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Second Thoughts On James Burnham
"Second Thoughts on James Burnham" ("James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution", when published as a pamphlet) is an essay, first published in May 1946 in ''Polemic'', by the English author George Orwell. The essay discusses works written by James Burnham, an American political theorist. In the essay Orwell accepts that the general drift has 'almost certainly been towards oligarchy' and 'an increasing concentration of industrial and financial power' but criticises the tendency of Burnham's 'power-worship' and comments upon the failures in analysis that arise from it. Orwell biographer Michael Shelden; – "Orwell was always at his best when he was on the attack, and his ''Polemic'' essay on Burnham is a brilliant criticism of the whole concept of power worship." Background Burnham (1905–1987) was a former Trotskyist and professor of philosophy, who rejected dialectical materialism in favour of logical empiricism in 1940. In 1941 he published ''The Managerial Revolution''. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polemic (magazine)
''Polemic'' was a British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" published between 1945 and 1947, which aimed to be a general or non-specialist intellectual periodical. ''Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain'' by Stefan Collini Oxford University Press, 2006 , Edited by the ex-Communist , it was "sympathetic to science, hostile to the intellectual manifestations of romanticism, and markedly anti-Communist. Eight issues were published. The first, published as a book to get round the prohibition of new journals imposed by war-time paper rationing, included contributions by [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
We (novel)
''We'' (russian: link=no, Мы, translit=My) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, written 1920–1921. It was first published as an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York, with the original Russian text first published in 1952. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre. George Orwell claimed that Aldous Huxley's 1931 ''Brave New World'' must be partly derived from ''We'', but Huxley denied this. Setting ''We'' is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State,The Ginsburg and Randall translations use the phrasing "One State". Guerney uses "The One State"—each word is capitalized. Brown uses the single word "OneState", which he calls "ugly" (p. xxv). Zilboorg uses "United State".All of these are translations of the phrase ''Yedinoye Gosudarstvo'' (Russian: Единое Государств� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essays By George Orwell
The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, novels, and non-fiction books written by the British writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), either under his own name or, more usually, under his pen name George Orwell. Orwell was a prolific writer on topics related to contemporary English society and literary criticism, who has been declared "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture." His non-fiction cultural and political criticism constitutes the majority of his work, but Orwell also wrote in several genres of fictional literature. Orwell is best remembered for his political commentary as a left-wing anti-totalitarian. As he explained in the essay " Why I Write" (1946), "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." To that end, Orwell used his fiction as well as his journalism to defend his political convictions. He fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predictions Of Soviet Collapse
There were people and organizations who predicted that the USSR would dissolve before the eventual dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Authors often credited with having predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union include Andrei Amalrik in '' Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?'' (1970), French academic Emmanuel Todd in '' La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère soviétique (The Final Fall: An essay on the decomposition of the Soviet sphere)'' (1976), economist Ravi Batra in his 1978 book ''The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism'' and French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse. Additionally, Walter Laqueur notes that "Various articles that appeared in professional journals such as '' Problems of Communism'' and ''Survey'' dealt with the decay and the possible downfall of the Soviet regime." Some Americans, particularly conservatives, view Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative as not only predicting but causing the dissolution of the Soviet stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Conquest
George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 1917 – 3 August 2015) was a British historian and poet. A long-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Conquest was most notable for his work on the Soviet Union. His books included '' The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s'' (1968); '' The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine (1986)''; and '' Stalin: Breaker of Nations'' (1991). He was also the author of two novels and several collections of poetry. Early life and education Conquest was born in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, to an American father, Robert Folger Wescott Conquest, and an English mother, Rosamund Alys Acworth. His father served in an American Ambulance Field Service unit with the French Army in World War I, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, with Silver Star in 1916. Conquest was educated at Winchester College, where he won an exhibition to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Magdalen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nineteen Eighty-Four
''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian state in the novel on Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future in the year 1984, when much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, Hitchens worked as a journalist with the ''New Statesman'' magazine in London in the 1970s after leaving Oxford. In the early 1980s he emigrated to the United States and wrote for ''The Nation'' and '' Vanity Fair''. Hitchens political views evolved greatly throughout his life. Originally describing himself as a democratic socialist, he was a member of various socialist organisations in his early life, including the International Socialists. Hitchens eventually no longer regarded himself as socialist, but continued to admire aspects of Marxism. He was critical of aspects of American foreign policy, including its involvement in Vietnam, Chile, and East Timor. However, he also supported the United States in the Kosovo War. After Hitchens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brave New World
''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, '' Brave New World Revisited'' (1958), and with his final novel, ''Island'' (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often compared to George Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). In 1999, the Modern Library ranked ''Brave New World'' at number 5 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. This ranking was by thModern Library Editorial Boardof authors. In 2003, Robert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sleeper Awakes
''The Sleeper Awakes'' is a dystopian science fiction novel by English writer H. G. Wells, about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London in which he has become the richest man in the world. The main character awakes to see his dreams realised, and the future revealed to him in all its horrors and malformities. The text published as ''The Sleeper Awakes'' in 1910 is a revised version of the novel ''When the Sleeper Wakes'', which was published as a serial, then as a book, in 1899. The 2004 Project Gutenberg title page displays on four lines that suggest a subtitle: ''The Sleeper Awakes''; A Revised Edition of “When the Sleeper Wakes”; By H. G. Wells; 1899. Library of Congress Catalog uses the subtitle. Publication history ''When the Sleeper Wakes'' was originally published as a serial in ''The Graphic'' (London) and ''Harper's Weekly'' (New York), with illustrations by Henri Lanos. Both editions appeared in the first 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including '' The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and '' Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Servile State
''The Servile State'' is a 1912 book by Hilaire Belloc, primarily a history of capitalism in Europe, and a repudiation of the convergence of big business with the state. Belloc lays out two alternatives: distributism and Collectivism and individualism, collectivism. Overview This book lays out, in very broad outline, Belloc's version of European economic history, starting with ancient pagan states, in which slavery was critical to the economy, through the medieval Christendom process which transformed an economy based on serf labour in a state in which the property was well distributed, to 19th and 20th century capitalism. Belloc argues that the development of capitalism was not a natural consequence of the Industrial Revolution, but a consequence of the earlier dissolution of the monasteries in England, which then shaped the course of English industrialisation. English capitalism then spread across the world. Belloc then makes his case for the natural instability of pure capita ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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