Risk Assessment Proposal and Report Research Paper

Risk Assessment Proposal and Report - Research Paper Example Amazon, which will derive a comprehensive understanding of the risks associated with the company and the steps to be taken in order to mitigate such risks. The research study would be based on providing solution to the research question of how Amazon can ensure protection of vital information pertaining to the customers and the sellers, which evolve as one of the prime risks or threats for the company. Furthermore, the research study would be aimed at providing an understanding of the key areas where Amazon has been successful as well as such fields that require high level of concentration for availing several significant benefits. The chief purpose of this particular research is to identify as well as assess the threats or the vulnerabilities faced by Amazon while performing different business or operational functions. From a theoretical perspective, threats or vulnerabilities are duly considered to be one of the vital factors affecting business environment, which may hinder the growth and expansion of an organization. Hence, it is in beneficial for the organizations to consider the risks associated with conducting a business and likewise take appropriate steps to mitigate the same. In this regard, risk assessment is referred to as the process, which involves identification of the business risks, evaluation of those risks and formulation of corrective measures to cope with the same (Drissi, Houman & Medromi, 2013). Hence, the research aimed at examining the risks faced by the company that affected its overall performance and also suggesting various ways through which Amazon might respond effectively in resolv ing such risks. The research study on risk Assessment of Amazon would be conducted via establishment and description of a number of steps. Initially, after introduction section, the study would provide the readers with a comprehensive understanding about the perceptions of management of risk and risk assessment. The second step in the research study would

Group therapy and t-groups Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Group therapy and t-groups - Essay Example Sometimes clients consider themselves liable for the progress their peers make and therefore the ultimate feeling of being helpful is generated. Quite often after observing the changes in the group, the clients adopt the positive behavior they observe in others and at the same time they manage to learn from each other and therefore the trust can increase their self-confidence and interpersonal skills among members. Clients are more prone to test their new skills in a safe environment before going to normal a little bit hostile social world. In many case group experience may be therapeutic by offering the clients a chance to reinforce or revise the way in which they relate to their primary families. Purely practical advantage of group therapy is the fact that it is more cost-effective and results in the therapist's time reduction. The therapist's role encompasses facilitating member participation and interaction, focusing conversation, mediating conflicts among members, offering emotional support when needed, facilitating the establishment of group rules, ensuring that the rules are followed and in the case the conflicts are smoothed. The main disadvantage of group therapy can be the fact that not people are... dvantage of group therapy can be the fact that not people are predisposed to reveal their problems in front of everybody and group therapy can be not as efficient for some personality types. In addition to this, the feedback that group gives is not censored by the therapist up front, and quite often it can be detrimental for the client. Another disadvantage that group can face is the switch from the problem to the other focal points. There are many different groups that are used in the psychotherapy: Some groups such as alcohol dependence groups, single parents group, and assertiveness training group. Some group can accept new member, meanwhile the other can be completely closed to new members, once the group is formed. Group therapy became very a popular practice after the Second World War and includes numerous methods of psychotherapy, including psychodynamic, behavioral, and phenomenological. In Fritz Perls's application of his Gestalt approach to group work, the therapist tends to work with one group member at a time. Other approaches, such as J.L. Moreno's psychodrama (role playing) method, stresses the interaction among group members. Psychodrama calls for the group to act out scenes relevant to the situation of a particular member under the therapist's guidance. Influenced by Moreno's approach, new action-based methods were introduced in the 1960s, including encounter groups, sensitivity training, marathon groups, and transactional analysis, whose foremost spokesperson was Eric Berne. Marathon groups, which can last for extended periods of time, are geared toward wearing down the members' defenses to allow for more intense interaction. In addition to the adaptation of individual psychotherapeutic methods for groups, the popularity of group therapy has also

