Ideological Commentary

George Walford: The Free Marketeers

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 »

George Walford: Editorial Notes (55)

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 »

George Walford: Meet Systematic Ideology (55)

(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 »

George Walford: Contradictions

Ideological development through the series can be presented as a series of stages in a continuing attempt to define the assumptions held, and as the definitions become sharper so self-contradiction becomes more direct. At one extreme statements made by the expedients display neither precision nor integration; the two poles of potential contradictions, seldom clearly distinguished,… read more »

George Walford: Military Martyrs

Systematic ideology distinguishes between a major ideology and the ways in which it finds expression; the one ideology may appear in a variety of forms, authoritarian religion and military activities, for example, both giving shape to the ideology of principle / domination. (See “The Church Military“, IC50 p. 18). Fallen Soldiers, by George L. Mosse,… read more »

George Walford: Meet Systematic Ideology (54)

(Revision of November 1991) 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 »

George Walford: Beyond Politics (54)

BEYOND POLITICS An outline of systematic ideology by George Walford BEYOND POLITICS shows that the influence of ideology extends beyond political parties and movements. In all our purposeful activities, whether playing with the children, practising a trade or profession, fighting a war, cooking, shopping or fox-hunting, we follow a pattern set by one of the… read more »

George Walford: Angles on Anarchism (54)

JUST OUT! Angles on Anarchism by George Walford with a contribution by Peter Cadogan Angles on Anarchism breaks new ground. Neither history nor polemic, it starts from the observation that the anarchist movement has settled down among the other members of the political cast; accepted, almost respectable, but of mainly theoretical importance. It asks why… read more »

Beyond Politics Reviews by The Scientific and Medical Network Newsletter

George Walford is concerned here to extend the definition and scope of ideology beyond its Marxist identification as “false consciousness” to demonstrate that ideological considerations underlie and dominate political thinking. He begins from what he calls the British political series of conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism and anarchism, adding that the largest category lying outside these… read more »

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