The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought

Bibliographic Data

ID9800044
AuthorsMichael Biddiss (University of Reading, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume120
Issue489
Pages1466-1467
Publication date2005-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cei466
OpenAlexW2010816327
LanguageEN
Citations received7

The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, ed. Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2003; pp. 754. £95). Historical overviews of the political thought of the last hundred years or so tend to be more shapeless than the patterns we have devised when analysing dominant themes from remoter epochs. However questionable the status of ‘classic texts’ handed on to us from those earlier centuries, works published during the twentieth remain even more difficult to reduce to some supposedly ‘canonical’ core. A related problem stems from the sheer proliferation of political scientists and philosophers, including the many who, as salaried servants of the twentieth century's globalised growth industry of higher education, have used an academic base from which to publicise their thinking. Against that background it is no small achievement for the editors, together with twenty-seven other contributors of diverse political persuasions, to have generated through this volume of the Cambridge History such an impressive quantum of well-argued order in the face of all the potential confusion. The task has certainly been eased by the wise decision to take 1880 as an approximate starting point for most chapters. On the other hand, the essays on ‘Fascism and Racism’ and on ‘Asian Communism’, as presented here by Stanley G. Payne and David McLellan respectively, do less than full justice to issues still current towards the more recent end of the book's temporal span. There are also other gaps: most notably perhaps, the omission of any sustained treatment of seminal developments in theories of international law, with particular regard to limitations upon state sovereignty and to efforts aimed at universalising the protection of human rights. It seems certain, nonetheless, that most readers will warmly welcome the high standards of scholarship consistently apparent in the many areas that this compilation does manage to cover. Alongside the relatively predictable clusters of essays on the changing fortunes of liberal democracy (and indeed those of its critics) and on the varieties of Marxism, the editors have also commissioned three further sections. One allows Bhikhu Parekh and Salwa Ismail to explore (under an eloquently problematic but virtually unavoidable label) the principal manifestations of ‘non-Western’ political thought. The second, entitled ‘Science, Modernism and Politics’, brings together a sparkling constellation of pieces that includes Melissa Lane on positivism, Paul Roazen on the Freudian tradition, Walter L. Adamson on artistic and scientific ramifications, and David Miller and Richard Dagger on utilitarianism and analytical theory. The third, surveying ‘New Social Movements and the Politics of Difference’, contains similarly valuable essays from Martin Ceadel on the discourse of peace movements, Susan James on varieties of feminism, and James Tully on identity politics, as well as one on ‘Green’ political theory from Terence Ball who—even amidst the distinguished scholarly company assembled by himself and his co-editor—stands out for his success in achieving a quite exemplary combination of clarity, depth, and range. The main text is rounded off with a synoptic epilogue by Steven Lukes, which reviews the strengths and limitations of the twentieth century's ‘grand dichotomy’ of tension between ‘leftist’ and ‘rightist’ approaches to issues of social and governmental organisation. The end-matter of the volume includes fifty pages of mini-biographies and a series of substantial bibliographical listings. Overall, such is the quality of the book that it is tempting straightforwardly to commend it as being completely indispensable to those concerned with this general field. One might equally and sadly wonder just how many individual scholars and institutional librarians might feel compelled to settle for deferred gratification, dispensing with this work for the time being simply because of the level at which the publishers have chosen to pitch its pricing. Pending the appearance of a more affordable paperback version, some market resistance from the academic community might well be a very salutary thing

Aesthetics · Art · Communism · Face (sociological concept · Literature · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Classics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Political Economy and Marxism

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