Government College Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Government College - Essay Example The Legislature is the prime law-making body and it is called the Congress in the United States. It is divided into two houses---The Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress passes bills and transforms them into acts and laws, approves or disproves of the appointments made by the President, it declares wars and also gives its consent on treaties. The Executive branch is the one that ensures the execution of laws passed by the Legislature. In the United States, the President is the head of the Executive organ of the Government and performs numerous functions. The most important ones among those functions are, that he is the Commander-in-Chief, he makes appointments in association with the recommendations of the Legislature, he can veto bills and laws; besides ensuring the proper implementations and execution of laws. The Judiciary is the body of the government that undertakes the job of administering justice and taking charge of the criminal and civil offences in the country. In the United States, the Supreme Court is the apex court, which also serves as the highest court of appeal. The other federal courts exercise their functions in accordance with their position in the hierarchal set-up. The Judiciary also interprets laws for the country. In addition to this, it also performs the functions of Judicial Review, which means, it undertakes the task of declaring a bill/act or law unconstitutional, if it goes against the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States also has a system of Checks and Balances, wherein each organ of the Government is granted autonomy, as well as, responsibility. In other words, one organ of the government can check the other organ, in case it goes beyond its sphere of activity or conducts proceedings in a manner that is outside its power. This way, none of the organs can attain supremacy over the other, in spite of maintaining their exclusiveness in their own realm. It, thus, checks and balances the functioning of all the three organs of the Government. In this process of working together and taking charge of the whole Governmental machinery and functioning, the three organs could sometimes overlap each other in their functioning and cause chaotic situations. The most common possibility of this occurrence is between the Legislature and the Judiciary! Sometimes, it so happens that in the process of interpreting laws that have been made by the Legislature, the Judiciary not only interprets it but also adds its own interpretations and thus, leads to the framing of new laws. This can prove to be quite confusing and

Leadership in Julius Caesar Essay Example for Free

Leadership in Julius Caesar Essay In Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Cassius is shown as the leader of the conspirators. Brutus, as chose by Cassius, becomes a secondary leader in the plan to eliminate Caesar. Cassius and Brutus portray specific leadership qualities in very different ways. Brutus shows he is a more sufficient leader by his bravery, integrity and selflessness. Cassius’ lack of bravery is matched up to that of Brutus at the time of their deaths during the Battle of Philippi in the fifth act. Just before Cassius’ death, he says to Pindarus, â€Å"O, coward that I am, to live so long, / To see my best friend ta’en before my face!† â€Å"Stand not to answer: Here, take though the hilts; / And, when my face is cover’d, as ‘tis now, / Guide thou the sword.† (V.III.2536-2537, 2546-2548) Cassius believes Brutus to be dead and assumes this means the end of the battle; the outcome not in his favor. Cassius has his servant, Pindarus, kill him rather than having the courage to kill himself. On the other hand, Brutus, hearing that Cassius has died, admits that they, the conspirators, have been defeated. Brutus bravely kills himself by his own doing rather than to someone else do it for him. â€Å"Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, / While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?† (V.IV.2728-2729) Brutus had shown more bravery than Cassius by having his own death carried out by himself. Brutus also has a greater integrity than Cassius, shown by Brutus’ intentions for the conspirators. Brutus tells Cassius, â€Å"We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar, / And in the spirit of men there is no blood.† (II.I.787-788) Brutus is explaining to Cassius that the point should not to be to kill Caesar, as Cassius wants, but to kill what Caesar stands for. Brutus says, â€Å"Let us be sacrificers, not butchers.†(II.I.786) It can be assumed that Brutus wants to kill Caesar with honor; that he wants to be seen as someone fighting for a cause, not j ust a murderer. Brutus shows higher respect toward Caesar as a person, which displays a greater integrity. Brutus is a more selfless person than Cassius and has a greater passion for Rome plus its people. At Caesars funeral, Brutus tells the plebeians, â€Å"If then that friend demands / Why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: / Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved / Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and / Die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live / All free men?† (III.II.1552-1558) Brutus’ intentions were really to help the people of  Rome, rather than Cassius who secretly wanted the crown for himself. The people of Rome did not want a dictator so Brutus’ plan was to create a republic. Cassius, though, did not actually care for helping the people of Rome, he was only after the power that Caesar had. He says. â€Å"That part of Tyranny that I do bear / I can shake off at pleasure.† (I.III.525-526) Here, Cassius is saying he can’t bear the fact of someone having more power than him. Cassius implies he’d rather kill himself than be beneath Caesar. Cassius would have been miserable if Caesar became king and became a tyrant. Brutus proved himself as a more selfless person by the way he cared for the people. Cassius was set at such a high place of being a leader, but Brutus proved he was better fit for the title. Brutus displayed leadership qualities such as bravery, integrity and selflessness that Cassius lacked. Brutus had the ability to become a leader of Rome, where he could do what was right for the people rather than gain more power for himself.

