Democratizing Movements v. Constitutional Politics

An introduction to this week’s issue on the future of constitutionalism and democracy

The idea for a symposium in Public Seminar on “Constitutional Politics” grows out of a two-day conference on Liberalism & Democracy: Past, Present, Prospects. I organized these conversations at the New School in February 2019, in collaboration with Helena Rosenblatt, a historian at City University of New York Graduate Center.  One of the key participants was Aziz Rana of Cornell University, ...
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Democratizing Movements v. Constitutional Politics

One Hundred Years of Communism

A look at Leninism

On November 7, 1917 (October 25, old style), the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government, took over power, and established their totalitarian rule (the first one-party system ever). Lenin called it "the dictatorship of the proletariat." Rule of law and traditional morality were discarded as "bourgeois hypocrisy." Political competition between parties ...
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