IC 36 included (on page 12) a note on Sir Isaac Newton and his religion. It remarked that systematic ideology goes against the tendency, common among the more extreme left, to posit a necessary connection between sound science and atheism, finding the search for precision to be constant rather with the types of religion, known… read more »
As the years and the decades go by, and now the centuries begin to pass, it becomes increasingly evident that neither socialism, communism nor anarchism embodies the first restless movements of an oppressed majority about to grasp its freedom. Although each of them claims to work for the great body of the people each of… read more »
Readers will be almost as grateful as we are ourselves for a respite from Marxism. In At the Dawn of Tyranny, the Origin of Individualism, Political Oppression and the State (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), Eli Sagen presents the most substantial attempt we have yet encountered at a psychoanalytical interpretation of the development of… read more »
Most of the people who think about ideology at all think of it in politics. Its influence appears more clearly here than elsewhere and the transition, from observation of the facts of social life to a grasp of the underlying ideological structure, is most effectively accomplished by way of a study of political movements and… read more »
IC32 reported with the agreement of IC Ellis Hillman had written to the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow to urge the publication of a comprehensive edition of Karl Kautsky’s works. Ellis undertook to supply a translation of the expected reply, but when it arrived just as IC33 was going to press we inserted the original –… read more »
In IC 27 appeared a piece entitled “The Meaning of Freedom.” It discussed the different conceptions of freedom held by right and left, and showed that the right believed in freedom of action in economic affairs but authoritarian control in political matters. Confirmation of this has been provided by recent developments in the Spycatcher affair…. read more »
Dear John, I read Barclay, People Without Government, spluttering and fuming at the things he was saying, to find at the end I agreed with his final position. I was saying, at the meeting last Friday, that the prospect of a society running wholly or mainly on anarchist lines is probably an illusion. Barclay says,… read more »
(Abridgment of a talk by George Walford, delivered to the Anarchist Forum on Thursday 13 Nov 86) I don’t have a crystal ball, so I shan’t be talking about the future of anarchism, only its probable future. When we look at the evidence, and think about it, what can we reasonably expect? First of all… read more »
Here is the ‘Wildcat’ cartoon from the anarchist journal, Freedom, for March 1987: “All I want is for everybody to be able to do what they like, so long as they don’t prevent others from doing the same.” It is a recognition that the claim sometimes made for anarchism, that it stands for freedom without… read more »
About three years ago a speaker was introducing systematic ideology to a MENSA meeting. He spoke, among other things, of anarchism, and tried to make it clear what he understood by the term: a small, highly intellectualised movement, holding that people are perfectly capable of governing themselves and operating an orderly society without the use… read more »