Central Nervous System and Peripheral Nervous System

Central Nervous System and Peripheral Nervous System Explain the different structures and functions of the two main types of cells in the nervous system. Neurons are the nerve cells; they contain a cell body, an axon, and dendrites. The cell body is the part that contains the nucleus and cytoplasm. The axon is a piece that extends from the cell body; its job is to send impulses away from the cell body. Most are covered with myelin sheath. This sheath helps protect the axon and speeds the impulse. The dendrites branch off from the cell body also, their job is to send impulses to the cell body. Neuralgia is a connective tissue that supports the neurons. Their job is to protect the nervous system. Astrocytes look like star-shaped cells; they are the biggest of the neuroglial cells in the central nervous system. Astrocytes surround the brains blood capillaries to form blood-brain barriers which protect the brain from harmful substances. Microglia are smaller cells that eat cellular debris, waste, and pathogens in nerve tissue. Oligodendrocytes are in the interstitial nervous system, smaller than astrocytes. They wrap around axons to form myelin sheaths. As stated above, the sheaths protect the axons and speed the nerve impulses. Describe the structures and functions of the  peripheral nervous system (PNS). Be sure to include the nerves associated with the PNS, and contrast the functions of the somatic and autonomic nervous systems. The peripheral nervous system consists of nerves, which transmit impulses from the brain to other parts of the body; and ganglion, which are masses of nerve cell bodies that connect structures. There are two main groups of nerves: the afferent nerves and the efferent nerves. The afferent nerves send information from the body to the brain. The efferent nerves send information from the brain to the muscles. The system is then broken into the somatic and autonomic nervous systems. The somatic nervous system regulates the voluntary controlled parts of the skeletal muscles, while the autonomic nervous system regulates involuntary controlled parts like smooth muscle, cardiac muscle, the glands, and secretions. The autonomic nervous system is also broken into two parts: the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. The sympathetic division responds when the body is in danger, increases heart rate, blood pressure, etc. The parasympathetic division is when the body is relaxed and resting. It is responsible for things like constriction of pupil, slowing of heart, and digestive systems. Name the two primary components of the  central nervous system (CNS).   Describe the protective membranes associated with the CNS. Differentiate between afferent and efferent nerve structure and function. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal cord. The brain is protected by the skull and the spinal cord is, obviously, protected by the vertebrae. They are also surrounded by meninges and by cerebrospinal fluid. The meninges are three protective layers of tissue. The outermost layer is the dura mater, the middle is the arachnoid membrane, and then the pia mater is the innermost layer. The cerebrospinal fluid flows all around the brain and spinal cord. It provides nutrients to the central nervous system. The spinal cord consists of afferent and efferent nerves. The afferent nerves send information from the body to the brain. The efferent nerves send information from the brain to the muscles. Name and give a brief description of the structures of the brain. Include the functions of these structures. The four major divisions of the brain are the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the diencephalon, and the brain stem. The cerebrum is the largest part of the brain. It is the whole top portion of the brain; it controls the memory, sensations, and voluntary movements. The cerebellum is attached to the brain stem and its main function is to coordinate body movements and balance. The diencephalon is in between the cerebrum and the midbrain. It consists of the thalamus, which is in charge of the sensory stimuli; the hypothalamus, which is in charge of sensory functions (i.e.: sleep, appetite, etc.); and the pineal body, which is in charge of regulating the bodys biological clock. The brain stem is between the spinal cord and the diencephalon and consists of the medulla oblongata, the pons, and the upper part of the midbrain. The brain stem is the path for impulses between the brain and the body. Choose 10 pathological conditions affecting the nervous system; describe each including diagnosis and treatment, if applicable. Alzheimers disease is a progressively fatal disease. It destroys brain cells and causes memory loss. Gradually over time the person will no longer be able to write or perform tasks, and then it gets to the point that the person cannot even control bodily functions such as bowel and bladder movements. There is not really a diagnostic test yet that has identified Alzheimers. There is no cure for AD, but the use of tacrine hydrochloride is used in mild cases to improve memory. Bells palsy is generally a temporary paralysis of the muscles on one side of the face following trauma. Diagnosis is simply the inability to close eye or drooling because of no control of facial muscle on one side