From the ‘spirit of capital’ to the “spirit” of capitalism: The transition in German economic thought between Lujo Brentano and Max Weber

I dedicate this essay to the memory of the late Wolfgang Mommsen—the subject would have been congenial to him. It is one of a series of offshoots from a central project: a scholarly edition of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with commentary. When I first told Prof. Mommsen of my plan in 1994 he looked me full in the face and gave a characteristic growl: “All that work!” Here was a man who knew what he was about. My thanks to Ross McKibbin and Keith Tribe for reading this paper in draft.

The article begins by examining Max Weber's relations with Lujo Brentano, much the most important “precursor” to Weber in the field of economics. In particular, Brentano conducted a form of parallel inquiry into the rise of ‘the spirit of capital’ in England 35 years before Weber looked for the origins of “spirit” of capitalism there, and the contrast between these two ideas casts much light both on Brentano and on Weber's Protestant Ethic. This personal history leads into a broader history of the transition in German economic thought between the 1860s – the formative decade for Brentano but also the era of Marx's Capital – and that of Weber's generation coming to maturity c.1890. Marx and Weber remain the two great canonical thinkers and original minds; but any authentic historical comparison between Marx and Weber must take in Brentano. The essence of the contrast between the generations is that between Weber's novel conception of an ethical ‘capitalism’, and the materialism and naturalism underpinning Brentano's and Marx's ‘capital’, although Weber and Brentano are alike as liberals, democrats and bourgeois.     

Fragmentation and forgetting: Sarajevo’s Vijećnica

In this article I argue that the crisis of common collective heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina is negatively affecting continued peace building processes in the country through an examination of the reconstruction of Sarajevo’s Austro-Hungarian city hall – the Vije?nica. Without a state-level ministry of culture, heritage that attests to a common cultural past uniting the three major ethno-religious groups in the country has suffered immeasurably, especially in comparison to ethnically specific cultural heritage. After the Second World War, the Vije?nica began to embody shared collective memories through its function as the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Nacionalna i Univerzitetska Biblioteka Bosne i Hercegovine). The building’s destruction during the Siege of Sarajevo cemented its place within the Bosnian psyche as a collective memory institution, but its reconstruction is transforming the discourses surrounding the building and the collective memories it embodies. By investigating the reconstruction process and the post-war separation of the National and University Library from the Vije?nica, I show that common collective heritage matters for peace building, and that in Sarajevo, the decay and neglect of such institutions not only mirror the splintering dynamics of ethno-religious nationalism, but also perpetuate them.     

FROM LEFT‐WING TO COMMUNIST MELANCHOLY: TRAVERSO'S WAGER

Enzo Traverso's inspired book Left‐Wing Melancholia revisits iconic representations of revolutionary hopes and defeats not to draw up an inventory of what has been lost but rather to remind his readers that past defeats also contain the traces of unfulfilled possibilities. After the end of the Soviet Union and the global triumph of neoliberal capitalism, the communist utopian imagination of a classless society, Traverso suggests, can be reignited through memorial practices of resilient, resistant melancholy. Traverso's argument draws on Walter Benjamin's notions of materialist history, redemptive memory, and knowing melancholy. Yet the nameless vanquished masses to whom Benjamin's concept of history seeks to do justice remain marginal in Traverso's book. Instead, revolutionary defeat is cast in the tragic mold of succeeding by failing, a trope exemplified by figures such as Auguste Blanqui, Charles Péguy, or Daniel Bensaïd. In response to Traverso's reliance on the transhistorical category of the tragic, this essay argues for a more abstractly theoretical understanding of left‐wing melancholy as conditioned by historically specific class relations that constrain and challenge the engaged intellectual. Moreover, this essay questions Traverso's dualistic treatment of politically committed (Benjamin, Brecht, C. L. R. James) and elitist intellectuals (Adorno) and concludes that the concept of left‐wing melancholy must ultimately be interrogated against the backdrop of a lingering uncertainty about the relationship between theory and praxis that, as Adorno claims, one can already find in Karl Marx—an uncertainty that is hence inscribed into the history of any Marxist theory of revolution and history.     

