Until IC draws attention to it, absolute truth (or the question whether absolute truth exists) attracts hardly any attention. It seldom forms the topic of conversation, and little gets written about it. This does not mean that it plays no part in thinking. IC‘s challenge provokes more letters than any other subject raised, and almost… read more »
Readers have written in, from time to time, criticising the proposition that Nothing Is Absolutely True. Personal correspondence with others suggests that they have reservations about it which they don’t express. Here we offer a passage which seems to us to formulate these objections, or at least some of the main ones, with power and… read more »
Reformers have been active for a long time now, and have achieved many successes. Yet the number of reforms needed remains as great as ever, and may even be increasing. This suggests some built-in source for our continuing difficulties, and here we ask whether they may not arise, at least in part, from the solution… read more »
Although nobody has been rude enough to raise the question, readers must have wondered why IC should speak so often in favour of familiar capitalism, with the market and the state; the system does have substantial disadvantages. An explanation appears when one notices a similarity between capitalism and getting old: bad as each of them… read more »
One major ideology develops out of another, and it does so because the previous one falls short; along with some of the desired results it produces others both unintended and unwanted. As warnings of the precarious condition of the giant panda brought these animals into the news, so destruction of them increased, more being captured… read more »
BACTERIA inhabited the earth by themselves for two billion years. They have not been eliminated in the course of further development. (C. Vita-Finzi) NATURE is an artificial construction. IDEOLOGY plays a larger part in current thinking than sometimes appears, its presence often disguised by coded language. When, for example, the socialists and communists assert that… read more »
Harold Walsby (originator of systematic ideology) once spoke of Hegel as the supreme anarchist. At the time I would have said that an anarchist was the one thing Hegel was most emphatically not, but the conversation moved on and I never did ask Walsby what he had meant. For many years the remark has been… read more »
Kevin Maxwell was recently arrested in an early-morning swoop by the Serious Frauds Office. Television showed him being taken to a police vehicle, his arm grasped by a constable. Since he is officially innocent until convicted, it is hard to see how this treatment can be justified. Bill Bloggs has been remanded in custody. Bill… read more »
Anarchism implies that we should all have independent facilities for expressing our own ideas, and as the zines come in we sometimes seem to be getting close to that. Disappointingly, the ideas in most anarchist journals turn out pretty much like those in most of the others, but the refreshing exceptions do turn up, one… read more »
Political movements vary in many ways but all of them, when in power, promote freedom. To meet the inevitable protest head-on: Nazism promoted freedom of action for anti-Semitism. To demand merely freedom, unspecified, is like asking for more without saying of what. For the demand to be capable of realisation we have to specify which… read more »