Communism |

George Walford: Are They Not Anarchists? (53)

September 3, 2012

Anarchism seeks recruits and an intake of six hundred would noticeably strengthen the British movement. Yet an organised group of this size remains detached and receives no encouragement to come closer. “The solution to repressive laws is not better government but no government.” Does that not sound like anarchism? It comes from the Socialist Standard,… read more »

George Walford: Ideology in the Reviews (53)

September 3, 2012

Systematic ideology presents political movements as expressions of stages in ideological development. In establishing this view it criticises the Marxist view that they arise, fundamentally, from class interest. Daniel Bell reviews Arpad Kadarkay’s George Lukacs: life, thought and politics. [1] Lukacs ranked with Gramsci and Marcuse as a major figure in Western Marxism. His father,… read more »

George Walford: Editorial Notes (53)

September 12, 2012

CHRISTMAS cards, Birthday cards, Get Well cards, Mother’s Day cards… IC introduces the GO AWAY! card. Carry a supply, hand them out to bores, pests, and botherers. EDMUND Burke: “the British House of Commons… is… filled with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in hereditary and acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval… read more »

George Walford: The Two Freedoms

September 3, 2012

When a conservative government clamps down on people who want to publish books about the security forces, when it restricts demonstrations, strengthen the police and imposes a uniform curriculum on the schools, and does all this while claiming to promote freedom, the reformers and revolutionaries find the combination difficult to accept. When socialists, communists and… read more »

George Walford: The Source of Anarchism

August 21, 2014

This article is reprinted from Raven, the anarchist quarterly, Volume 2, No. 1, June 1988. [1] It has been slightly revised, clarifying the argument. How do people come to be anarchists? At first sight this seems to be an easy one to answer. There may be a few original minds who work it out for… read more »

George Walford: First, Second, Third…

September 4, 2012

In a piece entitled Canon to the Left of Them, IC 32 spoke of: … the enduring absorptive power of the ediostatic ideologies, of the Establishment… the process that turned Darwin, Newton, Galileo and Copernicus, each of them a revolutionary in his time, into heroes of orthodoxy, the process that is not far from having… read more »

George Walford: Systematic Ideology

February 14, 2013

As the years and the decades go by, and now the centuries begin to pass, it becomes increasingly evident that neither socialism, communism nor anarchism embodies the first restless movements of an oppressed majority about to grasp its freedom. Although each of them claims to work for the great body of the people each of… read more »

George Walford: The Political Series

January 28, 2013

Most of the people who think about ideology at all think of it in politics. Its influence appears more clearly here than elsewhere and the transition, from observation of the facts of social life to a grasp of the underlying ideological structure, is most effectively accomplished by way of a study of political movements and… read more »

Ellis Hillman: A Letter from Moscow

January 28, 2013

IC32 reported with the agreement of IC Ellis Hillman had written to the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow to urge the publication of a comprehensive edition of Karl Kautsky’s works. Ellis undertook to supply a translation of the expected reply, but when it arrived just as IC33 was going to press we inserted the original –… read more »

George Walford: Letter to an Anarchist

September 5, 2012

Dear John, I read Barclay, People Without Government, spluttering and fuming at the things he was saying, to find at the end I agreed with his final position. I was saying, at the meeting last Friday, that the prospect of a society running wholly or mainly on anarchist lines is probably an illusion. Barclay says,… read more »