One economic proposition sometimes thought to be attracting increasing support is the “free market.” It comes in a variety of forms or degrees of intensity, from a mild, Liberalistic preference for less bureaucracy than a Labour government tends to impose, to a near-Anarchist demand that government withdraw, more or less completely from intervention in the… read more »
What we are “familiar-with” is not intelligently known, just for the reason that it is “familiar.” When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of… read more »
Newcomers to systematic ideology are often surprised at the amount of attention paid to the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). One reason for it is that in this organisation we find fully developed, set out ready for our inspection, the tendencies (in the jargon of s.i. the “eidodynamic” tendencies) which characterise the Left. One… read more »
From time to time IC includes short sharp jabs listed as “provocations”: This one appeared in IC5: Ideological uncertainty principle: The more precisely, an item of behaviour is quantified the less precise its significance becomes. Stan Chisman has responded: The more precisely an item of behaviour is quantified the less satisfactory it becomes as the… read more »
One conclusion toward which s.i. points is that the Political individualism associated with the eidodynamic has the result that the eidodynamic professions, (psycho-analysis for example), tend to be, unlike the eidostatic ones (physical science for example), areas of continuing intellectual conflict. Consider these remarks on the psycho-analytic theory of Jacques Lacan (a leading French analyst)… read more »
This review of Ideologies and Their Functions appeared in Reconciliation Quarterly. Ideologies and Their Functions. George Walford, 1979. Obtainable from The Bookshop, [address] Price: £3.95 HB; £1.95 PB. An interesting book. One cannot help liking a book which begins by pointing out that “I am mad about my flat” means “I am delighted with my… read more »
In IC5 there was an article by John Woodcock, entitled Evolution and Ideology. It posited an “evolutionary series” extending from the inorganic through the organic to the social and ideological. The purpose of the present short piece is to suggest that this concept is valid only if “evolutionary” be taken in that broad sense in… read more »
During over two years of activity in this country, the environmental movement has attracted support from minorities in all the major ideological groups. As usual each minority thinks its political programme best and the others are mistaken, and each minority seeks to convert firstly its own political group. This survey of attitudes is intended to… read more »
(In an earlier issue of IC we included a brief mention of this organisation and said a further account would follow. Here it is.) T.E.A.C.H. stands for Technology, Education and Change, the subjects with which it deals. It came into existence as a result of the very strong feedback from the conference on Education and… read more »
This paper is intended to show that certain evolutionary phenomena appear to support s.i. I take as a starting-point the assumption made in Ideologies and Their Functions (page 29) that homo sapiens constitutes a term in the overall evolutionary series comparable to the preceding organic and inorganic terms. The inorganic term itself divides into a… read more »