The major ideologies, outlined on the facing page, have developed through history. Each of them provides the conditions which permit the next one to emerge, and each of them has fewer people attached to it than the one before. The diagram below indicates the outcome, the ideological structure of contemporary society, but the model needs… read more »
(Revision of September 1992) IDEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY announces itself as a journal of systematic ideology (s.i.), but it does not claim final knowledge of this theory; the formulation that looked like the ultimate last month needs alteration now, and the account given here undergoes continuing revision. S.I. starts from observation of the limited success achieved alike… read more »
(Revision of September 1992) IDEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY announces itself as a journal of systematic ideology (s.i.), but it does not claim final knowledge of this theory; the formulation that looked like the ultimate last month needs alteration now, and the account given here undergoes continuing revision. S.I. starts from observation of the limited success achieved alike… read more »
THE DOMAIN OF IDEOLOGIES; a study of the origin, development and structure of ideologies. By Harold Walsby. Glasgow: Wm. McLellan in Collaboration with the Social Science Association 1947. The foundation document of the study now known as systematic ideology. Familiarity with the D of I is essential for a thorough grasp of the theory and… read more »
Anarchism implies that we should all have independent facilities for expressing our own ideas, and as the zines come in we sometimes seem to be getting close to that. Disappointingly, the ideas in most anarchist journals turn out pretty much like those in most of the others, but the refreshing exceptions do turn up, one… read more »
Struggle or cooperation? Darwin and Spencer on one side, Kropotkin on the other. Well, not quite. Although the title of his book, Mutual Aid gets read as suggesting otherwise, Kropotkin, too, recognised that life means struggle, and a struggle in which the fittest survive: No naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for… read more »
One early tendency that persists through later developments, coming to be disapproved of yet continuing to affect behaviour, is a high valuation of economic independence, the attitude: ‘it’s mine so I should be free to do as I like with it.’ Ken Livingstone is reported as saying that many potential Labour voters in the South… read more »
These quotations come from Freedom, the oldest anarchist journal: The Western industrialized world has been purged of smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis and leprosy; its crop fertility has been quadrupled within this century; our urban poor rarely die of hunger. (Michael Duane 2 May 92) The war of 1939-45 convinced [the capitalists] that wars were no longer… read more »
This review of Beyond Politics appeared in The Bulletin of Anarchist Research No. 25, Autumn 1991; the journal then expired. A successor is in prospect, but not before early 1993. – GW Anarchists’ social classifications are famously vague. Undefined groups, such as ‘the ruling class’ or ‘the bosses’ are pitted against ‘the oppressed’ without the… read more »
A talk delivered to a meeting organised by the Libertarian Alliance, on 25th June. By George Walford. (The version given here has been lightly edited in the transition from speech to writing). People who write books about doing talks offer several approved ways of beginning. You can start off with a BANG! to grip your… read more »