THINKERS not wanting to accept that relations between the major ideological groups set the main outlines of the social structure (continuing domination by the state among them) often seek an alternative explanation, and they commonly argue that the state maintains itself by force, more or less direct. The theory seldom gets put very clearly (perhaps… read more »
From the French Revolution Forward society seemed to be growing more open, more secular, more rational. Education and literacy spread, free thought and even outright atheism became socially acceptable, democracy largely replaced monarchy, and a prospect of socialism, communism, even anarchy, opened in the distance. The Great War revealed other possibilities, but that got dismissed… read more »
EXPEDIENCY: the ideology in which conscience comes as a still, small voice saying somebody may be watching. LIBERAL reformers of the 19th C feared an extended franchise: ‘The masses were then, as now, more conservative than their champions: (Peter Gay in The Cultivation of Hatred). AN ideology is a way of organising reality. ANOTHER driver… read more »
South Africa, Afghanistan, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and even once-mighty Russia; the states have been taking a pounding. In our more optimistic or pessimistic moments (according to ideology) we may even find ourselves contemplating the end of the institution. Orthodox anarchists tell us that our troubles come from the state. Get rid of it, with… read more »
Having paid the larger subscription for the Socialist Standard we proudly declare ourselves now officially a Supporter of the Party. THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS At Chiswick Branch on Friday 22 January. A debate between the (Anarcho)-Socialist Party (SW4) and Lord Desai of the Labour Party. His lordship, in good Labour Party style, kept to reforms he… 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 »
The Gadfly, by E. L. Voynich [1] Kipling wrote of the three-decker novel that it carried weary people to the Islands of the Blest. The Gadfly heads from oppression towards freedom yet it, too, carries the romantic cargo; not ‘stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs,’ but paternity unacknowledged, young love frustrated,… read more »
The major ideologies, outlined on the facing page, have developed through history. Each of them provides the conditions which permit the next one to emerge, and each of them has fewer people attached to it than the one before. The diagram below indicates the outcome, the ideological structure of contemporary society, but the model needs… read more »
Letter from Stan Parker: Sir, I have to tell you that I did not like much of IC60. Some 30 years ago I left an intolerant and sectarian but otherwise politically persuasive SPGB, but last year I found it had changed. The 1904 principles are no longer holy writ, although still valid in essence, and… 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 »