of the face after a trauma has occurred. There is really no treatment needed, however, facial massage, heat, prednisone for swelling, or analgesia for pain all help. Anencephaly is when there is no brain or spinal cord at birth. The only diagnosis is through an amniocentesis during pregnancy, and there is nothing they can do. Carpal tunnel syndrome is pressure on the median nerve caused by swelling of the tendons. Doctors diagnose carpal tunnel based on the symptoms of tingling in the fingers or palms of hands, pain in the wrists, or weakness in hands. Treatment uses splints, anti-inflammatory drugs, and sometimes surgery. Cerebral contusion occurs when the brain hits the inner skull and causes a bruise of the brain, happens most often in car accidents. If doctors suspect a cerebral contusion they can have an MRI or CT scan run. Treatment consists of close observation, if there is a lot of intracranial pressure then surgery may be needed. Huntingtons chorea is an inherited, degenerative disorder. The characteristics are spontaneous involuntary motor movements, speech problems, and restlessness. Since the disease is inherited, genetic testing could be done to diagnose the disease even before it begins. There is unfortunately no cure for this disease. There are many support groups for families affected by the disease. Narcolepsy is a sleeping disorder where the person can fall asleep randomly for minutes or even hours at a time. A polysomnogram can be performed to evaluate the persons sleep patterns. There is no cure, but medications are used to control the symptoms. Shingles (herpes zoster) is a viral infection that causes a rash on the body; occurs mostly in adults over 50. Flu-like symptoms, GI disturbances, tiredness, and rash are all symptoms that help to diagnose the disease. Treatments are used to help ease pain and get you better faster (analgesics or antiviral medications). Paraplegia is caused when there is severe injury to the spinal cord, results in paralysis of the lower half of the body. There is no treatment for paraplegia. However I did see online that there are many support groups for anyone who knows or falls victim to paraplegia. Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system. MS destructs the myelin surrounding nerves of the CNS. There are many symptoms that indicate someone could have MS: Unsteady balance, numbness of multiple extremities, facial numbness, and even impotence in males. When a doctor suspects MS an MRI may be performed, complete blood count, and spinal fluid evaluation. As with many of the diseases of the nervous system, there is no cure for MS. There are some medications that have helped prolong remissions, and as always there are support systems to help the family and persons affected by the disease.

The Developments and Changes the Monster Undergoes in Frankenstein by M

The Developments and Changes the Monster Undergoes in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Frankenstein is a classic novel by Mary Shelley, published in 1818. It recounts the life of Victor Frankenstein; Victor is a young, idealistic student of natural philosophy whose aim is to discover the elixir of life. He succeeds in his aim and consequently brings into existence a monstrous creation. However, he abandons his creation, which is then forced to discover the complicated ways in which society and the world works, in a very cruel but candid and unequivocal manner. The novel begins in the epistolary style, presenting the story in a series of letters. These letters are from Robert Walton, a British sailor who describes and communicates to his sister, though correspondence, his search for fame and glory by exploring the North Pole. More importantly, his letters also announce the discovery and rescue of a stranger, Victor Frankenstein. Consequently, Victor tells the story of his life to Robert Walton, who then includes it in his letters home to his sister. Therefore, Frankenstein is essentially an account of the life of Victor Frankenstein as related to him by a British sailor, Robert Walton, by whom he has been found on the ice floes of the Arctic Ocean. However, Frankenstein's story contains yet another narrative, that of the monster he has created. Furthermore, the monster includes within his narrative the story of the De Laceys, the family of exiles whom he unsuccessfully tries to make contact with. To synopsize, Frankenstein is one novel, but within it there are several narratives and consequently it contains several contrasting .. ...It may well be that Mary Shelley wanted her work to be a warning to all scientists. She was fascinated by the discoveries and scientific inventions that modern science produced. However, at the same time she was very aware of the potential dangers of scientific quest. In Victor Frankenstein's case, his obsessive thirst for knowledge and power developed into a self destructive passion. Through his research, he severs himself off from his family and friends, who are all finally destroyed by his creation. The innermost embedded narrative of the monster reveals to us that he is in an equally miserable and isolated situation. The monster is tragically fated to a life of rejection and isolation from humanity and ultimately we tend to sympathise with him and condemn Victor Frankenstein for his actions that resulted in this.

