A NEWSPAPER headline cries: “Marx gets the workers united – against him.” [1] So what’s new? Since Marxism first appeared practically all workers, by their actions if not their thoughts, have supported its opponents. [1] (Sunday Times 11 Feb 90) OLIVER IN SKIRTS The feminists will have gained their point when men wear skirts as… read more »
SOME BACKGROUND This party set out in 1904 to get a majority for ‘socialism’ – more accurately described as anarcho-socialism. the world population has increased by thousands of millions while the number of ‘socialists’ remains in the hundreds – of people, not millions. Further from their majority than when they started, they believe they are… read more »
SECRET SCIENCE Leo Strauss died in 1973; some of his books are now being re-issued. He thought advanced political ideas valuable but also dangerous; the Enlightenment led to Hitler. His answer was to keep scientific and philosophical thinking secret from the general body of ordinary people. (TLS 1 Dec 89). Such caution hardly seems called… read more »
IC apologises for the late appearance of this issue. For the past two years and more a replacement for Ideologies and their Functions has been under way, and these last weeks have been taken up with final correction and preparation for press. Beyond Politics, an outline of systematic ideology, is expected in March. 160 pages,… read more »
The Labour Party Conference of October was remarkable for the prevalence of agreement; unlike earlier ones it did not justify Norman Tebbit’s description of the comrades and brothers as “firmly united in fraternal hatred of each other’s guts”. An editorial in the Independent of October 7 spoke of “a respectable measure of unity at most… read more »
RAVEN, the anarchist quarterly, [1] includes a review-article by Brian Morris. Against the writers who seem to be kidding themselves that as a serious critique of marxism anarchism doesn’t exist [p. 278], he insists that it does. He is, of course, right. Anarchism exists as a critique of marxism, but marxism has no theory capable… read more »
Quentin Crisp wrote How to Become a Virgin. Whether he would call himself an anarchist we have no idea, but he has come up with a phrase that hits off, with grace and economy, the relationship between government and anarchy: “The function of government is to create a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.”… read more »
REPLYING to the suggestion from a correspondent, that IC ought to co-operate with the (A-)SPGB, IC40 asked, rhetorically, how one can possibly co-operate with people who declare themselves opposed to all other political parties, even at war with them. The answer, of course, is: by opposing them, by fighting them. This party affirms the value… read more »
REFORMERS and revolutionaries, demanding that people should think for themselves, tend to claim that they are increasingly coming to do so. The evidence goes against this belief, the latest item appearing in reports of a survey undertaken for the new “Sky” television system. This has very few subscribers and the fact itself operates as a… read more »
Smith (Ken) Free is Cheaper, John Ball Press, May Hill, Gloucester. Cloth bound, pp 259, £12.95. Some accept modern society, some support it, others feel they have had it thrust upon them. Ken Smith belongs to the last group, and he fights back. His attack opens on the first page, with the charge that never… read more »