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4095 results in Texts in political thought

Page 77 of 205

  • Appendix

  • Edited by Malcolm Schofield, University of Cambridge
  • Translated by Tom Griffith
  • Book:
    Plato: Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 November 2009, pp 205-206

  • Summary

    Simonides' poem reconstructed

    Truly becoming good is hard for a man,

    Standing four-square with hands and feet and mind,

    Fashioned beyond reproach.

    (Missing lines)

    It strikes a wrong note,

    That saying of Pittacus – though wise the man

    Who spoke it – ‘Being good,’ he said, ‘is hard.’

    Only a god can have this privilege.

    He cannot but be bad, a man, when once

    Helpless disaster brings him down.

    For any man is good when things go well,

    But bad when they go ill.

    Best for the longest time are they – whom the gods love.

    I will not cast my life's portion away

    In hopeless quest for what can never be –

    A man who's blameless among those who reap

    The broad earth's harvest.

    Should I find one,

    I'll bring you word.

    All those who do no shameful action willingly

    I praise and love.

    Against necessity not even gods can fight.

    (Missing lines)

    Enough, for me,

    A man who is not bad, not wholly useless,

    A sound and healthy man, one who well knows

    Justice, the city's profit, I will not

    Blame him.

    The tribe of fools is numberless –

    All things are fair wherein no foul is mixed.

  • Protagoras

  • Edited by Malcolm Schofield, University of Cambridge
  • Translated by Tom Griffith
  • Book:
    Plato: Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 November 2009, pp 137-204

  • Summary

    Dramatis personae

    Dates of birth and death given below are conjectural, except for Socrates and for the deaths of Alcibiades and Critias.

    ALCIBIADES (451–404) Flamboyant Athenian aristocratic politician, brought up in Pericles' household as his ward. An associate of Socrates from an early age: Socrates' erotic interest in him is explored in the Symposium, and alluded to in both the Gorgias and the Protagoras. He was the main advocate and initially commander of the Sicilian expedition (415–413), but was indicted in connection with religious scandals and recalled from his command. After intriguing first with the Spartans and then the Persians, he subsequently led the Athenian fleet to victory over the Spartans at Cyzicus in the Bosphorus (410). After further personal vicissitudes, he was murdered by Persian agents in Phrygia (modern Asiatic Turkey).

    CALIAS (450–365) His father Hipponicus was an Athenian aristocrat reputed to be the richest man in Greece and still active in the 420s (he served as general in 426/5). The family were connected to Pericles' family by marriage. Following the precedent of Eupolis's comedy Sycophants (421), Plato here imagines Callias as a mature man who has recently inherited the principal family house (315d) and is lavishing his wealth on sophists (see further Apology 20d). We hear of Callias as a public figure in his later years (general, 391; diplomatic envoy, 371).

  • Menexenus

  • Edited by Malcolm Schofield, University of Cambridge
  • Translated by Tom Griffith
  • Book:
    Plato: Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 November 2009, pp 115-136

  • Summary

    Dramatis personae

    MENEXENUS With his cousin Ctesippus became a member of Socrates' intimate circle, to judge from their presence in the prison on the day the hemlock was administered (Phaedo 59b). In the Lysis Menexenus (again in Ctesippus's company) and his friend Lysis are boys of twelve or thirteen. In the Menexenus he is evidently a few years older. Socrates suggests that he came from a prominent political family – but history has left no clues enabling us to identify the public figures Plato might have had in mind.

    SOCRATES (469–399) Sustains throughout the dialogue the teasing pretence that he is currently a student of rhetoric, with Pericles' mistress Aspasia for his teacher. What purpose Plato had in representing him in this alien and improbable guise is discussed in the Introduction.

    Analysis

    234a–236d – Introductory conversation

    236d–249c – Speech of Aspasia

    236b–237b Introduction

    237b–238b Good birth and upbringing: Athenian autochthony and how it shapes the life of the population

    238b–239a Good upbringing: the Athenian political system

    239a–246b Noble exploits: Athenian history

  • 239b–c: Athens' very earliest military exploits – the subject of poetry

  • 239c–240e: The rise of Persian imperialism; the Athenian victory at Marathon, and what it taught the Greeks

  • 240e–241c: The Athenian naval victories at Salamis and Artemisium – further lessons for the Greeks

  • 241c–e: Further victories over the Persians instil fear in the Great King

  • […]