Impact of the Russian revolution †Ideology matters Essay

I. BACKDROP: GERMAN IDEALISM AND RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARIES German philosophers in the 19th century were often â€Å"Idealists,† that is to say that they maintained that ideas have a force, power, and reality that is more â€Å"real† than that concrete, reality that so consume us in our daily lives. German idealism dominated the 19th-century Russian revolutionary movement from the Decembrist Revolt of 1825 until long after Lenin’s successful revolutionary coup that we call the October (or Bolshevik or Communist) Revolution of 1917. While I never want to downplay the central role of raw hypocrisy in human affairs, much of what we in the United States have interpreted as hypocrisy in the Soviet Union-the dissonance between the profound humanism of Marx’s ideas and the coarse violence of the Stalinist dictatorship-this hypocrisy can also be seen as the desperate attempt to coerce reality through the power of belief-through the power of the Idea. And one way to interpret the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was that the Soviets had lost their ability to convince themselves that the Leninist/Stalinist Idea had the power to transform reality into a better future. With the collapse of this self-justifying, central Myth that legitimized the Soviet experience, the Soviet Union died not with a bang but rather whimpered into Lev Trotsky’s â€Å"dust bin of history.† With this introduction, I would now like to offer three examples in the Russian Revolutionary experience where Ideas profoundly affected the future course of events. Only toward the end of the Twentieth Century have these effects begun to run out of steam. II. THREE EXAMPLES A. â€Å"MODERATE† SOCIALISM AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION OF 1917 The first example involves the reaction of moderate socialists to the February Revolution in Petrograd in 1917. Moderate Socialists, including the Marxist Mensheviks in contrast to Lenin’s Bolsheviks, had adopted a position that Russia was not yet ready for a Socialist Revolution; reading Marx’s Stages of History quite literally, they understood that the Bourgeois Revolution had to come first and had to take place under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. The working class movement thus had to be satisfied with playing the role of a party of the extreme opposition-the bourgeois revolution must come first and be developed, and the responsibility of the proletariat was to encourage this historical necessity. Real consequences flowed from this belief. When the women, workers, and soldiers of Petrograd spontaneously took to the streets in February 1917, it took only several days for them to overthrow the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty. They then handed power they had won in the streets to their moderate socialist leadership-none of whom were philosophically or psychologically ready to assume the mantle of power. Consistent with their beliefs, the socialists in turn handed power to the bourgeoisie who established the Provisional Government. Not having the complete courage of their convictions, however, the moderate socialists also established the Petrograd Soviet which basically held veto-power over the actions of the bourgeois Provisional Government. This â€Å"compromise† established the period of â€Å"Dual Power† which was inherently unstable. In retrospect, it is amazing that the Provisional Government, amidst the catastrophe of World War I, managed to hold on to power until October of 1917 when Lenin’s and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks managed a coup d’etat to take power. Lenin, like his Menshevik cousins, was a Marxist, but his Marxism focused less on the determinist element of Marx’s Stages of History than on the ability of the individual to assert his will on history. For him, there was no need to wait patiently for the bourgeoisie to fulfill their historical duty at their own leisure; Bolshevism could force the pace. Lenin’s Will to Power and his belief in the power of the Idea to change reality made the difference between his success and the moderate socialists’ failure. B. LENIN’S IMPERIALISM, THE HIGHEST STAGE OF CAPITALISM The second example of the power of the Idea concerns Soviet influence on the developing world. Lenin wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1917, during the trials of the First World War and before the Bolshevik Revolution, to explain two crucial contradictions facing Marxists of the day. The first contradiction concerned the delayed outbreak of the promised world revolution. After all, it had already been sixty-nine years since Marx in the Communist Manifesto had proclaimed that â€Å"A Specter is haunting Europe-the specter of Communism.† What had gone wrong? The second failure of the Marxist promise involved the inability of the world’s proletariat to prevent war and its rejection of internationalism for nationalism. It had been a common belief among those of all political stripes from the far right to the far left, that socialist influence on the proletariat had made a major European war impossible. One of the central socialist beliefs was that wars are fought for the benefit of capitalist profits. Now, with the spread of democracy and the entry of powerful socialist parties into Europe’s parliaments, the capitalists could try to provoke war to their heart’s delight but would find it impossible to vote war credits through parliament or to mobilize soldiers who, following their socialist leadership, would refuse to fight. These ideas evoke memories of the anti-Vietnam War poster: â€Å"What if they gave a war and nobody came?