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's effort of retreat and the ending of the East Asian War

Abstract

During the second stage of the East Asian War, Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豐臣秀吉 hopefully sought to make an honorable exit, but the Choson 朝鮮 formulated a unique diplomatic strategy that brought the Ming to the battlefield, and there was no way for Toyotomi Hideyoshi's retreat and attempts at peace talks to be successful. In the end, the war concluded with Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death from illness and the retreat of the Japanese army in defeat, and the international order established between China and Korea was maintained.     

The Swedish journal Morgonbris on political violence in Finland 1917–1918

Women participated actively in the Finnish Civil War in January 1918–April 1918. The radicalization of the Finnish Social Democratic Party and the embracing of a revolutionary discourse sent tremors also to Sweden. In this article, I investigate how the Swedish Social Democratic women’s journal Morgonbris addresses women’s political violence in the period surrounding the Russian Revolution in March 1917, the October 1917 Bolshevik takeover and the following Civil War in Finland early 1918.

Morgonbris did not shun from reporting or debating women’s political violence, however, as this article shows there is a great discrepancy between how different acts of violence are understood in the greater discourse. Some violence, and especially some acts of violence committed by women, is clearly framed as more legitimate than others.     

宪法危机与1919年南北和谈

1919年议和前后南北政府混乱的宪法依据,以及双方各利益集团的不同考虑,凸显出南北议和的一个难点:宪法问题.也正因此导致第二次南北和谈缺乏一个能够统摄各方的中心,并使南北军阀在和谈前期达成的利益妥协不能实现,和谈最终陷于瘫痪.     

黎萨尔与菲律宾现代政治变革模式的形成

何塞.黎萨尔被认为是菲律宾"国家和个人生活的基石"。在有关黎萨尔的研究中,黎萨尔与菲律宾政治变革的途径,即经由"改革"还是"革命"来达致国家的独立、获取全民的"福利",是争论不休的一个关键问题。从黎萨尔的著作来看,黎萨尔倾向于经由菲律宾政治精英在殖民政府内部对现有不合理的旧制度进行一场彻底的、激进的"好改革"来实现菲律宾的独立和民主。如果这一条道路走不通,那么,"暴力革命"将是最后的手段。黎萨尔所强调的"精英化的好改革"的政治思想,经由美国殖民政府的渲染,最终构成为菲律宾现代政治变革的基本模式——旧框架内的和平革命。     

Six seasons of wild pea harvest in Israel: bearing on Near Eastern plant domestication

Harvest experiments of wild crop relatives are essential for our understanding of the biology of wild plants embodied in the economy of ancient forager communities. Most of the previous experimental harvest reports spanned a single season and therefore are unable to address questions concerning long-term yield potential. Herein we report on six consecutive harvest seasons taking place at four sites in Israel that harbour wild pea populations: three typical Pisum fulvum sites and one typical Pisum elatius site. Three out of the four sites showed no indication of a decline in grain yield as a result of repeated harvest and the removal of a considerable portion of mature seeds. Site-specific factors seem to have a strong influence on the grain yield as no seasonal yield similarity was observed between adjacent and ecologically similar sites harbouring the same wild pea taxon. The erratic year-to-year wild pea yield we observed calls for a reassessment of the presumed role of grain legume species in Near Eastern hunter–gatherers' diet. Combined with published data on cultivation of wild pea, our results are inconsistent with models suggesting protracted domestication of Near Eastern grain legumes or with the preliminary attempts to apply Niche Construction Theory to the study of plant domestication in the Near East.     

构建民族国家：辛亥革命前后的中国边疆

本文着重从民族国家构建的角度探讨辛亥革命前后蒙、藏等边疆地区的政治变迁。辛亥革命使“五族共和”、“中华民族”学说从思想变成了政治实践,实际上成为梁启超政治思想、价值体系的代行者。可以说,因辛亥革命而昌盛的“五族共和”、“中华民族”观念作为民国初期政府整合中央与边疆地方的意识形态,对边疆地方的民族国家之认同影响极深。