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

Mark B. Smith - Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union as a Civilization, 1953-1991

With Stalin's death, the Soviet Union remained a repressive, harsh and belligerent place, but one which became more predictable for its citizens and one which made a genuine attempt to create the egalitarian, progressive country that the Russian Revolution had once promised. That this attempt would fail was not clear until the 1980s. Mark B. Smith's remarkable book recreates the day-to-day life of this vast state, the largest ever to exist. What was life like in a country which made such absolute claims for the future, which claimed to be on its way to creating a people's utopia and which, like the USA, owned enough atomic weapons to end human life on Earth?

Exit Stalin is filled with extraordinary stories about those who lived in the USSR and the distinctive and functioning civilization that they built. Many of them embraced its values, understood its goals and could not imagine life outside such a vastly ambitious and progressive project. The shortages, coercion and incompetence that underlay the USSR and which by the late 1980s would doom it has to be understood alongside the acceptance it always had from many of its citizens. And this in turn is a crucial issue for understanding Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union in the 21st century.

Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes

Scholars have generally assumed that courts in authoritarian states are pawns of their regimes, upholding the interests of governing elites and frustrating the efforts of their opponents. As a result, nearly all studies in comparative judicial politics have focused on democratic and democratizing countries. This volume brings together leading scholars in comparative judicial politics to consider the causes and consequences of judicial empowerment in authoritarian states. It demonstrates the wide range of governance tasks that courts perform, as well as the way in which courts can serve as critical sites of contention both among the ruling elite and between regimes and their citizens. Drawing on empirical and theoretical insights from every major region of the world, this volume advances our understanding of judicial politics in authoritarian regimes.

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson - Learning From Ricardo and Thompson: Machinery and Labor in the Early Industrial Revolution and in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

David Ricardo initially believed machinery would help workers but revised his opinion, likely based on the impact of automation in the textile industry. Despite cotton textiles becoming one of the largest sectors in the British economy, real wages for cotton weavers did not rise for decades. As E.P. Thompson emphasized, automation forced workers into unhealthy factories with close surveillance and little autonomy. Automation can increase wages, but only when accompanied by new tasks that raise the marginal productivity of labor and/or when there is sufficient additional hiring in complementary sectors. Wages are unlikely to rise when workers cannot push for their share of productivity growth. Today, artificial intelligence may boost average productivity, but it also may replace many workers while degrading job quality for those who remain employed. As in Ricardo's time, the impact of automation on workers today is more complex than an automatic linkage from higher productivity to better wages.

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-economics-091823-025129

А. Баранникова - По обе стороны Гибралтара

О книге «По ту сторону ориентализма. Ахмад ибн Касим аль-Хаджари между Европой и Северной Африкой»

Постколониальные исследователи ломают голову, как писать историю культурных посредников между метрополией и периферией, не превращая их в безмолвных информаторов или героев-одиночек. Литературоведу Умельбанин Жири удалось соблюсти баланс и реконструировать жизнь марроканского полиглота Ахмада ибн Касима аль-Хаджари увлекательно, но вместе с тем методологически честно.

https://gorky.media/reviews/po-obe-storony-gibraltara