عنوان

Communism and the counter-culture :

Number

TLets360564

Title Proper

Communism and the counter-culture :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Aldous, Roger.

Title Proper by Another Author

the socialisms of William Morris and Ernest Belfort-Bax.

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Sussex

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

1997

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Sussex

Text preceding or following the note

1997

Text of Note

The thesis sets out to analyse the written works of these socialist colleagues from a particular, stated, perspective.The analytical framework is one drawn from a variety of writers whose work can loosely be banded togetherunder the heading of Cultural Materialism. Four analytical tools are described specifically in the first section ofthe thesis; Abstract Objectivity, Hegemony, Production, and Science. These concepts largely consider the workofV.N.Volosinov, Raymond Williams, Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, and Sandra Harding respectively.The second section of the thesis is split into four chapters; Morris and utopia, Edward Bellamy, H.G.Wells andthe Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League. The first of these includes an introduction to Morriswith a short biographical description and a consideration of his utopian thinking and the challenge this held forparticular bourgeois hegemonic meanings, this chapter also contains a discussion of utopian theory. Bellamy isthen used as the first comparative study as his novels use precisely the same method as Morris's News FromNowhere, and Looking Backward in particular is normally considered to be one of the chief motivations for thiswork. This is followed by a consideration of Wells's utopian and dystopian work which, although slightly laterthan Morris's, is a legitimate comparison as it combines utopianism and socialism with particular reference to therole of science, something especially relevant to any reading of Morris. The final chapter in this section considersthe contemporary writings of Morris and Bax's Marxist socialist colleagues. They were both leading members ofthe S.D.F. and founding members of the League but this chapter sets out to make clear that the majority of thosewho contributed to the relevant publications for these organisations did so from within an epistemology andagenda dominated by meanings and values normally thought by Marxists to be specifically bourgeois. All thetexts in this and future sections are broken down into various sub-headings such as science, progress, productionand nature in an attempt to uncover hidden assumptions within the work.The third and fourth sections apply the same analytical techniques to the political publications of Morris and Baxand highlight what I believe to be the unique contribution their work made to the process of development withinsocialist theory. It also considers the weaknesses of their work when compared to that of their colleaguesespecially in the area of the 'women question'.The Conclusion not only draws these elements together but reflects upon how the work of Morris and Bax can beseen to have influenced the theoretical framework through which I have chosen to study them and how, in asense, the thesis comes about full circle.

Political science

Aldous, Roger.

University of Sussex

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y