New readers of IC are often puzzled by the amount of attention devoted to the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Many have never heard of it before, some may confuse it with the Labour Party, and those acquainted with it know it to be little more than a coterie, a group of some five or… read more »
One type of reform increasing in popularity (though the ideological structure of society makes it a statistical impossibility that it should win majority support) is that promoted by the ecological and conservationist movement, leading to (among other things) the establishment of game reserves in Africa. Do the well-intentioned reformers, and the journalists who support their… read more »
Latest News from the Communist Front – or does the front become the rear when they are retreating? Exploitation, class inequality, corruption and superstition are re-emerging in China on a scale not seen for 50 years. This is not the snap judgment of a cynical outsider. William Hinton, an American farmer once on good terms… read more »
The reformist and revolutionary movements have a strong tendency to think of themselves as rationalistic, and rationalism works on the belief that if only people will divest themselves of prejudice, attend to the evidence and think clearly, they will arrive at the correct solutions to social problems; it implies that for each problem there can… read more »
The rationalists assume that every increase in knowledge and understanding is an advance, a step toward full mental freedom. But this clashes with experience. The people who show themselves, by their behaviour, to be enjoying the experience of freedom, both mental and physical, are not the wise but the ignorant. Those with lifetimes of learning… read more »
Common experience suggests that ideological development is usually completed by the early twenties; after that age most people are ‘set’; regression is common but further development rare. Here is some evidence confirming that impression and suggesting that development is sometimes completed even sooner than one would have thought. Lenin was 47 when he made his… read more »
When thinking about ideology we tend to assume that the most it can do is to affect the way we think about, and respond to, existent things. But there is reason to believe that it does more than that, that according to whether we are identified with this or that ideology we act as if… read more »
A book which has hovered in the background of philosophical discussion for several decades is Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic. According to the blurb on my Penguin copy it is “the original English manifesto of Logical Positivism. It remains the classic statement of this form of empiricist philosophy and still retains its interest after more… read more »
In order to understand systematic ideology it is essential to grasp the distinction between intelligence and intellectuality (in the special sense in which this latter term is used in s.i. Here is some evidence confirming that such a distinction does exist. Nazism is the anti-intellectual political movement par excellence, but the IQs of the Nazi… read more »
In 1936 Goering was instructed by Hitler to build up the German air force: But where was the money to come from to pay for the air force expansion? Goering went to Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, who was in charge of the Reich’s economic affairs, and asked that bossy and self-confident character for increased subventions. He… read more »