Expediency

George Walford: Ideology in Practice

Systematic ideology has one feature in common with every other theory covering a wide area: when people start to think about it they usually find the predictions it gives diverging from the results of their own observation. A theory undertakes more than an account of self-evident facts, and its propositions often need analysis before the… read more »

George Walford: The Iron Law

Robert Michels’ book, Political Parties, a sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy [1], first appeared in 1911, and quickly became famous [2]. The English translation has been available since 1915 (there were also Italian, German, French and Japanese versions) and in those seventy-five years nobody, so far as I have been able… read more »

George Walford: Ideology in Education

Should the school be adapted to the child or the child to the school? An inclination in either direction is notoriously linked with political outlook, and this suggests a connection with the underlying system of major ideologies. Zvi Lamm, a professor of education in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has cut across these roundabout associations,… read more »

Ailsa Pain: Review of Beyond Politics

Review of Beyond Politics, an outline of systematic ideology. From PLAN, Journal of the Progressive League, November 1990, by Ailsa Pain. This is a readable and thought-provoking little book. While many people have come to somewhat differing conclusions as a result of their own studies and speculation, I am sure they will find interest and… read more »

John Rowan: Review of Beyond Politics

Review of Beyond Politics, an outline of systematic ideology. From SELF AND SOCIETY, European Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. XVIII No.6, Nov / Dec 1990, by John Rowan. This is a book about ideologies. An ideology is a way of seeing the world, a more or less coherent philosophy of the way things seem to… read more »

George Walford: Liberal Restrictions

Systematic ideology posits a range of ‘major’ ideologies, each of them (except the first, which is non-political) finding political expression through one of the main-sequence parties. In moving along the range from non-political through conservatism towards anarchism, economic collectivism strengthens and freedom of action in economics comes under heavier repression. This is not always self-evident,… read more »

J. M. Alventosa Ferri: Beyond Ideology?

The book Beyond Politics, an outline of systematic ideology, calls attention to the analysis, observation and study of opposites. It is a dialectical book about dialectics. It is intended to explain the ideological structure of today’s society. It is in vogue nowadays to write and talk about the end of history, the end of the… read more »

George Walford: From Hegal-San to NIAT

Kitaro Nishida’s An Inquiry into the Good has been re-issued in a new translation. [1] Reviewing this, [2] Hide Ishiguro remarks that it does not contain the two concepts, of absolute nothingness and the self-identity of the absolutely contradictory, which account for its author’s fame as a Zen philosopher. Kitaro Nishida has doubtless earned his glory;… read more »

George Walford: Editorial Notes (50)

‘MORE recently, historians have tended to see the [English] Revolution [of 1640] in terms less of horizontal divisions between classes and more of vertical divisions, cultural and ideological, running through all strata of society.” (John Miller, TLS 14 December) REVIEWING The New Cambridge History of India Vol IV Pt 1, by Paul R. Brass, Geoffrey… read more »

George Walford: Doing the Splits (49)

The series running under this title has a dual theme; that the eidodynamic movements tend to split while the eidostatic ones do not. The “tend” matters; it is not being suggested that all eidodynamic movements are always splitting while all eidostatic ones enjoy perpetual internecine peace Anarchists are often able to operate in small groups… read more »

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