Communism |

Mary Cole: The Systematic Supernatural / Systematic Ideology as a Framework for the Origin, Function, and Alteration of Religion

August 4, 2013

Winner, 2013 George Walford International Essay Prize. In an evolutionary context, a belief in the supernatural is costly. Evolutionary cost refers to anything that reduces an individual’s eventual reproductive success from what that individual would otherwise achieve. Such cost includes unnecessary practices that either neglect or consume resources that otherwise could be used provision oneself… read more »

George Walford: Breakaway!

August 21, 2014

SPANNER, a New Journal for New Thinking Issue No. 1 [address], 52 pages, occasional illustrations, £1 SPANNER claims to be A New Journal for New Thinking; the list of contents runs: The Green Wave, Common Ownership, That Frame of Mind (discussing the principles of a socialist society), Neo-Connectionism (on artificial intelligence), The Road to Socialism, Standing… read more »

George Walford: Socialist Understanding

August 21, 2014

The Socialist party of Great Britain (not to be confused with the Labour Party) is a small organization to the left of Left. It holds that modern industrial society is divided into two classes, a large working class the produces but not but does not possess, a small capitalist class the possesses but does not… read more »

George Walford: Precision

May 31, 2013

Gellner E. 1988 Plough, Sword and Book; the structure of human history. London: Collins Harvill, 288 pages £15. In this book Professor Gellner distinguishes three stages of society: first came hunting-gathering (the “hunger-gatherers” on p.33 is presumably a misprint), next based on the single discovery of food-production, and finally (so far) industrial, based on the… read more »

George Walford: The Reason Why

May 28, 2013

Genesis set the first people in Paradise, Hesiod spoke of a Golden Age at the beginning of things, and the belief that life used to be better than it is has persisted down to our own time. The people who really did follow an earlier way of life were known to the Greeks as Barbarians,… read more »

George Walford: Editorial Notes (46)

May 27, 2013

OVERHEARD on the jogging track: “Any day now the doctors will be deciding that exercise is bad for you – AND I WISH THEY’D HURRY UP!” MARSHALL Sahlins on interdisciplinary study “an enterprise which often seems to merit definition as the process by which the unknowns of one’s own subject matter are multiplied by the… read more »

Erik Grigg: Who Does Own the Means of Production?

May 25, 2013

SOME BACKGROUND This party (with its companion parties abroad) claims to be the only socialist, Marxist, revolutionary movement. It declares that socialism cannot be established until an overwhelming majority has accepted its case and declares war on all other political parties. Since it was founded, in 1904, the world population has increased by thousands of… read more »

George Walford: Greedom?

May 24, 2013

“Socialist Spain is not the only country to pursue policies of Thatcherism without Thatcher. Communist Vietnam is reported to be practising Thatcherite monetarism and advocating the importance of the market, while proclaiming Marxist-Leninism …” (Freedom 27 Jan 90) These two have to be added to the list of countries proclaiming economic collectivism while practising individualism…. read more »

George Walford: Three Ages of Ecology (45)

August 11, 2014

Fifty-five years ago the atomic bomb was a fantasy and the greenhouse effect was what ripened your tomatoes. The newspapers said there was another war coming, but it would be over in a few months because the Germans didn’t have much oil, and after it things would be better. The bad old days were coming… read more »

George Walford: Editorial Notes (45)

May 21, 2013

HEGEL was a humourist. Must have been, since Terrell Carver writes of his “post-humorously collected lectures”. The remark comes from Friedrich Engels, his, life and thought (MacMillan 1989 p. 71) and apart from one transposition of Hegel’s Christian names is the only misprint in the book. ENGELS to Marx: “What the proletariat does we know… read more »