Francis Galton was one of those estimable, highly intelligent but slightly flat-footed investigators who flourished during the Victorian era; one of his enterprises was a statistical inquiry into the efficacy of prayer, the results appearing in the issue of the Fortnightly Review for 1 August 1872. “God Save the Queen!” may be more a command… read more »
A character of T. S. Eliot’s claimed to have measured out his life with coffee-spoons; other people see themselves differently, and the groups out towards the revolutionary and repudiative end of the ideological range like to think they are engaged in the political part of a struggle between classes, with the trade unions fighting on… read more »
The Labour Party Conference of October was remarkable for the prevalence of agreement; unlike earlier ones it did not justify Norman Tebbit’s description of the comrades and brothers as “firmly united in fraternal hatred of each other’s guts”. An editorial in the Independent of October 7 spoke of “a respectable measure of unity at most… read more »
RAVEN, the anarchist quarterly, [1] includes a review-article by Brian Morris. Against the writers who seem to be kidding themselves that as a serious critique of marxism anarchism doesn’t exist [p. 278], he insists that it does. He is, of course, right. Anarchism exists as a critique of marxism, but marxism has no theory capable… read more »
For clear thinking and reliable conclusions logic is the thing. Emotion, rhetoric, even ideology may be useful in the political struggle, but when we want to get at the truth of a matter, rather than to win an argument or an election, what we need is logic. Logic provides the standard by which thinking, and… read more »
Quentin Crisp wrote How to Become a Virgin. Whether he would call himself an anarchist we have no idea, but he has come up with a phrase that hits off, with grace and economy, the relationship between government and anarchy: “The function of government is to create a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.”… read more »
Elaine Morgan’s The Descent of Woman sets out with persuasive verve the theory originated by Alister Hardy, that human anatomy and physiology, and the gap in the fossil record, are best explained by assuming that the race passed through an aquatic period. In his Foreword to her later and less popular book on the same… read more »
REVOLUTION is supported mainly by the working class, but so is reaction and – even more important – so is apathy. SIR ROBERT MARK, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, defined a good police force as one that employed fewer criminals than it caught; he noted that the Met did not then meet this criterion…. read more »
Revision of May 1989 IDEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY is devoted to the development and exposition of systematic ideology, a theory originated and largely developed by the late Harold Walsby. We do not claim final or exhaustive understanding of it; the formulation that looked like the ultimate last month needs alteration now, and the partial account given here… read more »
REPLYING to the suggestion from a correspondent, that IC ought to co-operate with the (A-)SPGB, IC40 asked, rhetorically, how one can possibly co-operate with people who declare themselves opposed to all other political parties, even at war with them. The answer, of course, is: by opposing them, by fighting them. This party affirms the value… read more »