Duncan Bell

This essay explores how a range of British socialist writers – novelists, philosophers and scientists – imagined utopian futures centered on the idea of telepathic communication. I focus on the work of H. G. Wells, J. D. Bernal, J. B. S. Haldane, and Olaf Stapledon. Sceptical of previous popular ideas about telepathy, which suggested it was a latent human psychic capacity awaiting discovery by scientific investigation – the position of (for example) Henry Sidgwick and William James – they argued that it could be bio-engineered. As such, they defended what I will call a “fabricated” rather than a “found” mode of telepathic communication. The ability to communicate in an unmediated fashion, mind-to-mind, constituted an important part of their utopian imagining of future socialist societies. I show how each of my cast formulated their ideas, how they argued for different conceptions of individuality and human freedom, and how their attempts to balance the group and the individual indexed the contrasting types of political order (ranging from communism to liberal socialism) that they advocated.

In this article I pursue two main lines of argument. First, I seek to delineate two distinctive modes of justifying imperialism found in nineteenth-century political thought (and beyond). The 'liberal civilizational'li model, articulated most prominently by John Stuart Mill, justified empire primarily in terms of the benefits that it brought to subject populations. Its proponents sought to 'civilize'lthe 'barbarian'. An alternative `republican' model focused instead on the benefits - glory, honour and power above all - that accrued to the imperial state. Less concerned with spreading civilization, its proponents concentrated on fortifying the imperial polity. Second, I offer a 'republican' interpretation of the writings of the historian and public moralist J.A. Froude (1818-94), arguing that he both diagnosed the problems of modern Britain and prescribed imperial solutions to those problems, based on his reading of the fate of the Roman republic.

In this article, I explore recent work on realist political theory and international politics. I discuss how scholarship on the topic emanates from two different fields—International Relations and political philosophy—and argue that there is a good case for greater engagement between them. I open by delineating various kinds of realism, showing that the term covers a wide variety of methodological and political approaches. In particular, I suggest, it is important to recognize the difference between liberal and radical approaches. The remainder of the essay examines assorted examples of realist international political theorizing, work that ranges from attempts to rewrite the canon of 20th century political thought to contributions to the vibrant global justice debates.

The world in which we live is largely the product of the rise, competition, and fall of empires. This chapter examines European, and principally British, ideologies of imperialism during the last two hundred years. The chapter starts by distinguishing between imperial imaginaries, ideologies, and theories, before dissecting elements of the western imperial imaginary, focusing in particular on notions of civilizational hierarchy. The rest of the article examines three ideal-typical aspects of imperial ideology: justification; governance; and resistance. Ideologies of justification provide reasons for supporting or upholding imperial activity, seeking to legitimate the creation, reproduction, or expansion of empire. Ideologies of governance articulate the modalities of imperial rule in specific contexts. Finally, ideologies of resistance reject imperial control.

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways in political thought and social science. This essay challenges how the liberal tradition is typically understood. I start by delineating different types of response—prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory—that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. Liberalism, on this account, is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time and space. In the remainder of the article, I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how Locke came to be characterised as a liberal. I argue that the scope of the liberal traditionexpanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious understanding of liberalism was a product of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

The status of boundaries and borders, questions of global poverty and inequality, criteria for the legitimate uses of force, the value of international law, human rights, nationality, sovereignty, migration, territory, and citizenship: debates over these critical issues are central to contemporary understandings of world politics. Bringing together an interdisciplinary range of contributors, including historians, political theorists, lawyers, and international relations scholars, this is the first volume of its kind to explore the racial and imperial dimensions of normative debates over global justice.

J. G. Ballard was one of the most original writers of the postwar era. Although he has drawn considerable attention from scholars across various fields, the character of his political thinking remains a puzzle. He has been claimed as both a radical and a conservative, while others suggest that his work expresses no distinct political stance. Drawing on a wide range of source materials, I argue that from the 1960s to the early years of the twenty-first century Ballard developed a bold and intriguing account of liberalism grounded in insights drawn from surrealism and Freudian psychoanalysis. This was an idiosyncratic version of the liberalism of fear. The essay analyzes Ballard’s sociopolitical vision, focusing in particular on his account of human nature, social reality, totalitarianism, and the power of the imagination.

Recent scholarship on John Stuart Mill has illuminated his arguments about the normative legitimacy of imperial rule. However, it has tended to ignore or downplay his extensive writings on settler colonialism: the attempt to create permanent “civilized” communities, mainly in North America and the South Pacific. Mill defended colonization throughout his life, although his arguments about its character and justification shifted over time. While initially he regarded it as a solution to the “social problem” in Britain, he increasingly came to argue that its legitimacy resided in the universal benefits—civilization, peace, and prosperity—it generated for humanity. In the final years of his life Mill seemed to lose faith in the project. Finally recognizing the prevalence of colonial violence and the difficulty of realizing his grand ambitions, yet refusing to give up on colonization altogether, his colonial romance gave way to a form of melancholia.