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Paradox

George Walford: Eastern Ideology

August 28, 2012

A. C. Graham 1991 Unreason Within Reason: Essays on the Outskirts of Rationality Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. 309 pages. Cloth 0-8126-9166-0 $59.95; Paper 0-8126-9167-9 $19.95. Reviewed by George Walford. Physical science, high technology, market capitalism and political democracy belong to a syndrome. Although now worldwide, it emerged spontaneously only in western Europe, arriving elsewhere… read more »

George Walford: Freedom from Truth or Was Stirner Serious

August 31, 2012

In 1845 Johann Kaspar Schmidt, writing under the name of Max Stirner, published his version of egoism. Highly original, intensely provoking, puzzling and disconcerting, the book acts as an irritant. Working with the English translation by Steven J. Byington [1] I produced more than one short study (appearing in IC and Freedom) which proved on… read more »

George Walford: Anarchists

September 3, 2012

Anarchists routinely describe their desired society as one in which everybody would be free to act as they choose provided they did not interfere with the freedom of others. The 1945 constitution of Kemalist Turkey agreed: “Every Turk is born free and lives free. He has liberty to do anything which does not harm other… read more »

George Walford: Editorial Notes (53)

September 12, 2012

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 »

George Walford: Anarchy Now!

September 3, 2012

If there is one thing on which anarchists agree it is that anarchy would be a society of freedom. This has no sooner been said than it has to be qualified: under anarchy all would be free to do as they liked, provided they didn’t interfere with the freedom of others. That sounds innocent enough,… read more »

George Walford: Laws

May 27, 2013

Laws make criminals. True; without laws there can be no crime. But attractive though it sounds, the absence of crime does not make it easier for people to live together. Observation of hunter-gatherer communities, which have no laws, shows that although without crime they yet suffer from individuals who take things from others against their… read more »

George Walford: The Meaning of Freedom

September 5, 2012

Here is the ‘Wildcat’ cartoon from the anarchist journal, Freedom, for March 1987: “All I want is for everybody to be able to do what they like, so long as they don’t prevent others from doing the same.” It is a recognition that the claim sometimes made for anarchism, that it stands for freedom without… read more »

George Walford: Bound to be Free

September 5, 2012

Several of the anecdotes put forward to illuminate the history of ideas have been shown to be false; Galileo didn’t drop them, Voltaire didn’t say it. One we have not yet heard disproven is that during the Seventeenth Century a French minister of finance named Colbert asked a group of merchants what he could do… read more »

George Walford: Accounting for Marxism

September 5, 2012

In the TLS for 6 September 1985 Anthony Giddens reviews a book, by the late Alvin W. Gouldner, entitled Against Fragmentation; the Origins of Marxism and the Sociology of Intellectuals (OUP 1985). The author was Max Weber, Research Professor of Social Theory at Washington University, St. Louis, and a winner, with an earlier work, of… read more »

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