Dedication: To F. S. JOHNSON For well over ten years now I have been deeply interested in a field of study which, generally speaking, has so far received comparatively little attention and practically no systematic investigation from men of the scientific frame of mind: the domain of ideologies. This realm – a realm of ascertainable… read more »
Most people – at least, most of those willing to consider such questions – now accept that ideology affects political life; they recognise its influence in the behaviour of their opponents if not in their own actions. Many will also agree that ideology influences some of the more intellectual activities outside politics in the narrow… 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This undated and previously unpublished work was discovered among the papers of the George Walford.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 »
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 »
We have distinguished three main stages of social development (four if one reckons the presence of the eidodynamics as constituting a distinct stage), each of them marked by the emergence of an ideological influence not previously active. We cannot precisely locate the first appearance of these influences and probably never shall be able to do… read more »
Early societies displayed a narrower range of activities than those we know today, showing their ideological structure to have been less complex. Go back two hundred years and our anarchist, communist and socialist movements dwindle to a few scattered visionaries. Another two hundred, to the 16th Century, science and the political outlook we know as… read more »
People engaged in trades, and in professions outside party politics do not normally think of their activities as influenced by ideology, but governments sometimes take a different view. In Russia after 1917, in Germany after 1933, in China after 1948 and elsewhere at other times, the attempt was made to reduce the workings of a… read more »
We now have before us six movements (strictly, five movements and one group), each of them extending over most of the world although under various names and with adaptations to suit local conditions. In introducing them I have taken the opportunity of showing that they form a series, and we shall find greater significance in… read more »