  • 7 - Conclusions: cadre training and the future of party rule

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp 180-195

  • Summary

    CADRE TRAINING, THE PARTY-STATE AND ANTHROPOLOGY

    One of the most striking aspects of cadre training and education is how much it is suffused with a discourse on (if not an obsession with) modernity. At the most general level, this takes the familiar shape, common to all reform policies and a linear descendant of the CCP's May Fourth roots, of an unchallengeable belief that China should progress from a state of backwardness and weakness to one of strength and modernity. Of course, the reforms also buy off political discontent with the material fulfilment of the consumerist desires of middle-class life, but the key of the success of the reforms is that they have delivered, or promise to deliver, the completion of China as a modern nation – strong, unified and prosperous – that will at last right all the wrongs that China has suffered in the course of 150 years of humiliation since the Opium War in 1840. What makes this discourse on modernization irresistible to almost all Chinese is that differences in modernity also imply and justify inequalities in status and power: the discourse on modernity not only liberates, but also locks its subjects into a hierarchical vision of the world. The hierarchical nature of the Chinese concept of modernization entails that modernity is always elsewhere: modernization means trying to improve one's place on the ladder of modernity by trying to become like other, more modern places, people, institutions or nations.

  • 4 - Life and work at party schools

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp 81-113

  • Summary

    Like many other party schools, the Party School of the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee (Yunnan shengwei dangxiao) cum Yunnan Provincial Academy of Administration (Yunnan sheng xingzheng xueyuan) is located at the edge of the capital, in this case the city of Kunming. This location keeps the school in the immediate proximity of the province's administrative centre, but away from the noise, stress and pollution that are a normal part of city life in contemporary China. The party school is located in the small town of Haikou on the shore of Tianchi, a large mountain lake immediately to the southwest of the city. This location gives the residents of the school not only a stunning view of Kunming city on the other side of the lake, but also places the school in an area that until very recently was largely rural and at the foot of a range of forested hills. The proximity of the hills allows invigorating after-dinner hikes along carefully constructed footpaths leading through the forest and botanical gardens on the hillside to the top. The area is praised for its fresh, crisp air, which clears the mind and helps the students recover from the stress of their work and the onslaught of the unhealthy city environments that they normally inhabit.

  • 6 - Cadre training, cadre careers and the changing composition of China's political elite

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp 141-179

  • Summary

    As this book has shown, the training and education of cadres are essential elements of China's cadre management system. The recruitment, promotion, placement, assessment, further education, remuneration and discipline that shape the careers of Chinese cadres are all punctuated by frequent participation in a plethora of training courses specifically designed for the political and professional needs of cadres. Equally important, the pursuit of educational qualifications, from middle vocational all the way to doctoral degrees, and public examinations for specific posts increasingly determine the twists and turns of an individual's career.

    In this final substantive chapter I will analyse some of the many connections between cadre training and education, the cadre management system, cadre careers and, ultimately, the composition of China's ruling elite. I will first discuss the expectations, experiences and opinions of cadres about the role of education and training in their own work and career development, followed by a discussion of the fit – or lack thereof – between the realities of cadres' daily work and the party's requirements and ambitions. I will then turn to an analysis of the career paths of leading cadres in Yunnan, and the impact that recent reforms in cadre management had at the time of my fieldwork in 2004 and 2005. In the final section I will turn to the implications of the rise in the status of professional training and qualifications and the composition of China's cadre corps.

  • Appendix 2 - Student questionnaire survey

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp 201-205

  • Summary

    The survey was carried out between September and December 2005 among all cadres who participated in a training programme at the Yunnan Provincial Party School. The questionnaire was designed together with Professor Duan Eryu of the party school, and administered by the class teachers (ban zhuren) at the school. The survey results were coded in MS Excel and analysed in SPSS. A full list of survey variables is attached at the end of this appendix.

    A total of 490 questionnaires were distributed with 362, or 74%, valid returns. Three-quarters (74%) of the respondents were men and one-quarter (26%) were women. Around two-thirds of the participants were between the ages of 40 and 49 (65%). The age distribution for men and women was similar, with modal ages of 43 for men and 44 for women. There were seven ranks in the study population: below ke, vice ke, full ke, vice chu, full chu, vice ting and full ting. The largest category of respondents were of ke rank (171, or 47%), followed by chu (133, or 37%), and the highest rank ting (19, or 5%). The largest individual rank in the study was vice chu (93), followed by full ke (83); together they constitute 49% of respondents.

