Телеграм канал «Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)»

Thomas Waller - The long farewell

Review of T.J. Clark, Those Passions: On Art and Politics(2025)

In the introduction to Farewell to an Idea (1999), T.J. Clark imagined modernism as a vast historical ruin, one whose forms of representation seem unreadable to us now, but only because we have come to inhabit the future they prophesied. On this model, the critic of modernist art would be a kind of intrepid archaeologist, rummaging through the ciphered remains of some forgotten civilisation, suffused with ways of living alien to their own. Those Passions is Clark’s latest attempt to decipher that ruin, to excavate those lost signs. Divided into three parts ‘Precursors’, ‘Moderns’, ‘Modernities’ it anthologises material written over the past twenty-five years for exhibition catalogues, essay collections, academic journals and the London Review of Books. The anthological form of the book mirrors the fragmentary character of many of its objects, imitating the dialectic that its final chapter finds in Picasso’s Guernica: a disconnectedness held in unity. By revisiting some of the most important names in the painting of modern life from Bosch to Malevich, Ensor to Richter, Delacroix to Pollock Clark’s tour de force interpretations mount a firm but chary defence of art’s ability to register political realities in ways that refuse transcendence yet surpass mere reflection. A quarter of a century since his fin-de-siècle masterwork Farewell to an Idea, Clark has returned once more to the modernist dig, unearthing an art-critical history of the present to make the stones speak.

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/rp220_waller_clark.pdf

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy - Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians

Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud and the violence of the Capitol riot have made it unavoidably clear that the future of American democracy is in peril. Unseen political actors and untraceable dark money influence our elections, while anti-democratic rhetoric threatens a tilt towards authoritarianism. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy reveals the role corporations play in this dire state of political affairs, and explains why and how they should be held accountable by the courts, their shareholders, and citizens themselves. Drawing on key Supreme Court cases, Torres-Spelliscy explores how corporations have, more often than not, been on the wrong side of history by working to undermine democratic norms, practices, and laws.

Thomas F. Remington - The Returns to Power: A Political Theory of Economic Inequality

Thomas F. Remington examines the rise of extreme economic inequality in the United States since the late 1970s by drawing comparisons to the effects of market reforms in transition countries such as Russia, China, and Germany. Employing an unconventional comparative framework, he brings together the latest scholarship in economics and political science and draws on Russian, Chinese, and German-language sources. As he shows, the US embraced deregulation and market-based solutions around the same time that China and Russia implemented major privatization and liberalization reforms. The long-term result was increasing inequality in all three nations. To illustrate why, Remington contrasts the effects of these policies with the postwar economic recovery program in Germany, which succeeded in protecting market competition within the framework of a social market economy that provides widely shared prosperity, high growth, and robust democracy. The book concludes with an analysis of the political dangers posed by high inequality and calls for a new public philosophy of liberal capitalism and liberal democracy that would restore political equality and inclusive growth by strengthening political and market competition, expanding the provision of public goods, and broadening social insurance protection. An ambitious account of why political and economic inequality has increased so much in recent times, The Returns to Power's emphasis on policy variation across democracies also reminds us that it did not have to turn out this way.

Eric Toussaint - The World Bank. A Critical History

In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference ushered in a new international economic order. The World Bank emerged as one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world, and a new colonial authority in all but name. But how does it operate, who funds it, and what agenda does it work to promote? In The World Bank: A Critical History , Éric Toussaint answers all of these questions and more. Offering up a highly readable yet uniquely authoritative account, the book analyses the Bank from its beginnings to the present day. Chapters on gender, climate and the pandemic era provide the reader with a truly contemporary, definitive text. Seven international case studies illustrate the impact of World Bank policy, and Toussaint also explores the political, economic and strategic motives of the US government with regard to the World Bank. The book concludes with a proposal for replacing the World Bank, IMF and WTO with new, multilateral and democratic institutions.

Iran After Khamenei

An interview with sociologist Asef Bayat on the U.S.-Israeli war, democratic opposition to the Islamic Republic, and the country’s uncertain future.

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/iran-after-khamenei/

Евгения Басовская - Советская пресса - за "чистоту языка": 60 лет борьбы

Книга посвящена пропаганде "чистоты языка" в "Литературной газете" и других советских изданиях 1920-1980-х годов. Представлена эволюция официального наполнения концепта, продемонстрирована способность пропаганды превращать понятие в эмоциональный символ. Автор затрагивает проблему соучастия в пропаганде, рассматривая личный вклад М. Горького, СИ. Ожегова, А.Н. Толстого, Л.В. Успенского, Д.Н. Ушакова, К.И. Чуковского и других писателей и ученых в формирование идеологически значимого образа "чистого языка".