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This undated and previously unpublished work was discovered among the papers of the George Walford.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 »
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 »
Since introducing Walsby’s ascription of the ideologies of Expediency, Domination and Precision to the eidostatic and those of Reform, Revolution and Repudiation to the eidodynamic, I have spoken only of the first three. We found each of these established as the distinctive mark of a stage in social development, but the same cannot be said… read more »
Each empire had its enemies, but serious resistance to the principle of imperialism did not arise until late in the Eighteenth Century, when the sans-culottes erupted against the aristos – both groups defined by political attachment rather than rank or income, the aristos often plebeians and the sans-culottes wearers of revolutionary trousers instead of reactionary… 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 »
The British parties do not appear in the rest of the world and verbal correspondences are usually misleading. The Bolsheviks originated as one wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party, but this does not make a British social democrat a Bolshevik (or a Menshevik either), and an American liberal is not the same as a… read more »