  • 2 - Cadres, cadre training and party schools

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp 26-55

  • Summary

    SOCIALIST GOVERNANCE

    The Communist Party's dominance in China amounts to much more than simply holding on to power. In Soviet and Chinese communist political theory, the Communist Party is intimately linked to, but remains separate from, the government. The party does not govern, but leads, directs, controls and inspires all institutions of governance: state, army, judiciary, mass organizations, ‘functional’ work units, state enterprises. The party even guides, mainly through its United Front Department (Tongzhan Bu), the formal institutions of representative government, such as the people's congresses and the people's consultative conferences. In addition to having its own separate organizational setup, the party has created cells of party members in institutions everywhere, ensuring the party's role as the leading force that holds society together. With only slight exaggeration we can indeed say that the party is ‘the organized expression of the will of the dominant class in society, the proletariat’ (Schurmann 1968: 109). This role is predicated on socialist ideology as a mode of governance. Without such an ideology, the party would quickly decay into an electoral machine or a patronage network for the competition and sharing of power: effective perhaps at just that, but no longer a party capable of exercising leadership across society.

  • 1 - Socialism, capitalism and the anthropology of neo-socialist rule

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp 1-25

  • Summary

    Putting the Chinese Communist Party's reinvention of the party-state at the centre of the epochal transformation of China into a global superpower, this study homes in on the education and training of cadres (administrators and politicians), a crucial but almost completely overlooked aspect of the Chinese party-state. Cadre training is an entry into the often opaque and mysterious world of the people in China who staff the party-state and rule the country, a way of understanding the Communist Party's enduring and growing power inside and outside China without having to risk an investigation in the often secret and highly sensitive specifics of the exercise of that power itself. Cadre training also highlights the fact that China's contemporary administration is Mao Zedong's worst nightmare become real. Gone forever are first-hand revolutionary experience and direct involvement in the life and work of China's toiling masses. Instead, cadres have become a ruling elite who worship book learning and formal educational qualifications. As the embodiment and chief instrument of the party's leading role in society, cadres are to be leaders, managers, moral exemplars and faithful servants of the party at the same time. The learning, discipline and privilege that cadre training provides is a key transformational experience in the construction of cadres' unique personhood, a sense of self that straddles the boundaries between strong individuality, total submission to the party's will, elitist exclusivity and faceless anonymity.

  • Preface

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp vii-vii

  • Summary

    The fieldwork, survey and documentary research carried out in China between 2004 and 2007 would not have been possible without the help and cooperation of the many scholars, students and administrators in Yunnan and Beijing who freely gave their time to answer the many questions I put to them. My most important debt is to Professor Duan Eryu, who was my official counterpart at the Yunnan Provincial Party School. He had the courage and foresight to accommodate the outrageous request from a foreign anthropologist to be allowed into the inner sanctum of the Chinese Communist Party. He not only arranged my fieldwork at the provincial and sub-provincial schools in Yunnan featuring in this book, but also became my most important informant and, in time, a personal friend. In facilitating other parts of the project, I would like to thank Zhao Baige, Fan Jianhua, Zhang Lihua, Shen Yuan, Liu Xirui, Xiang Biao, Yang He and several others who should remain anonymous. Excellent research assistance was given by Li Yongkang in Yunnan, Wu Qiquan and Zhang Huayang in Beijing and Meera Balarajan in Oxford.

    In the course of writing the manuscript, I have burdened several friends with the thankless task of reading drafts of papers, chapters or even the whole manuscript. Chris Hann, Sun Xiangdong, Susan Greenhalgh, Bill Hurst, Brian McVeigh and an anonymous reviewer for Cambridge University Press are in no way responsible for any of the mistakes or omissions that remain, but should certainly be given much credit for whatever qualities the finished product has.

  • 3 - Cadre training and education in the twenty-first century

  • Frank N. Pieke, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Good Communist
    Published online:
    29 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 November 2009, pp 56-80

  • Summary

    THE INSTITUTIONS OF CADRE TRAINING

    Cadre training involves a great many party and state institutions. Although overall responsibility at each level of administration rests with the general party committee, this responsibility is delegated to a separate committee directly under the party committee called the cadre education and training committee (ganbu jiaoyu peixun weiyuanhui, or ganjiaowei for short). This committee is responsible for drafting the annual cadre educational and training plan, and is the main forum for political decision making on cadre education and training. All other party and government departments, the party school, the academy of administration and the academy of socialism essentially have executive, rather than decision-making, responsibility for parts of the plan. It is therefore very telling that this committee is a party, rather than a government committee: it is in coordinating committees such as this that the party's Leninist leading role over state and society finds concrete expression.

    The formal chair of the cadre education committee is the full party secretary. The deputy chair – and the person normally running the committee – is the deputy party secretary in charge of ideological work, who also doubles up as the full head of the party school. Other members include the party secretary of the party's discipline inspection committee, the standing deputy head of the party school, the head of the party's propaganda and organization departments, the head of the government's personnel bureau and also the party secretary of the working committee for directly administered departments (zhishu jiguan gongzuo weiyuanhui or gongwei, see below).

Page 77 of 205