary read. To begin with, it carries on the venerable Marxist tradition in which state leaders are also thinkers, whose thoughts appear in writing. Think of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping. Chairman Xi clearly...

Roll up your sleeves and get to work

I am working my way through Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China, enjoying especially a piece from 2013 called ‘Hard Work Makes Dreams Come True’. One of a number of statements on the Chinese Dream (which actually means at a minimum the second stage of socialism, or xiaokang as it is called hereabouts), it addresses workers as the backbone of the party and the country. Here we find many good old communist themes – as with the book as a whole – such as the role of the working class, model work...

Out soon: Time of Troubles

The new book by Christina Petterson and I will be out soon. It is called Time of Troubles: A New Economic Framework for Early Christianity and is published by Fortress Press. The listed release date is 1 May, 2017.

The book is the third instalment in a series of books dealing with economics, religion and Marxism. The other two are Idols of Nations, also by the both of us and published by Fortress in 2014, and The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel, published by Westminster John Knox in 2015.

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Famine and Socialism

One of the great myths concerning socialist collectivisation of agriculture is that it produced ‘man-made’ famines, since it is supposedly less ‘efficient’. This story is perpetrated by friend and foe alike.

Example 1: The famine of 1932-33 in the Soviet Union, which is supposed to have been ‘man-made’.

Let me set the context. During the ‘socialist offensive’ of the late 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union, a massive process of industrialisation and collectivisation took place.

The Soviet Uni...

China’s parliament meets

A host of good information about the ‘two sessions’ this year: the National People’s Congress and the China People’s Political Consultative Conference (modelled on and modified from the Soviet Union’s two levels of government). The main site is here, with plenty of links for those interested. Apart from noting that both houses are elected (see also here) and that the president is also elected by the NPC, I am particularly drawn to the following:

The increased focus on the reduction of povert...

Reading Arrighi

I have spent the day reading Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing. While I am not in agreement with all his arguments, he does provide some useful insights. The key theoretical point concerns the differences between capitalist and non-capitalist market development. This should be obvious, since study of markets in the ancient world reveals that they were by-products of a state’s logistical concerns. With that in mind, he spends a good deal of time distinguishing between European and North American...

On the origins of fascism (Losurdo)

As preparation for the socialism in power project, I am working my way systematically through Losurdo. At the moment I am reading through War and Revolution, which offers a sustained riposte to the revisionist tendency (Nolte, Furet et al) that seeks to blame all of the twentieth century’s ills on the revolutionary tradition, from the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks.

Instead, as Losurdo points out, Hitler was a great admirer of the British Empire and sought to emulate it (with Ireland as the prime...

Filming Chinese Marxism

In preparation for the MOOC on Chinese Marxism, I had  a Chines film crew over October and November of last year. We filmed in Beijing, but especially at the major sites of the Chinese Revolution: Shaoshan, Ruijin and Yan’an. I was even able to sit at the desk in Mao’s room in both Ruijin and Yan’an, where the seeds of modern China were sown.

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