This article asks why it is so difficult to find a place for Raymond Aron among sociologists, even though he is consensually regarded as one of the most important contributors to the development of political sociology and to the analysis of the democratic political regjmes of his day. The author examines the foundations of Aron's 'political sociology' in terms of (a) Aron's intellectual development and (b) the French intellectual scene from the 1940s to the 1980s (including the conflict with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty over Soviet totalitarianism). Also discussed are Aron's intellectual roots in the French philosophical tradition (Montesquieu and Tocqueville), his analysis of German thought in the late 1930s (especially the influence of Max Weber), and the fundamentals of his philosophy of history. In the second part the author looks at Aron's critical analyses of totalitarianism and contrasts the specifics of his approach with some frequent themes in the theories of totalitarianism, namely the so-called uneven distribution of fear and 'hidden' (illegal and illegitimate) exclusion. In conclusion the author interprets Aron's 'pessimist dialectics' (disenchantment with the idea of progress) as a vital stimulus for the study of social and political issues today.
This article draws upon the remarkable diaries of Vojtěch Berger
to offer an original perspective on left-wing politics and the transformative effects of war, occupation, and violence in early twentieth-century Central Europe. Berger, a trained carpenter from southern Bohemia, began writing a diary at the turn of the century when he was a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party in Vienna. He continued to write as he fought for the Habsburg monarchy during World War I; moved to Prague and joined the Communist Party; endured the Nazi occupation; and questioned the
Communist Party, and his place in it, after liberation in 1945. Berger’s diary speaks to two constituencies that deserve more attention from historians: Czech-speaking veterans of World War I and rank-and-file members of the interwar Communist Party. The article argues that Berger’s politics, while informed by his experiences and framed by party ideologies and structures,
obtained significance through relationships with like-minded “comrades”. Furthermore, the article examines how Berger used his diary to create political self-understanding, to fashion a political self. Each world war, the article concludes, threw this sense of self into disarray. Each world war also spurred Berger to reshape his political self, and with that to reconstitute his political beliefs, his public relationships, and his sense of belonging in the world. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou