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The Politics of Poverty

David Brady

in Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty

This chapter revisits the long‐standing debate about Leftist politics and poverty. It begins by outlining the contributions and limitations of power resources theory, a key starting point for the ... More

This chapter revisits the long‐standing debate about Leftist politics and poverty. It begins by outlining the contributions and limitations of power resources theory, a key starting point for the study of politics and poverty. Next, the chapter articulates how institutionalized power relations theory moves beyond power resources theory. This chapter then provides an empirical evaluation of the causal hypotheses derived from institutionalized power relations theory with six different measures of Leftist politics. Ultimately, the aim is to both theoretically and empirically advance the understanding of the economic consequences of politics and the political causes of poverty. This chapter builds on Chapter 4 in developing the institutionalized power relations theory. Broadly, the analyses demonstrate that Leftist politics do influence poverty. Proportional representation electoral systems appear to be the most consequential measure of Leftist politics. The effects are mostly channeled through the welfare state and only partly combine with the welfare state. Leftist politics fundamentally influence a society's amount of poverty, but the welfare state remains the proximate and direct influence on poverty.Less

Rebel Generation: Being A Middle-Class Radical, 1971 –1976

in Waking from the Dream: Mexico's Middle Classes after 1968

This chapter outlines the spectrum of leftist politics, from moderate students to radical urban guerrillas, and examines how leftists struggled to come to terms with their middle-class status. It ... More

This chapter outlines the spectrum of leftist politics, from moderate students to radical urban guerrillas, and examines how leftists struggled to come to terms with their middle-class status. It also analyzes the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) attempts to reach out to the discontented students.Less

Radicals and Reformers: Anarchists, Electoral Politics, and the Unions, 1900–1910

Kirwin R. Shaffer

in Black Flag Boricuas: Anarchism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the Left in Puerto Rico, 1897-1921

This chapter illustrates that during the first decade of U.S. rule, anarchists cautiously joined the AFL-linked Federación Libre de Trabajadores (FLT), assuming leadership roles in local unions, ... More

This chapter illustrates that during the first decade of U.S. rule, anarchists cautiously joined the AFL-linked Federación Libre de Trabajadores (FLT), assuming leadership roles in local unions, publishing in union newspapers, and printing anarchist newspapers through the union presses. From within the union, anarchists criticized the FLT's pro-Americanization project, the rise of republican political institutions and electoral politics on the island, and the union's occasional attempts to engage in elections. These critiques, sometimes published at home and sometimes published in the international anarchist press in Cuba that was then mailed back to Puerto Rico, often found anarchists on the margins of union politics. Moreover, they worked as best as they could with the reformers while continuing to put forth a more radical agenda achieved by direct action, not parliamentary politics.Less

Liberating “Shadow” America: Antifascism, Pluralism, and Democracy, 1932–39

John P. Enyeart

in Death to Fascism: Louis Adamic's Fight for Democracy

Chapter 2 traces Louis Adamic’s emergence as a leader in the antifascist vanguard. By the mid-1930s, Adamic proclaimed that the United States was ripe for fascist exploitation and pointed to the ... More

Chapter 2 traces Louis Adamic’s emergence as a leader in the antifascist vanguard. By the mid-1930s, Adamic proclaimed that the United States was ripe for fascist exploitation and pointed to the efforts of white nationalists who claimed that the struggles for worker, immigrant, and black rights were communist-inspired. Adamic promoted cultural pluralism and the dynamic labor activism of the Congress of Industrial Organizations as countermeasures to fight the demagoguery of the anticommunists. Adamic also attacked the procommunist left in the United States because of their adherence to Moscow’s dictates, which highlighted his independent leftist politics. His proworker novel Grandsons, which became an example of the genera of proletarian literature, and his work with the propluralist Foreign Language Information Service are highlighted.Less

The Roots of Anarchism and Radical Labor Politics in Puerto Rico, 1870s–1899

Kirwin R. Shaffer

in Black Flag Boricuas: Anarchism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the Left in Puerto Rico, 1897-1921

This chapter illustrates the status of organized labor and the Left in Puerto Rico in the final decades of Spanish rule. It focuses on the tradition of artisanal autonomy and resistance, the rise of ... More

This chapter illustrates the status of organized labor and the Left in Puerto Rico in the final decades of Spanish rule. It focuses on the tradition of artisanal autonomy and resistance, the rise of artisan and worker-based centers to develop class consciousness, and the emergence of the island's first important labor organizations in the 1890s. Central to the story is the arrival of Santiago Iglesias Pantín, a carpenter from Spain who had worked with anarchist groups in Spain and Cuba before fleeing from the latter in late 1896 and joining forces with libertarian socialists to form the first two labor unions and the first two important left-wing newspapers from 1897 to 1899. Iglesias soon rose to lead these organizations, and after the U.S. occupation began in 1898, he traveled to the U.S. mainland to join forces first with Socialists and then the AFL.Less

Agnes Smedley between Berlin, Bombay, and Beijing: Sexology, Communism, and National Independence

Veronika Fuechtner

in Global History of Sexual Science, 1880-1960

This chapter examines how the global circulation of sexology intertwined with communism and national independence by focusing on the writings of American journalist Agnes Smedley as well as the ... More

