Having failed to elicit the expected support from the workers, the left now show an increasing tendency to turn to minority ethnic groups, in America especially the blacks. This appeal has met with no better response than the first; in a recent Washington Post survey some 35% of blacks described themselves as “conservative” or “very… read more »
Studies in systematic ideology tend to centre around politics. There have been forays into wider fields, and Beyond Politics [1] justifies its title by an attempt at tracing the influence of ideology in society at large, but broad areas remain unexplored. Here we take up one feature of the ideology of religion, a subject hardly… read more »
Several chiefs of newly privatised industries have awarded themselves generous rises at a time when increasing numbers have to tighten their belts. The newspapers have mentioned amounts in the hundreds of thousands annually and even the Tory government has expressed disapproval. No report suggests that any of these managers have other sources of income; all… read more »
Systematic ideology provides an explanation for the worsening conditions in so many former colonies since the empires withdrew. The high degree of freedom of action in economic affairs favoured by the ideology of Principle and Domination tends to produce (along with other, more desirable consequences), exploitation of the many by the more fortunate, enterprising or… read more »
RATS FOR EVER! Sir, “The economic structure of the rat race makes people behave like rats” (Socialist Standard, quoted in IC 52). When food is put out in farmyards and, the stronger pigs, dogs, vultures, budgerigars, monkeys keep the weaker ones away from the supplies until they have eaten their fill. The stronger rats, on… read more »
When discussing the relative sizes of the major ideological groups, one commonly encounters the suggestion that an opinion survey would settle the question once for all. Why undertake all this argument? Why not simply count them? The Chair of a MENSA meeting addressed by an s.i. speaker once put this forward. The people who have… read more »
Issue No.3 of Spanner has just arrived. It concentrates on greenism, and since the journal retains its stance in favour of socialism (though preferring to call it a non-market economy) a question of priority arises. Let us agree, to start with, that the greenists have a solid point. We clearly cannot go on treating our… read more »
Over recent decades ideology has grown more respectable but it still gets valued below science, an activity commonly seen as the impartial and disinterested pursuit of objective knowledge. Alan Gross has studied the way in which scientists present their results, and in The Rhetoric of Science [1] he comes up with a picture differing radically… read more »
Systematic ideology presents political movements as expressions of stages in ideological development. In establishing this view it criticises the Marxist view that they arise, fundamentally, from class interest. Daniel Bell reviews Arpad Kadarkay’s George Lukacs: life, thought and politics. [1] Lukacs ranked with Gramsci and Marcuse as a major figure in Western Marxism. His father,… read more »
Pipes R. 1990 The Russian Revolution 1899-1919 London: Collins Harvill. Final judgments about Soviet Russia will remain premature until the authorities there have fully opened their archives and scholars had time to study them, but Richard Pipes does not try to hide his opinions. He sees Lenin as a brutal coward who urged his followers… read more »