George Walford: Correction With Apologies

In 1979 George Walford published a book entitled Ideologies and Their Function. It took a number of the principal social activities and discussed the connections of each of them with one or another of the major ideologies. Military activity, production and fascism (including Nazism) were ascribed to the protostatic, and this has now been recognised as an error. It was Ike Benjamin who first raised the question and having tried, over a period of months, to maintain his view against these criticisms the author of the book finds himself forced to accept the correction. These activities are associated with the epistatic rather than the protostatic ideology.

The functions of the protostatic are even more difficult to define than those of the other major ideologies. It is beginning to look, in fact, as though this ideology cannot be said to have a function, the establishment of its assumptions in practice being the ultimate object of social activity and all other ideologies, and ideological groups, being functional as they contribute to this.

That last paragraph needs explicating; the place of the protostatic in society has to be set out as clearly and fully as can be done. This is being worked on, but it is not yet known whether it will be practical to issue a correction-sheet for the book; in the meantime sales are of course suspended.

from Ideological Commentary 25, January 1987.