Best of
Politics

1948

Universal Declaration of Human Rights


United Nations - 1948
    The Guinness Book of Records describes the UDHR as the "Most Translated Document" in the world. It consists of thirty articles which outline the view of the General Assembly on the human rights guaranteed to all people. The International Bill of Human Rights consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, & the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights & its two Optional Protocols. In 1966 the General Assembly adopted the two detailed Covenants which complete the International Bill of Human Rights. In 1976, after the Covenants had been ratified by a sufficient number of individual nations, the Bill took on the force of international law.

Individualism and Economic Order


Friedrich A. Hayek - 1948
    Hayek discusses topics from moral philosophy and the methods of the social sciences to economic theory as different aspects of the same central issue: free markets versus socialist planned economies. First published in the 1930s and 40s, these essays continue to illuminate the problems faced by developing and formerly socialist countries.F. A. Hayek, recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, taught at the University of Chicago, the University of London, and the University of Freiburg. Among his other works published by the University of Chicago Press is The Road to Serfdom, now available in a special fiftieth anniversary edition.

Ideas Have Consequences


Richard M. Weaver - 1948
    Weaver unsparingly diagnoses the ills of our age and offers a realistic remedy. He asserts that the world is intelligible and that man is free. The catastrophes of our age are the product of unintelligent choice and the cure lies in man's recognition that ideas--like actions--have consequences. A cure, he submits, is possible. It lies in the right use of man's reason, in the renewed acceptance of an absolute reality, and in the recognition that ideas like actions have consequences.

Politics Among Nations


Hans J. Morgenthau - 1948
    Although it has had its critics, the fact that it continues to be the most long lived text for courses in international relations attests to its enduring value. Someone has said the study of international relations has for half a century been nothing so much as a dialogue between Morgenthau, those who embrace his approach, and those who turn elsewhere for enlightenment. After 50 years, the dialogue between Morgenthau and scholars from around the world continues more or less as in the past something with more intensity even in an "age of terror." The new edition preserves intact Morgenthau's original work while adding a 40 page introduction by the editors who explore its relevance for a new era. What follows the introduction are the perspectives of a dozen statesmen, scholars, and observers each offering insights on Morgenthau's concepts and ideas as they relate to current crises on every continent. They bring up to date the dialogue that began in 1948.

Prison Notebooks: Volume I


Antonio Gramsci - 1948
    Arrested and imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died before fully regaining his freedom. Nevertheless, in his prison notebooks, he recorded thousands of brilliant reflections on an extraordinary range of subjects, establishing an enduring intellectual legacy.Columbia University Press's multivolume Prison Notebooks is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. The notebooks' integral text gives readers direct access not only to Gramsci's influential ideas but also to the intellectual workshop where those ideas were forged. Extensive notes guide readers through Gramsci's extraordinary series of reflections on an encyclopedic range of topics. Volume 1 opens with an introduction to Gramsci's project, describing the circumstances surrounding the composition of his notebooks and examining his method of inquiry and critical analysis. It is accompanied by a detailed chronology of the author's life. An unparalleled translation of notebooks 1 and 2 follows, which laid the foundations for Gramsci's later writings. Most intriguing are his earliest formulations of the concepts of hegemony, civil society, and passive revolution.

The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It


Richard Hofstadter - 1948
    First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics," Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Like only a handful of American historians before him—Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard are examples—Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.

Negro Liberation


Harry Haywood - 1948
    This study prods deep into the socioeconomic conditions of the Black Belt South. Haywood's work reveals, through a precise materialist analysis, that the Black Belt is a distinct nation, oppressed under the boot of U.S. imperialism and white supremacy. Negro Liberation considers the national question inside the U.S. using Marxism-Leninism as a theoretical and practical basis. It attempts to reconsider the post-Civil War plantation system, the sharecropping industry, and the problem of land distribution as persistent semifeudal socioeconomic relations in the region. Haywood goes on to demand that a national-democratic revolution is needed to fully liberate African Americans who continue to bear the brunt of social, political, and economic oppression under Jim Crowism and "lynch mob democracy."This book is notable for its historical impact on Marxism, the International Communist Movement, and the African American Liberation Movement, then and now.

