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George Walford: Angles on Anarchism (56)

August 14, 2014

Angles on Anarchism by George Walford with a contribution by Peter Cadogan Angles on Anarchism breaks new ground. Neither history nor polemic, it starts from the observation that the anarchist movement has settled down among the other members of the political cast; accepted, almost respectable, but of mainly theoretical importance. It asks why this has… read more »

George Walford: Beyond Politics (56)

August 14, 2014

BEYOND POLITICS An outline of systematic ideology by George Walford BEYOND POLITICS shows that the influence of ideology extends beyond political parties and movements. In all our purposeful activities, whether playing with the children, practising a trade or profession, fighting a war, cooking, shopping or fox-hunting, we follow a pattern set by one of the… read more »

George Walford: Reality Over Rule

August 14, 2014

Any reader of anthropology (or at least any reader not committed to the conventions of the profession) will have been impressed, and perhaps puzzled, by the elaborate detail, precision and complexity of the kinship and marriage practices reported. One encounters phrases like this: ‘of the general type called Iroquois or bifurcate-merging, and of the particular… read more »

George Walford: Work! Who Needs It?

August 14, 2014

DO YOU BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER WORK? While other things change work persists, grinning at us every Monday morning. Those who have it grumble; those without it want it. We even hear of a right to it. Unlimited education and medical care for everybody, a big detached house, a Rolls and a luxury yacht for… read more »

George Walford: The (Anarcho- ) Socialist Party (56)

August 13, 2014

Readers will recall that in 1991 the (A-)SPGB, following standard procedure for extreme eidodynamic groups, split in two. They had done this often enough before, but this time both fractions were large enough to survive. We now have two (anarcho-) socialist parties, each of them repudiating the other. IC55, differentiating them as SW4 and N12,… read more »

George Walford: Freedom to Oppress

August 13, 2014

Political movements vary in many ways but all of them, when in power, promote freedom. To meet the inevitable protest head-on: Nazism promoted freedom of action for anti-Semitism. To demand merely freedom, unspecified, is like asking for more without saying of what. For the demand to be capable of realisation we have to specify which… read more »

Geoge Walford: Metaphysics of Modern Science

August 13, 2014

The indivisible atom, solid and reliable, vanished in the first glimmer from Rutherford’s cathode-ray tubes, and physicists seeking a replacement have found only ghosts wandering in a fog of probability, such dreams as stuff is made on. One ‘fundamental’ particle after another has refused to be pinned down. Among workers at the growth-point of physics… read more »

George Walford: NIAT (56)

August 11, 2014

IC maintains that Nothing is Absolutely True. The Shorter Oxford gives several meanings for ‘absolute,’ all deriving from the root meaning of detached or disengaged; in religion, for example, absolution detaches from sin. The most explicit of these is the one numbered IV.3: ‘Existing without relation to any other being; self-existent’ and (in the attached… read more »

George Walford: The First Step

August 11, 2014

S.i. identifies the first ideology, originally displayed, by the hunter-gatherers, as expedient and the second (which first appeared together with agriculture, production, civilization and trade) as principled. One ethnographer notes a later appearance of the distinction. After saying that Navaho behave in one way towards fellow-tribesmen and in another towards outsiders, he continues: Under the… read more »

George Walford: What’s Wrong with S.I.? (56)

August 11, 2014

It seems obvious that a major difference between human beings and animals lies in humans having won, or having been granted by biology, freedom from some of the genetic restraints that compel the animals. This has probably been asserted somewhere in the literature of s.i. although a recent search has failed to find it. Its… read more »