This review, by Colin Mills, appeared in the ETHICAL RECORD, journal of the South Place Ethical Society, for March 1987. It is followed here by a reply which appeared in ER for April, both reprinted with the generous permission of the Editor of ER. – GW An Outline Sketch of Systematic Ideology by George W…. read more »
In the British General Election of June 1987 the Conservative Party, having already held office for two consecutive terms, received 13,763,134 votes, Labour 10,033,633 and the Alliance 7,339,912. Other candidates between them 1,199,573. The turnout was 75.4 percent. This was after repeated experience of labour governments in Britain and after the conservatives had shown themselves to… read more »
It’s a strange thing that whenever Katharine Whitehorn is confirming what we say she writes better than when disagreeing. This happens even though to our knowledge she has never heard of IC or s.i. In the Observer of 26 April 1987 she writes of the way unrestricted competition tends to eliminate itself, producing monopoly instead…. read more »
Ideologies and their Functions was published eight years ago, and since then the theory of systematic ideology has moved forward. A more up-to-date statement of it is being prepared, and the present short account of some of the main changes is intended to help bridge the inevitable gap before this appears. The book set out… read more »
Like the rest of their pseudo-scientific tribe, that four-legged combination of two S.P.G.B.-ers writing under the name of “Philoren” (in your correspondence, Feb 11) avowedly repudiate the “long term view of social evolution” and, along with it, the whole historical labour and working-class movement. (A movement, by the way, in which the I.L.P. has played… read more »
In IC12 we presented a table of the patterns of thinking – which is to say the logics – used by the different ideologies. With revisions it goes like this: Protostatic: X and non-X are not logically differentiated. Epistatic: X and non-X are in principle distinct. Parastatic: X is X and not non-X. Protodynamic: X… read more »
LOTS OF LOVELY PEOPLE In this issue of IC we reprint another paper by Harold Walsby. It draws attention to the rate at which the population has been increasing and asks whether the purist ‘socialists’ – who tell us they need a majority have even been maintaining their relative numbers. It was written in 1951 and… read more »
Autogestion and omnarchy have been suggested as better names for the “anarchist” movement. For too many people, anarchy requires disorder, and this presumption gets in the way of communication. Because the goal of the true anarchist is to open up a personal space, free of external governance, so that we may be free to be… read more »
IC has had a good deal to say about the (Anarcho-)Socialists of the “SPGB”; now we turn towards the (Socio-)Anarchists of the “Anarchist” movement. Within anarchism there are two strands: First, the attempt to live anarchism within authoritarian society. Second, the attempt to establish a society which shall operate wholly or mainly in an anarchist way…. read more »
Reprinted from here with the kind permission of the Socialist Party of Great Britain under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs copyright license. The group that formed around Harold Walsby and his ideas probably represents the most unusual breakaway from the Socialist Party in its entire history. During the Second World War this group developed a fascination… read more »