† Lenin’s ingenious answer to both questions came in his book, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. In it he argued that the concentration of production had transformed the capitalism of free competition into monopoly capitalism. The concentration of production also had dramatically increased the socialization of production. Big banks had changed from pure credit institutions into business banks and as such they dominated whole sectors of industry. Together the banks and industry were tied in with government. This coalescence of bank capital with industrial capital with strong government ties had led to the formation of a financial oligarchy that controlled large sections of the national economy. Share issues and state loans had increased the power and amount of surplus capital which flowed beyond political frontiers and extended the financial oligarchy’s control to other countries. The capital exporting monopolies had divided the world among themselves; international cartels formed the basis for international relations, and the economic division of the world provided the ground for the struggle for colonies, spheres of influence, and world domination. But once the world was divided up, the struggle had become one for the repartitioning of the world. Because the economic development of individual countries is uneven and sporadic, some were left at a disadvantage in this repartitioning. Imperialism represented a special, highest, stage of capitalism. The transition to a capitalism of this higher order was connected with an aggravation of contradictions, frictions, and conflicts. Monopolists assured profits by corrupting the upper stratum of the proletariat in the developed countries. The imperialist ideology permeated the working class. In other words, the burden of bourgeois oppression had been shifted from the shoulders of the domestic proletariat to those of the colonial peoples. In effect, the domestic proletariat had been bribed and they came to see that their material interests were tied up with colonial enterprise. Now, successful war to repartition the world in the favor of a particular nation made fighting war against fellow proletarians in other countries worthwhile. With his theory, Lenin seemingly had explained those two problems with Marx. The revolution had not yet swept the world because the potential revolutionaries, the proletariat, had been bribed by the illusion of short-term, material gains to forget their true, long-term interests. They had rejected their class-based internationalism for nationalism because wars fought to expand colonial holdings appeared to be in their material self-interest. Hence they did not prevent the outbreak of the Great War. This theory held long-term importance because Lenin, unlike Marx and Engels, did not see the revolutionary perspectives as centered uniquely upon advanced capitalist countries. After the Great War, in a period of â€Å"Capitalist Encirclement† the Soviets attacked â€Å"the weak link in the chain of imperialism,† the colonies. Political influence went to where the oppression was-the colonies. In the colonial and post-colonial world after World War II, given the absence of an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie with the will and capacity to transform existing conditions and to overcome the entrenched interests opposed to full-scale development, a gospel of competitive individualism seemed useless for modernization to those in the Third World. What appeared to be needed to get the underdeveloped country moving has been collective effort inspired by a national sense of political purpose. Only governments had sufficient capital, organizational skills, and commitment to make rapid development possible. Ideologically, therefore, the intelligentsia of such countries gravitated to one or another of the various socialist doctrines-something that in general might be described as state capitalism, that is, the state and not private individuals perform the entrepreneurial duties of gathering land, labor, and capital for productive enterprise. Socialist rhetoric disguised this crucial essence . For most of the twentieth century, Soviet Russia provided the model for those in the Third World who wished to rapidly modernize their countries. And rapid modernization was necessary for the sake of national prestige and independence. Russia’s success seemed obvious when we note that within forty short years Russia had risen from the ashes of World War I to defeat Hitler, to become one of the world’s two superpowers, and to be the first in space. Just as important as was this practical example was the vocabulary provided by Lenin. That Marx himself had had little to say to the underdeveloped world mattered little. I would argue that many Third World leaders, for two contentious examples Ho Chi-Minh and Fidel Castro, who led revolutions to assert national pride, independence, and prosperity, turned to Communism because Lenin had provided a vocabulary with a coherent explanation for colonial degradation and a means for asserting national regeneration. Additionally, of the major powers, the Soviet regime alone more-or-less consistently supported the aspirations of those wishing to throw off the oppression of colonialism and capitalism. Of course, today, the Communist model no longer holds the same allure it once did. C. TWO MARXIST HERESIES: LENINISM/STALINISM AND MUSSOLINI’S FASCISM The final example of the power of ideas generated during World War I involves the intimate, kissing cousin-relationship between Stalinist Communism and Mussolini’s Fascism. Despite facile assumptions, Fascism and Communism were not antipodes. Although their exact relationship remains difficult to define, there exist commonalties, as one author has pointed out: Fascism was the heir of a long intellectual tradition that found its origins in the ambiguous legacy left to revolutionaries in the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Fascism was, in a clear and significant sense, a Marxist heresy. It was a Marxism creatively developed to respond to the