Calling the tune? The CIA, the British left and the cold war

Wilford, Hugh

doi:10.1080/03071840108446612

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…While the Congress and the Mont Pèlerin Society initially had some degree of overlap (see Audier 2012b: 315–317), in practice they were quite different organisations. The founding conference of the Congress in Berlin in 1950 was attended by figures such as Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Karl Jaspers and Benedetto Croce, and in later years the Congress attracted a strong contingent from the British Left (see Wilford, 2003: 193–224) that included high profile figures such as Hugh Gaitskell (leader of the opposition from 1955 to 1963) and Anthony Crosland, the author of the influential tract The Future of Socialism . Prominent sociologists were also involved, particularly in the American branch of the Congress, which counted Daniel Bell, Edward Shils and David Riesman among its ranks.…”

Section: Aron Contra Hayekmentioning

confidence: 99%

In and out of neoliberalism: Reconsidering the sociology of Raymond Aron

Gane

2016

Journal of Classical Sociology

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This article reconsiders the work of Raymond Aron in order to explore the fracture lines that existed (and in many ways continue to exist) between conservative forms of political liberalism, as advocated by Aron, and neoliberal ideas of economic or market freedom associated with Hayek and his followers. These tensions between Aron and Hayek are analysed by assessing Aron's involvement in the Mont Pèlerin Society and the Congress for Cultural Freedom through the 1950s, and then considering the arguments of his 1962 review of Hayek's Constitution of Liberty and his 1963Jefferson Lectures. While Aron has been largely neglected in the existing literature on neoliberalism, it will be argued that he was the key sociological figure to engage critically with neoliberalism in its formative years and, beyond this, that the value of his work today lies in its defence of the social basis of democracy and freedom against the raw economism of neoliberal thought.

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Section: Aron Contra Hayekmentioning

confidence: 99%

In and out of neoliberalism: Reconsidering the sociology of Raymond Aron

Gane

2016

Journal of Classical Sociology

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“…But as historians of US intervention in OECD countries attest, the process of new boundary drawing focusing on the party system plus the projection of anti-political union norms were evident all over Europe (cf. Eisenberg, 1983, 1996; Weiler, 1988; Wilford, 2002, 2003). To greater and lesser degrees, depending on the American government’s perception of a country’s strategic importance vis-à-vis the Cold War, all over the OECD Marshall Plan and other forms of multi- and bi-lateral aid became the means to boosting non-communist party-governments and unions; international certification by new international planning bodies often depended on Cold War policies; and the FTUC funded and the ICFTU certified new unions and spread the gospel of free trade unionism.…”

Section: What Deviant Italy Tells Us About Post-war Hegemony and Pathmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 5 There is an extensive historical literature on US unionists’ Cold War ‘internationalism’, their deepening alliance with the US government, and their splitting of national and international organizations of labor, for example, Carew (1984, 1987, 1996, 1998), Filippelli (1989, 1992), Lewis (2004), MacShane (1992), Romero (1992), Van Goetham (2006), Weiler (1981, 1988), Wilford (2002, 2003). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor repertoires, neoliberal regimes and US hegemony: what ‘deviant’ Italy tells us of OECD unions’ paths to power

Gentile

2014

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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This paper notes the tendency of 'social movement unionism' scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic to focus on and prescribe the citizen repertoire as the single most important repertoire of labor for challenging neoliberal globalization. Consistent with liberal conceptions of civil society and theories of participatory democracy, it implicitly dismisses political unionism as a path to labor's revitalization. It also assumes epochal change and confines neoliberalism to the post-Washington Consensus era. Deviant case analysis of Italian labor's use of two repertoires (the citizen and the labor repertoire) and of its two regimes of capitalism (in succession, a post-WWII neoliberal regime and a post-1970 corporatist regime) over the course of the 'American Century' gives pause to both these contentions. This study relates labor's citizen repertoire to the era of US hegemony that promotes changes in party-government that tend to reproduce the image of the archetypically neoliberal American polity: a polity that is devoid of 'labor' as a recognized category of the political community, is low in social rights, and, relatedly, is devoid of a party of labor. In this neoliberal political order, labor is perennially locked into the category of 'citizen' and reliant on the citizen repertoire. By contrast, the survival of parties of labor in non-US polities during the post-war wave of neoliberalism permitted union movements a route away from labor-decategorizing orders -political unionism. Now, in the postWashington Consensus wave of neoliberal regime change, that route is more onerous owing to Third Way changes in parties of labor. The major challenge for labor movements that have experienced regime change to a neoliberal polity is in directing their efforts and even their new citizen repertoire to the task of recapturing parties of labor or to creating new ones -or risk long-term US-style labor decategorization. . 2 The episode of contention described in this section, focusing on the 'Trainstopping' action, was compiled by the author by means of ethnographic research conducted in 2005 in Florence, Genova, Livorno, Ravenna, Rome, and Salerno. Semi-structured and unstructured interviews of between 1 and 3 hours were conducted with disobbedienti activists and union officials, and all information provided by each interviewee was cross-referenced with others and with available newspaper and online coverage.

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“…Many Left intellectuals, as Wilford (2003) explains, "had become so preoccupied with the threat of Soviet expansion that they had almost entirely lost interest in other political issues, including suggestions for new, positive leftist activity" (32).…”

Section: Orwell and The Agonies Of The Leftmentioning

confidence: 99%