By Telos Press · Monday, March 20, 2023 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Eric Hendriks-Kim about his article “The Polemics of China’s Counter Cosmopolitanism,” from Telos 201 (Winter 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss the impetus behind the current proliferation of Chinese theories of cosmopolitanism; how these new ideas about cosmopolitanism fit into a history of anti-Western forms of universalism in various parts of the world; the idea of tianxia, its meaning and history, and how it is used today; how Jiang Shigong’s idea of socialism with Chinese characteristics differs from the theories based on the idea of tianxia; how Jin Huimin conceives of the relationship between universalism and particularity; the relationship of these Chinese notions of cosmopolitanism to Western notions of cosmopolitanism; and whether any of these conceptions escape from an imperialist perspective. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 201 are available for purchase in our online store.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, November 19, 2020 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with John Milbank about his article “In Triplicate: Britain after Brexit; the World after Coronavirus; Retrospect and Prospect,” from Telos 191 (Summer 2020). An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos 191 in our online store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By Erik Olin Wright · Thursday, May 9, 2019 Erik Olin Wright’s “Martin Sklar’s Theory of Capitalism and Socialism” appears in Telos 186 (Spring 2019). Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are available in both print and online formats.
 This essay explores how Martin Sklar’s typology of the patterns of thought that have animated social and political struggles in capitalist societies since the mid-nineteenth century can, with some modification, be incorporated into a more general analytical framework for thinking about alternatives to capitalism. Sklar frames his analysis primarily in terms of two contrasts—between what he calls “utopian” and “realist” modes of thoughts, and between capitalism and socialism as ways of organizing political-economy institutions. He supports a realist mode of thought that examines the ways in which socialist elements emerge within capitalism, creating various kinds of hybrids through what he calls the “capitalism/socialism interplay.” The prospects for progressive social change come out of that interplay. This essay proposes modifying Sklar’s framework in two respects: First, rather than rejecting the utopian mode of thought, utopian models can be useful as a way of clarifying the normative foundations of struggles for human emancipation and the logical connections between different elements of proposed alternatives to existing institutions and social structures. Second, while Sklar is correct that real economic systems contain hybrids of capitalist and noncapitalist elements, it is a mistake to lump all relevant noncapitalist elements under the rubric “socialist.” Specifically, it is useful to distinguish statism from socialism. This creates a more nuanced conceptual map of possibilities and points more clearly to the problem of democratizing state and democratizing the economy as the central task of progressive politics.
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By Kim R. Holmes · Wednesday, May 1, 2019 Kim R. Holmes’s “A Man between Two Worlds: Assessing Martin Sklar’s Philosophy of Liberalism” appears in Telos 186 (Spring 2019), as part of a symposium on Martin J. Sklar. Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are available in both print and online formats.
Martin Sklar is an underappreciated thinker. The fact that he was a leading intellectual of the New Left in the 1960s and remained a self-identified leftist gave him a unique historical perspective. It enabled him to cut through many misunderstandings and clichés about the history of American liberalism, and gives us an opportunity to understand the left’s theory of community in a different light. One of Sklar’s central theses is his contention that the American system during the Progressive Era became a “mix” of capitalism and socialism. Looking at this background, one of Sklar’s more prescient theses is his distinction between the “broad left” and the “sectarian left.” This also informs his insightful idea of the “transvestiture of left and right”—that the left and right have largely changed historical places on ideas. The postmodern left is very different from, and indeed has largely broken off ideologically from, classic as well as mainstream liberalism as it has been understood in the past. One very important component missing from Sklar’s approach is religion. It must be recognized that the post-revolutionary construct in America helped ensure that the freedom of civil society as a liberal project could not fully flourish without the support of religion. Sklar’s work illuminates the great intellectual divide between classic liberalism and socialism, and between the moderate and radical Enlightenment legacies, which rest on two different views of human nature. However, if a choice had to be made between liberty and the dictates of community, Sklar always chose liberty.
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By David Pan · Monday, March 18, 2019 Telos 186 (Spring 2019) is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
This issue is devoted to the question of universal history and is based in part on a 2015 Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference organized by Greg Melleuish. As this event suggested, universal history today imagines the convergence of humanity around a single trajectory of capitalist technological progress coupled with the defense of liberal rights. But as much as technology has increasingly linked the world into a single movement of history, we cannot say the same about liberal rights. Rather than pointing us toward the liberal light at the end of the historical tunnel, world politics seems to be casting us into the blazing arena of the “clash of civilizations” presaged by Samuel Huntington, with different regions of the world—Africa, America, Asia, Europe, the Muslim world—increasingly at odds, each region with a dominant civilization pursuing its own cultural and political hegemony. This divergence between a materialist unity of development and a cultural fragmentation frames the problem of universal history.
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By Aleksandr Shchipkov · Monday, October 2, 2017 The following paper was presented at the conference “After the End of Revolution: Constitutional Order amid the Crisis of Democracy,” co-organized by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute and the National Research University Higher School of Economics, September 1–2, 2017, Moscow. For additional details about the conference as well as other upcoming events, please visit the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute website.
Today is the time when we get to discuss our future together. This is a rare occasion that may or may not occur every hundred years. For once, we now have Russians, Americans, and Europeans sitting in one boat and considering together how to pass the rapids without capsizing. Steering out of the impasse where we have been driven by the global crisis requires clear thinking and direct, candid dialogue, i.e., the return to the “direct statement” culture. And this is exactly the way in which I will take the liberty to speak. I term the manner of speaking plainly in scientific discussions as “intellectual diplomacy.” And there are times when it is capable of achieving greater results than the combined efforts of the foreign ministries of a number of countries of the world.
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