particular and specific needs of an economically retarded national community condemned, as a proletarian nation, to compete with the more advanced plutocracies of its time for space, resources, and international stature. Was this kind of self-awareness present as thinkers and politicians struggled to define these two ideologies as they co-developed earlier in this century? In fact, many did recognize that their common interests held much greater weight than did the Talmudic differences between Fascism and Communism. Arturo Labriola’s Avanguardia Socialista of Milan by 1903 had become the forum for Italy’s Sorelian syndicalist revolutionaries, who were struggling to make Marx relevant and against reformist socialism. Such luminaries as Vilfredo Pareto and Benedetto Croce graced its pages, followed shortly by a second generation of Sorelian theoreticians, who came to dominate Italian radicalism for more than a generation. Together they constructed an alternative socialist orthodoxy, which they believed was the true heir to classical Marxism. Clearly, their ideas were no more heretical to those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels than was Lenin’s Marxism. By 1904 Mussolini, then a socialist agitator in Switzerland, had begun his collaboration with Avanguardia Socialista, a relationship he maintained for the next five years. The syndicalist contributors to the journal affected the future Duce’s intellectual and political development. Radical syndicalists like A. O. Olivetti innovatively argued that, under retarded economic conditions, socialists must appeal to national sentiment if their ideas are to penetrate the masses. For him, both syndicalism and nationalism were dedicated to increasing production dramatically. As long as Italy remained underdeveloped, the bourgeoisie remained necessary to build the economic foundation requisite for a socialist revolution. Olivetti spoke of a national socialism, because in an underdeveloped economy, only the nation could pursue the economic development presupposed by classical Marxism. When Mussolini took over as editor of the socialist paper, Avanti!, in December 1912, he attracted anarchists and even some rigid Marxists like Angelica Balabanoff, whom he took on as his assistant editor. Paolo Orano, who served on the editorial staff of Avanti!, along with other syndicalists like Sergio Panunzio, set the tone of that socialist paper. Mussolini also founded and edited Utopia from November 1913 until December of the following year. This bi-monthly review attracted many of the most important young socialist and syndicalist theoreticians, who helped Mussolini to develop his own ideas. In the final years before the First World War, many independent national syndicalists, including Panunzio and Ottavio Dinale saw war as progressive. Helping to put together the rationale for Fascism, they supported Italy’s fight with the Ottomans over Libya in 1911, and, along with Mussolini, they called for Italy’s intervention in the First World War. Many socialists now passed into Mussolini’s Fascist ranks, and syndicalists such as Panunzio, Olivetti, and Orano, became its principal ideologues. As early as October 1914, Olivetti in Pagine Libere spoke of an Italian socialism infused with national sentiment, a socialism destined to complete Italy’s unification, to accelerate production, and to place it among the world’s advanced nations. Over the next three years in L’Italia Nostra, Olivetti spoke of the nation as uniting men of all classes in a common pursuit of historical tasks; class membership did not align an individual against the nation, but united him with the nation. Patriotism was fully compatible with the revolutionary tradition of Italian socialism. By the time of Mussolini’s accession to power, Fascism had given clear evidence of its commitment to industrialization and modernization of the economy. Not only were the Futurists, Nationalists, and National Syndicalists agreed that maximizing production was the first order of business, but all also advocated urban development, the rationalization of financial institutions, the reorganization of the bureaucracy on the basis of technical competence, the abolition of â€Å"traditional† and nonfunctional agencies, the expansion of road, rail, waterways, and telephonic communications systems, the modernization and secular control of the educational system, and the reduction of illiteracy. What does this mean for Fascism’s relationship with Soviet Russia? Mussolini by 1919 was pointing out the absolute decline in economic productivity in Russia as proving its failure to recognize its historic obligations. He suspected that the Bolsheviks ultimately had to commit themselves to national reconstruction and national defense, that is, to some form of developmental national socialism as defined by Fascism’s former syndicalists. Speaking of the Bolshevik failure to comprehend their revolutionary necessities, Mussolini presciently predicted that Lenin had to appeal to bourgeois expertise to repair Russia’s ravaged economy. Bolshevism, he said, must â€Å"domesticate† and mobilize labor to the task of intensive development, something which could have been anticipated, because Marxism had made it quite clear that socialism could be built only upon a mature economic base. Russia, not having yet completed the capitalist stage of economic development, me t none of the material preconditions for a classic Marxist revolution. Russia was no more ripe than was Italy for socialism. Lenin, in the practical working out of his revolutionary government, did run headlong into many of these conundrums predicted by the syndicalists. In the months following his takeover, he had expected that the revolution in Germany would bail Soviet Russia out of its difficulties. Thus, while the first Fascists were organizing for a national revolution, the bolsheviks were still dreaming