IC57 |

George Walford: Publications on Systematic Ideology (57)

August 22, 2014

THE DOMAIN OF IDEOLOGIES; a study of the origin, development and structure of ideologies. By Harold Walsby. Glasgow: Wm. McLellan in Collaboration with the Social Science Association 1947. The foundation document of the study now known as systematic ideology. Familiarity with the D of I is essential for a thorough grasp of the theory and… read more »

George Walford: Back to Work

August 22, 2014

Social Inventions is the Journal of the Institute for Social Inventions. (£15 for Institute subscription, £3 each back issue of the journal. [address]). No. 26, 1992, reprints a passage from the article Work, Who Needs It? which appeared in IC56 May 1992, and adds the following comment: If it is true as George Walford argues,… read more »

George Walford: How Say You?

August 22, 2014

Kevin Maxwell was recently arrested in an early-morning swoop by the Serious Frauds Office. Television showed him being taken to a police vehicle, his arm grasped by a constable. Since he is officially innocent until convicted, it is hard to see how this treatment can be justified. Bill Bloggs has been remanded in custody. Bill… read more »

George Walford: What’s a Dumpster?

August 22, 2014

Anarchism implies that we should all have independent facilities for expressing our own ideas, and as the zines come in we sometimes seem to be getting close to that. Disappointingly, the ideas in most anarchist journals turn out pretty much like those in most of the others, but the refreshing exceptions do turn up, one… read more »

Bob Black: Black Definitions

August 22, 2014

MORALITY? The idea in the mind of God that survived his death. NIHILISM? Confusing transvaluation with devaluation. NORTH AMERICA? The lost Continent of Moo. PARVENU? Plays racquetball, can’t spell it. PEDERASTY? Child rearing. PESSIMISTS? Have chocolate tunnel vision. POSEUR? Reads Edgar Allen Poe in the original French. PUNK? Eine kleine Nichtmusik. THE SEVENTIES? History’s 13th… read more »

George Walford: Cooperative Struggle

August 22, 2014

Struggle or cooperation? Darwin and Spencer on one side, Kropotkin on the other. Well, not quite. Although the title of his book, Mutual Aid gets read as suggesting otherwise, Kropotkin, too, recognised that life means struggle, and a struggle in which the fittest survive: No naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for… read more »

George Walford: Christian Corner

August 22, 2014

George Orwell produced this deliberate distortion of which familiar Bible passage? (Answer below): Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. HYMNS REFORMED For vegetarians:… read more »

George Walford: Endurance

August 22, 2014

One early tendency that persists through later developments, coming to be disapproved of yet continuing to affect behaviour, is a high valuation of economic independence, the attitude: ‘it’s mine so I should be free to do as I like with it.’ Ken Livingstone is reported as saying that many potential Labour voters in the South… read more »

George Walford: Ideology Afloat

August 22, 2014

Each major ideology consists of broad, general, enduring assumptions, while that of each member of the group identified with it comprises also assumptions peculiar to place, time and circumstance; no member holds exactly the ideology of the group. Each of them stands closer to that than to the ideology of any other group, but every… read more »

George Walford: How To Do It

August 22, 2014

Every now and again one of the masters shows us how to write about ideological features. Here is Tolstoy, in War and Peace, on expediency: [Napoleon has invaded Russia.] With half of Russia in enemy hands, and the inhabitants of Moscow fleeing to distant provinces, with one levy after another being raised for the defence… read more »