When discussing the relative sizes of the major ideological groups, one commonly encounters the suggestion that an opinion survey would settle the question once for all. Why undertake all this argument? Why not simply count them? The Chair of a MENSA meeting addressed by an s.i. speaker once put this forward. The people who have… read more »
Issue No.3 of Spanner has just arrived. It concentrates on greenism, and since the journal retains its stance in favour of socialism (though preferring to call it a non-market economy) a question of priority arises. Let us agree, to start with, that the greenists have a solid point. We clearly cannot go on treating our… read more »
Over recent decades ideology has grown more respectable but it still gets valued below science, an activity commonly seen as the impartial and disinterested pursuit of objective knowledge. Alan Gross has studied the way in which scientists present their results, and in The Rhetoric of Science [1] he comes up with a picture differing radically… read more »
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 »
Pipes R. 1990 The Russian Revolution 1899-1919 London: Collins Harvill. Final judgments about Soviet Russia will remain premature until the authorities there have fully opened their archives and scholars had time to study them, but Richard Pipes does not try to hide his opinions. He sees Lenin as a brutal coward who urged his followers… read more »
Systematic ideology distorts its subject-matter. It cannot avoid doing so, for any attempt even to sketch out, however lightly, the assumptions underlying intentional behaviour attributes to them a firmness, coherence and explicitness they do not possess in their original condition. Other disciplines suffer corresponding difficulties. Sociologists distort their subject-matter when they use questionnaires, for the… read more »
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 »