of an international insurrection. Lenin, changing horses, in 1921 proposed the New Economic Policy to replace the ideologically purer but failed War Communism. Like Fascists, Lenin now spoke of holding the entire fabric of society together with â€Å"a single iron will,† and he began to see the withering away of the state as a long way away: â€Å"We need the state, we need coercion†-certainly a Fascist mantra. After Lenin’s death in 1924, this logic culminated in 1925 with Stalin’s â€Å"creative development† of Marxism: â€Å"Socialism in One Country,† a national socialism by any other name. Mussolini suspected that Stalin might be abandoning true Communism. This, it seemed, might provide economic advantages to Italy, and to Mussolini it made sense for his country to build ships and planes for the Soviets in exchange for one-third of Italy’s oil supplies. For him the even more interesting possibility was that Stalin might be the true heir to the tsars and an imperialist with whom Fascism could see eye-to-eye. In 1923, the Duce predicted, â€Å"Tomorrow there will not be an imperialism with a socialist mark, but . . . [Russia] will return to the path of its old imperialism with a panslavic mark.† Mussolini convinced himself that Russian Communism was proving to be less revolutionary than was Fascism. The Duce and some of his followers considered it possible that the two movements were moving together closely enough as to be no longer easily distinguishable. Even dedicated Fascist party workers such as Dino Grandi, Mussolini’s foreign minister from 1928 to 1932, early recognized Fascism’s affinities with Lenin’s Bolshevism. He had taken at least part of his own intellectual inspiration from revolutionary syndicalism, and in 1914 he had talked of the First World War as a class struggle between nations. Six years later, Grandi argued that socialists had failed to understand the simple reality of what was happening in revolutionary Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution had been nothing less than the struggle of an underdeveloped and proletarian nation against the more advanced capitalist states. Not only Fascists made this sort of analysis. Torquato Nanni, a revolutionary Marxist socialist and an early acquaintance of Mussolini, as early as 1922 had anticipated these developments. He analyzed the common economic foundations of Fascism and Bolshevism, which produced the related strategic, tactical, and institutional features of these two mass-mobilizing, developmental revolutions. Both, he wrote, had assumed the bourgeois responsibilities of industrializing backward economies and defending the nation-state, the necessary vehicle for progress. Lev Trotsky, the organizer of the October Revolution, consistently, even mulishly, argued that Fascism was a mass movement growing organically out of the collapse of capitalism. He also rejected all notions of any sort of â€Å"national† Communism. Nonetheless, he too recognized a certain involution. â€Å"Stalinism and Fascism,† he said, in spite of a deep difference in social foundations, are symmetrical phenomena. In many of their features they show a deadly similarity. A victorious revolutionary movement in Europe would immediately shake not only fascism, but Soviet Bonapartism. (that is, Stalinism) He, however, refused to go as far as his sometime ally, Bruno Rizzi, who later argued that the assumption of similar developmental and autarchic responsibilities could only generate social and ideological convergence. He lamented, â€Å"that which Fascism consciously sought, [the Soviet Union] involuntarily constructed.† For him, the governments of Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and even Roosevelt were lurching toward a global system of â€Å"bureaucratic collectivism,† a new form of class domination. Fascist theoreticians agreed with such convergence notions. By 1925, Panunzio claimed that Fascism and Bolshevism shared crucial similarities. Fascists noted that the Soviets had created an armed, authoritarian, anti-liberal state, which had mobilized and disciplined the masses to the service of intensive internal development. The supreme state generated and allocated resources, articulated and administered interests, and assumed and exercised paramount pedagogical functions. Thus, while the first Fascists were formulating the rationale for a mass-mobilizing, developmental, authoritarian, hierarchical, anti-liberal, and statist program guided by a charismatic leader, events had forced the Bolsheviks along the same course. Both intended to create a modern, autarchic, industrial system, which would insure political and economic independence for what had been an underdeveloped national community. With forced industrialization and â€Å"state capitalism,† the Soviets hoped to bring Russia all the benefits of bourgeois modernization. In the face of required austerity, to mobilize their respective populations, the Communists and Fascists alike supplemented economic incentives with pageantry, ritual, ceremony, and parades. All this, coupled with territorial aggression, completed a compelling picture of â€Å"systemic symmetry.† III. CONCLUSION I have presented three diverse examples of the impact of the Russian Revolution on subsequent history. There are other potential examples. I find it interesting that events so crucial to the twentieth century, now seem to be fading so rapidly in their influence. One real benefit of examining the Communist Revolution within the larger question of â€Å"how best to develop† is that the Revolution loses its sense of seminal criticality. For all the pathos surrounding the effort, it becomes just another interesting attempt at rapid development-a failed attempt at that. While I would happily argue that Marx still has relevance for us today, especially in his critique of capitalism if not particularly in his solutions, clearly Lenin and Stalin no longer do.