Day 3 Semester 2 of Political Science (and History)

Today is going to be weird to post about as most of what was talked about in my history class was not interesting enough to write about here. I reread my notes just to be certain. Didn’t miss anything that I could potentially mention but for the most part nothing stood out. We honestly only talked about what a act is, how facts relate to the study of history, how they’re applied, the system used to study history, and a tiny bit about Napoleon. If you’re curious about the Napoleon discussion it was only brought up in reference to Lynn Hunt herself and how her main focus as a historian is how women were treated during the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rule.

Facts - Coherence - Completeness

That’s the method in which all historians around the world use to to do their research and make conclusions to whatever questions they’re trying to answer. I don’t think this is truly worth writing about here but if someone is curious I am willing to discuss it more in the comments.

I’m writing this segment during my break so maybe my Political Science class will be more interesting. Then again, my classes are interesting but, like today, not every day is going to have good content to write about on Lemmygrad. Unless the class content itself or the professor makes comments related to or about Marxism I’m not going to write about it. Which probably doesn’t track well with my posts as I tend to ramble a lot but I’m going to try and cut back on that as much as possible. I would hate for anyone to get bored or frustrated reading my posts.

So class started and wouldn’t you know, we talked about Marxism! You bet your asses I add little hearts around anything to do with it too. So in this class we went over what explain political behaviour, who rules, and where and why. Interests, beliefs, and structures are the three main things that explain political behaviour. I mention this because we dove into beliefs which led to what modernists are, and in relation to modernists my professor told as that Mexico was deemed as some sort of authoritarian system compared to Western European nations. He mentioned the book The Civic Culture 1963 by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in which they said just that. For what its worth my professor didn’t really take that claim seriously and only talked about it to lead into criticisms of modernism such as its tendency towards Anglo-American ethnocentrism. Next, of course, was postmodernism with a reference to Ronald Inglehart:

Cultures are sets of symbols subject to interpretation; focus on political discourse; challenge to modernist assumption on one clear, fixed, homogenous culture.

Political correctness and anti-PC; woke and anti-woke campaigns. The culture war fits here.

Critics of postmodernism: can interpretation explain something?

Symbols don’t have a monopoly. The colour red, for example, is the colour of the Labour Party but is also used by many conservatives in the USA.

Each ideology has its own idea for a good and just society. Im sure most of you know who Antonio Gramsci but he was discussed in class, so here’s what I managed to write down when my professor was talking:

He was a Marxist theorist that was arrested and unfortunately died in prison.

He never wrote a book himself but his works were saved and compiled by his friends.

He expanded on Hegemony.

Ideology is justification of rule.

The ruling class try to not only rule altogether but to convince the masses of their legitimacy.

After that we moved on to structures which opened up with Marxism. I wont write about my notes on Marxism but I want to talk about how my professor spoke about it. Of course we went over Base and Superstructure and how every society has both and in capitalism the bourgeoisie exercise power over every part of society. He admitted that the definition and discussion of Marxism in our class was the dogmatic version and that its a very orthodox ideology. His tone is almost kind, not dismissive or mocking, as if he recognizes Marxism as legitimate. If anyone remembers my last semester posts Marxism was brushed over in class, but even during the recorded lecture where my professor had more time he didn’t seem to take it seriously which saddened me but whatever.

Institutionalize was next but nothing too interesting was taught so I’ll skip it and go to “who rules.” So with this one there are two theories: pluralists and elites. With pluralists you got power dispersed equally among various political groups, no group has complete/permanent power. With the elite theory its self explanatory and Marxist traditions explain it well, yes my professor said this. My professor made sure to mention that in the Soviet Union, contrary to popular beliefs, it had factions and worked more like pluralists and he made this remark in regards to the criticism that pluralists cannot explain authoritarian regimes. He didn’t talk about the USSR with any contempt, and I feel like that’s important to mention. I wonder if any of the other political science professors here has the same view. With the elite theory section and citing Marxism as a school of thought that explain it well, a guy in my class asked if it was accurate to say that even in bourgeoisie societies its more pluralist as they too have factions. My professor answered this in the pluralist perspective there’s production bourgeoisie vs some other type of bourgeoisie that I couldn’t quite catch but that hardly matters.

After this the class ended and I went home. That’s really all I have for today, and for once I posted it on time.