Of the promises made in the early days of IC at least one has been kept: that it would appear irregularly. Do you want to see it more frequently? This is more likely to happen if you send in material; either original work or relevant quotations (but please understand if we are not able to… read more »
In IC12, which was issued in August 1984, there was an invitation to the “Socialist” Party to counter our attacks on them: One sort of contribution will (until further notice) certainly be printed: anything of up to 1,000 words defending the Socialist Party of Great Britain or expounding its case. We do, of course, reserve… read more »
PART ONE It is seldom easy for the two parties to any serious discussion to speak directly to each other’s arguments, and when they are adherents of different major ideologies the difficulty is increased. They often find they are talking past each other; each feels the other is failing to meet his points and is… read more »
New readers of IC are often puzzled by the amount of attention devoted to the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Many have never heard of it before, some may confuse it with the Labour Party, and those acquainted with it know it to be little more than a coterie, a group of some five or… read more »
One type of reform increasing in popularity (though the ideological structure of society makes it a statistical impossibility that it should win majority support) is that promoted by the ecological and conservationist movement, leading to (among other things) the establishment of game reserves in Africa. Do the well-intentioned reformers, and the journalists who support their… read more »
Latest News from the Communist Front – or does the front become the rear when they are retreating? Exploitation, class inequality, corruption and superstition are re-emerging in China on a scale not seen for 50 years. This is not the snap judgment of a cynical outsider. William Hinton, an American farmer once on good terms… read more »
The reformist and revolutionary movements have a strong tendency to think of themselves as rationalistic, and rationalism works on the belief that if only people will divest themselves of prejudice, attend to the evidence and think clearly, they will arrive at the correct solutions to social problems; it implies that for each problem there can… read more »
The rationalists assume that every increase in knowledge and understanding is an advance, a step toward full mental freedom. But this clashes with experience. The people who show themselves, by their behaviour, to be enjoying the experience of freedom, both mental and physical, are not the wise but the ignorant. Those with lifetimes of learning… read more »
Common experience suggests that ideological development is usually completed by the early twenties; after that age most people are ‘set’; regression is common but further development rare. Here is some evidence confirming that impression and suggesting that development is sometimes completed even sooner than one would have thought. Lenin was 47 when he made his… read more »
The Socialist Standard of September 1981 tells us why capitalism survives: The capitalist social system continues in existence, not because it is efficient or beneficial or controllable. The very opposite is true: it exists because, in spite of the facts of experience, the people under it will it to continue. – p. 162 The official… read more »