In order to form any clear ideas about the probable social future we need a rational conception of the course followed in the past, a curve to extrapolate. Beyond Politics presents a stadial conception in which the first major step occurs when the state succeeds the foraging communities, a transition intimately linked with the emergence… read more »
With the disappearance of the USSR, and of one Communist party after another, Marxism has begun to return to its former condition as the hobby of a few disturbed individuals. Long the most popular formulation of the ideology of revolution it is still only one version, prepared in a particular set of historical circumstances. These… read more »
PETER Marshall has produced Demanding the Impossible; a history of anarchism. (Harper-Collins). The free-market movement known as anarcho-capitalism he rejects as “merely a free-for-all in which only the rich and the cunning would benefit. Evidently he agrees with IC that anarchism stands not only for freedom but also for limitation; a free-for-all is not acceptable…. read more »
Jean Baptiste Colbert, Minister in charge of finance under Louis XIV, asked the merchants what he could do for them; they added to the common stock of cliches with the reply: “Laissez-nous faire.” Or so the story goes. After generations as an unassimilated immigrant the phrase has now been naturalised as the demand for a… read more »
Coming from Argentina to Israel, Diana Keller studied History and French literature at Beer Sheba and Ben Gurion Universities and took her MA in Policy Making, Planning and Educational Administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ms. Keller has published (in Hebrew) on education, and after working as a teacher now co-ordinates the Social and… read more »
CURRENT mores tend to produce a tangle of ex-husbands and ex-wives, their present partners and their present partners’ exes, that amounts to a new type of extended family. The nuclear family didn’t last long. PROGRESS includes reversals and regressions. The social advance from expediency to domination, for example, included the appearance of law, and “One… read more »
(Revision of January 1992) IDEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY announces itself as a journal of systematic ideology (s.i.), but it does not claim final knowledge of this theory; the formulation that looked like the ultimate last month needs alteration now, and the account given here undergoes continuing revision. Si. starts from observation of the limited success achieved alike… read more »
STATE ANARCHISM “Until this year, young people could only learn about anarchism outside of school. Now, anarchism is included in the syllabus for ‘A’ level politics by the London Examinations Board. We learn this from students who have been coming into the Freedom Press Bookshop seeking information.” (DR in Freedom 30 November) Ever since anarchism… read more »