This chapter examines how the global circulation of sexology intertwined with communism and national independence by focusing on the writings of American journalist Agnes Smedley as well as the letters written to her by the Indian revolutionary Bakar Ali Mirza. More specifically, it considers sexual science's connections to leftist psychoanalysis and to the Indian independence movement during the 1920s. It discusses Smedley's self-conscious mobilization of the language of sexual science as a path toward revolution and modern selfhood, doing so by shuttling between India, Germany, China, and the United States. The Berlin–India nexus and Mirza's correspondence with Smedley highlight the intrinsic interrelationships among the liberational rhetoric of leftist politics, feminism, sexual rights, national independence, and psychoanalytic introspection. The chapter also considers how Smedley and her Indian revolutionary interlocutors negotiated new definitions of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality emerging from the global movements of sexual science, radical politics, and psychoanalysis.Less

Cacerolazo: Rumors, Gossip, and the Conservative Middle Classes, 1973–1976

in Waking from the Dream: Mexico's Middle Classes after 1968

This chapter considers a wave of destabilizing rumors, as the conservative middle classes worried about peso devaluations, rising inflation, and a possible leftward turn in Mexican politics. It then ... More

This chapter considers a wave of destabilizing rumors, as the conservative middle classes worried about peso devaluations, rising inflation, and a possible leftward turn in Mexican politics. It then examines the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) reaction to conservative protest and traces the escalation of these rumors to whispers of a coup d'état in 1976.Less

The Blacklist

Paul O. Jenkins

in Richard Dyer-Bennet: The Last Minstrel

This chapter focuses on the blacklisting of Richard Dyer-Bennet in the United States. It explains that American folk music has long been associated with leftist politics, and that Dyer-Bennet took ... More

This chapter focuses on the blacklisting of Richard Dyer-Bennet in the United States. It explains that American folk music has long been associated with leftist politics, and that Dyer-Bennet took part in a number of activities for all the right reasons but in support of causes and organizations that attracted the attention of members of the government. The chapter also highlights the fact that Dyer-Bennet was implicated in the testimony of his old friend Burl Ives.Less

Diana L. Linden, Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015. xi + 170 pp.

Richard I. Cohen (ed.)

in Place in Modern Jewish Culture and Society

This chapter reviews the book Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (2015), by Diana L. Linden. Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals is about Ben Shahn, whom Linden considers an ... More

This chapter reviews the book Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (2015), by Diana L. Linden. Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals is about Ben Shahn, whom Linden considers an American Jew rather than a Jewish American. Linden studies a few of Shahn’s murals and a related easel painting, all conceived or completed between 1933 and 1943. She focuses on four large projects (one unrealized) from the vantage point of Shahn’s Jewish identity and leftist politics, contextualizing the art alongside the history of the American Jewish experience. Working first and foremost as an art historian, she explores Shahn’s iconography and the desires of his patrons. According to Linden, Shahn’s art is “neither solely American nor solely Jewish but rather an alchemic combination of the two.”Less

Last Years

Robert E. Lerner

in Ernst Kantorowicz: A Life

This chapter details Ernst Kantorowicz's final years. Kantorowicz died of a ruptured aneurysm in September 1963. Before this, he worked on a succession of recondite articles, attended the annual ... More

This chapter details Ernst Kantorowicz's final years. Kantorowicz died of a ruptured aneurysm in September 1963. Before this, he worked on a succession of recondite articles, attended the annual meetings of the Medieval Academy and the Byzantine Institute at “Oakbarton Dumps,” vacationed on the West Coast and the Virgin Islands, and carried on earnestly with his dining and imbibing. His politics also became more leftward from the postwar years until the time of his death. For a decade and a half he was deeply worried about the possibility of nuclear war, and he held the United States responsible. During the 1950s, he was bitterly hostile to Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. On the day after Kennedy's inauguration, Kantorowicz wrote the he “couldn't be worse than Eisenhower, ” although he did change his mind.Less

Burmese Nationalism and the Path to Independence

Kenton Clymer

in A Delicate Relationship: The United States and Burma/Myanmar since 1945

This chapter looks at the period after World War II until Burma's independence in January 1948. In Burma, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the United States had to respond to the pressures of ... More

This chapter looks at the period after World War II until Burma's independence in January 1948. In Burma, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the United States had to respond to the pressures of nationalists who were pressing for early independence—which the United States favored for Burma, albeit with ambivalence. The Americans were nervous about Aung San, Burma's emerging leader, who fought against the Allies and had leftist political leadings. However, they also had a sympathetic understanding of the minority people, many of whom were Christians, and were suspicious of a united country dominated by the Burman majority. But as the Grand Alliance disintegrated and the United States focused on the communist threat, it became even more committed to independence under Aung San's leadership.Less

Minimalist versus Expansive Views of Human Rights: Dignity and the Arc of Humanist Justice

Pablo Gilabert

in Human Dignity and Human Rights

This chapter explores the implications of the dignitarian approach for the ongoing debate in the philosophy of human rights about how minimalist or expansive human rights should be taken to be. After ... More

This chapter explores the implications of the dignitarian approach for the ongoing debate in the philosophy of human rights about how minimalist or expansive human rights should be taken to be. After a critical survey of eleven arguments for minimalist accounts of human rights, the chapter endorses a moderate form of expansivism casting human rights as basic claims that cover the most urgent requirements of human dignity. It presents a two-tiered, dynamic humanism that enables us to arbitrate the debate between minimalist and expansive views of human rights. Elements of egalitarianism (in particular regarding political rights) are part of this picture. However, a wider and more ambitious set of egalitarian demands of humanist justice that go beyond human rights (such as democratic socialism) is also seen as flowing from the dignitarian perspective, and its significance for the contemporary political context is explored.Less