Political Thought

Conservative and Critical Political Thought. Since political thought usually aims either to support or to attack existing political institutions and methods, it may be classified broadly as either conservative or critical. Theories of the conservative type arise from the attempts of men to explain and justify the political system under which they live and to … Read more

Problems of Political Thought. If an analysis be made of the questions with which political thought has been concerned, it is found that emphasis was placed at various periods upon widely different types of problems. In the medieval period controversy centered in the contest for supremacy between spiritual and temporal authorities; in the seventeenth and … Read more

Political Thought and Political Institutions. Political thought is the immanent philosophy of a whole age which determines its actions and shapes its life. There was abundant political thought in the middle Ages. The conflict between the church and the state; the relation of church to common people, learned persons, feudal landlords and students of educational … Read more

The origins of political thought are in ancient Rome and Greece. Starting in approximately 600 B.C.E, thinkers in these societies began to consider questions of how to organize societies, as part of their more broad considerations of how ethics and how to live the good life. Origin of Political Thought All living creatures except man … Read more

The Theory of Separation of Power is a doctrine of constitutional law under which the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) are kept separate. Theory of Separation of Power:- Separation of powers, division of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions among separate and independent bodies. Such a separation, it has been argued, limits … Read more

National Socialism, Communism, and Democracy. Any account of the political theories of the last quarter century must inevitably end with a comparison of national socialism and communism and of both with liberal democracy. For within this period these three have been the rivals for men’s loyalty and each has exacted from its followers miracles of … Read more

Totalitarianism. Both Italian fascism and German national socialism were intrinsically efforts to submerge all differences of class and group in the single purpose of imperialist aggrandizement. The myths which constituted their philosophy were designed to further that purpose. Hence the practical outcome of both, however justified, was the totalitarian internal organization of the state. For … Read more

Lebensraum. The national socialist theory of territory or space, like the theory of race, was put together from ideas that had been current in Europe for a century. Fundamentally it was merely an enlargement or plans for a powerful German state in Central and Eastern Europe, which should expand as far as its military powers … Read more

The Racial Myth. This idea of the Volk and the leader was supported by a general theory of race and-of the relationship between race and culture, or more specifically by the myth of the Aryan or Nordic race and its place in the history of Western Civilization. Hence the racial theory and the parallel and … Read more

The Folk, the Elite, and the Leader. No figure of speech recurred more frequently in national socialist writing than that of the organism and its organs to express the relationship between the individual and the nation of which he is a member. Mussolini had written it into the Italian Labor Charter in 1927 which began … Read more