An article in the Observer (15 September) opens with a ringing declaration that under the series of Conservative governments which began in 1979 crime figures have more than doubled, from an annual 2.2 million offences to a “staggering” 5 million projected for 1991. (Why we should be staggered by 5 million and not by 2.2… read more »
S.I. goes against a common view in holding that liberalism shows not only greater mental independence than conservatism but also a stronger inclination to use the powers of the state in the management of economic affairs. Alexis de Tocqueville stands high among liberals. Reviewing a clutch of books about him Larry Siedentop notes that he… read more »
DEFINITION: Editor (n) A person responsible for the contents of a journal, whose job it is to separate the wheat from the chaff and see the chaff gets printed. (Adapted from Elbert Hubbard). OUR headline prize for this issue goes to the anarchist journal Black Flag for ”RED TSARS IN THE SUNSET.” CAPITALISM a killer?… read more »
What happens at anarchist meetings, often enough, is that someone rehearses a particular argument for the anarchist case, and other anarchists present pick holes in the argument, point out errors of fact or reasoning. This is enjoyable because anarchists in general enjoy arguments, and instructive because it helps you to avoid looking silly when arguing… read more »
Review by Julia Stapleton from Durham University Journal (July). Reprinted by permission of the Journal and the reviewer. – GW. The emergence of this book suggests that grand narrative in the human sciences lives on, despite the attempts of postmodernists to sign its death warrant. For Walford contends that ideology forms part of an evolutionary… read more »
This review first appeared in The Australian Journal of Politics and History Volume 39 Number 2, October 1993. Systematic ideology is not a well known body of theory. In fact it is largely due to two men. Harold Walsby and George Walford. The work under review is an elaboration and refinement of earlier studies: Walsby’s… read more »
This undated and previously unpublished work was discovered among the papers of the George Walford. SYSTEMATIC IDEOLOGY – A study of the Structure, origin and evolution of ideologies Introduction Ideology, usually seen as a distorting influence, is best understood as a normal part of social life. Karl Marx’s class theory of ideology is the only… read more »
Appendix A: Anarchism in Spain One apparent exception to the rule, that the nearer to anarchism a movement stands the smaller and weaker it tends to be, is provided by the strength of the anarchist movement in Spain prior to and during the Civil War. In discussing this I rely mainly on The Spanish Civil… read more »
In the opening pages I noted that a theory of ideology must account for the presence of differing ideologies within the one society. Systematic ideology explains the major or main-sequence ideologies as stages in the universal system of evolution and the minor ideologies, the more localised and transient ones, as specialised versions of one or… read more »
Having looked very briefly at the major ideologies and some of their effects on the history and present functioning of society, we now turn to trace out their origins. In doing this we shall need two concepts which Walsby developed beyond their usual significance: assumption (which we have already met) and limitation. I have been… read more »