Whether there are any free men or free women may be debatable, but there are certainly two Friedman. David the son wrote “The Machinery of Freedom” and Milton the father wrote (among other works) Capitalism and Freedom (Phoenix Books, University of Chicago Press, 1963). Milton Friedman’s theories have been said to be the inspiration for… read more »
The Socialist Standard for August 1984 says: The working class […] run society from top to bottom. The same journal for October 1984 says, of the proposition that ‘the exploited control their own exploitation’ that it ‘defied logic.’ But if the workers run society from top to bottom then they must control their own exploitation,… read more »
The Socialist Standard of September 1981 tells us why capitalism survives: The capitalist social system continues in existence, not because it is efficient or beneficial or controllable. The very opposite is true: it exists because, in spite of the facts of experience, the people under it will it to continue. – p. 162 The official… read more »
The Americans seem to have halted the deterioration of their inner cities; New York had been a particularly troublesome case. But whether they have managed to cure the trouble, or only to suppress the symptoms, remains to be seen. They still have tension between white and black (as we have in Britain also). Previous waves… read more »
“A censorship-free social environment would not be a social environment at all, it would be a maniac’s nightmare.” Sir Edmund Leach, quoted by M. I. Finley in TLS July 1977. from Ideological Commentary 12, August 1984.
Does the government control society? Not: Can Mrs. Thatcher beat the miners? but: Does any government control any society? In one sense, yes: decisions are made by the government with which the society complies. Examples of this are the exact rate at which taxation shall be levied and the precise date on which a new… read more »
Exact science is able to be exact only by excluding inexactitude. In Euclidean geometry (paradigmatic of exact science) a proposition will begin: “Let ABC be a triangle… ” This establishes that what follows relates only to figures which are, exactly and without qualifications, triangles, figures bounded each of them by three lines (possessing length but… read more »
I have said and written a good deal about Harold Walsby’s theories and have always set myself as it were on his side, accepting what he said and trying to take it farther. But there is one paper he issued which I am not able to accept; his diagram entitled “Attitude to Paradox,” which appears… read more »
Prominent among the more chewy nuggets of unorthodox political literature stands The Ego and his Own, the case of the individual against authority, [1] first published in 1845 and written by Johann Kaspar Schmidt under the pseudonym Max Stirner. Marx tackled it in The German Ideology, and the question whether Stirner ranks among the anarchists still… read more »
In two vigorous contributions to Freedom (December 1988 and January 1989) the Anarchist Communist Federation supported the National Health Service, a system under which the state imposes compulsory payments for medical services. The Editors of Freedom added their voice in the December issue, describing the present system, under which the coercive powers of the state… read more »