Letters of Thomas Jefferson


Thomas Jefferson - 1948
    hardcover with dust jacket

The Roosevelt Myth


John T. Flynn - 1948
    Like other academics they tend to be overwhelmingly on the left. "Left-liberal historians worship political power, and idolize those who wield it most lavishly in the service of left-liberal causes." (Higgs) Why should it be surprising that they venerate Roosevelt and try to get a credulous public to do the same? For a rather different view, the reader can now turn to The Roosevelt Myth, which was and, after half a century, remains the major debunking of Franklin Roosevelt.

Wobbly: Rough and Tumble Story of an American Radical (American Autobiography)


Ralph Chaplin - 1948
    Originally published: University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1948.

Imperium


Francis Parker Yockey - 1948
    It is inspired by Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. Imperium advocates the creation of a pan-European empire governed by sound principles or 'absolute politics'. It is divided into five parts, which are concerned with History, Politics, 'Cultural Vitalism', America and the World Situation. Imperium deals with doctrinal matters as well giving a survey of the 'world situation' in the 20th century. "In this book," writes Yockey, "are the precise, organic foundations of the Western soul, and in particular, its Imperative at the present stage." "...What is written here is also for the true America, even though the effective America of the moment, and of the immediate future is a hostile America, an America of willing, mass-minded tools in the service of the Culture-distorting political and total enemy of the Western Civilization." "The mission of this generation is the most difficult that has ever faced a Western generation. It must break the terror by which it is held in silence, it must look ahead, it must believe when there is apparently no hope, it must obey even if it means death, it must fight to the end rather than submit. ...The men of this generation must fight for the continued existence of the West..." "The soil of Europe, rendered sacred by the streams of blood which have made it spiritually fertile for a millennium, will once again stream with blood until the barbarians and distorters have been driven out and the Western banner waves on its home soil from Gibraltar to North Cape, from the rocky promontories of Galway to the Urals." The book's Chicago-born author, Francis P. Yockey, was just 30 years old when he wrote Imperium in six months in a quiet village on Ireland's eastern coast. His masterpiece continues to shape the thinking and steel the will of readers around the world.

Psychological Warfare (WWII Era Reprint)


Paul M.A. Linebarger - 1948
    Even today, it explains the basic principles of propaganda and psychological warfare (both white and black), from organization and planning to analysis and response. Examples are drawn from military history, with an emphasis on tactics by both the Allies and Axis during World War II. This is a fascinating subject, with greater relevance to everyday business and politics than may be immediately recognized.

The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History


Leonard D. White - 1948
    This is an exceedingly interesting history of the beginnings of administrative government under George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Timothy Pickering, and other Federalist leaders. It is an intimate picture, drawn from original sources, of the day-to-day problems that perplexed officials; an analysis of the great permanent problems of management and of congressional relations; of the hard thinking done by government officials in the days when precedents were in the making.Hamilton-Jefferson FeudRealizing the importance of personality in the early American administration the author includes character sketches of Washington, Hamilton, and many lesser figures as administrators. He explores too the administrative aspect of the great feud between Hamilton and Jefferson, hitherto unrecorded; together with the consequences of the disastrous contest between Hamilton and Adams. The feud between Federalist ideals and those which became ascendant in Thomas Jefferson is especially fascinating.Basic SourcesThe author has made this interesting study almost exclusively from basic sources, such as collected letters and papers, public reports, memoranda, the decisions of federal courts, Studies at Large, Annals of Congress, American State Papers, etc. Five helpful tables are included.War: "A Dificult and Unpopular Department"; The Attorney General - "A Sort of Mongrel"; "Fitness of Character" - Public Service Ideals; Notes on Prestige; Administrative Housekeeping; The Rule of Parsimony - these are only a few of the down-to-earth chapters on subjects which will interest us today.Significantly, the Federalist administration was perhaps in advance of its time in moral standards, and well abreast in actual achievement - in spite of great physical handicaps in communications.

Essays in the History of Ideas


Arthur O. Lovejoy - 1948
    

From the Heart of Europe


F.O. Matthiessen - 1948