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IC seeks to encourage responsible discussion. It does not make statements it knows to be false, misleading or inaccurate, and it does its best to avoid printing such statements by other people, even (perhaps especially) when they are about things said in IC. If you are sending a letter intended for publication, please be careful… read more »
This letter is reprinted, by permission of the author, from the TLS of 1-7 April, 1988. It draws attention to two features of current society, of great importance to all who seek to effect substantial changes, for which s.i. provides a rationale. Fist, that the rationalists possess mainly mental power, the coercive forces of society… read more »
When, in the course of argument, one asks for an example of universal truth, the proposition that one and one make two usually comes up. A little thought reveals exceptions. One heap of sand added to another heap of sand does not make two heaps of sand, the same applies to puddles of water and,… read more »
Would you rather be alive or equal? The right wing tend to think it an achievement that five thousand million people should be alive, regarding equality as certainly unattainable and probably undesirable. The reformers and revolutionaries tend to pursue equality (or the suppression of socially-imposed inequality), taking the maintenance of the population for granted. In… read more »
‘The individual is the only real thing in nature and in life. Neither the species, the genus nor the race actually exists; they are abstractions, terminologies, scientific devices, useful as syntheses but not entirely exact.’ (Quoted, with approval, from Pio Baroja, in issue No. 10 of THE EGOIST, published irregularly by S. E. Parker, [address],… read more »
I read with interest the exchange with George Hay in IC32. Perhaps I may offer a third position? (i) As I understand the relationship between specific ideation and ideological category, general public disinterest in the overall theory need not have much to do with whether or not a specific idea or term propagates through society –… read more »
Readers of IC who have been in touch with s.i. from its early days will already know that Harold Walsby left a quantity of papers, some concerned with ideology, some with other subjects, such as his dialectical algebra. With the approval of his widow these have now been deposited with the International Institute of Social… read more »
Readers will be almost as grateful as we are ourselves for a respite from Marxism. In At the Dawn of Tyranny, the Origin of Individualism, Political Oppression and the State (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), Eli Sagen presents the most substantial attempt we have yet encountered at a psychoanalytical interpretation of the development of… read more »