(Reprinted from the Socialist Leader 10 November 1951. Copy supplied by Ellis Hillman. – GW) In the cloud of emotional dust raised by Len Collier there is still left, when the dust has settled, a very real and vital problem for all socialists to consider. The problem is not new, but it is of vital… read more »
This letter left us with ambivalent feelings, and after a time we began to see why. Although written as a whole, it falls into two parts. The first consists of the ideas Austin would have us accept. These are not to be swallowed unquestioningly – he would not want that – but they are all… read more »
The orthodox theory of competition assumes that each trader in a given field will attempt to excel the others in the satisfactions offered, thus attracting more custom and making greater profits. The customers also benefit, receiving greater satisfactions. It is a troublesome, risky and expensive model for traders to follow, and being sensible people they… read more »
Louis Althusser is a French Marxist intellectual, and they don’t come any more intellectual than that. The TLS tells us his Essays on Ideology (London, Verso, 1984) is “the work of an acute intellect and contains extended passages of originality and brilliance”. Tribune: “Althusser demands patience from the reader but he rewards it with his… read more »
TO INTENDING CONTRIBUTORS IC is not an academic journal and we do not need to support a claim to academic status by flying the tribal recognition symbols. We can use English instead of sociologese or litcritican. When tempted to relax with “heuristic,” “semiotic,” “deconstruction,” “discourse” (in the academic sense), “problematic” and the others, the effort… read more »
The Centre for the Study of Public Policy at Strathclyde University has produced a report which may do something to modify the apprehension we all feel about what the government – any government – will get up to next. The report shows that the actions of any government are ruled mainly by the weight of… read more »
The feminist movement is losing impetus. In a long and thoughtful article in FORUM (an American journal, privately circulated) for December 1985 Riane Eisler and David Loye ascribe this to a dividedness in its ideology. Only in their manifest ideology, they say, are the feminists opposed to domination of the female by the male; deeper… read more »
Using a copy supplied by Ellis Hillman, IC28 reprinted from the Socialist Leader (journal of the Independent Labour Party) of 1950 a reply by Harold Walsby to two members of the (A-)SPGB who had used the pseudonym “Philoren.” On 4 March 1950 another pseudonym joined in: a letter criticising what Walsby had said came from… read more »
In the orthodox view ideology appears as a distorting influence which shrivels under the hard light of science, but systematic ideology suggests otherwise. It shows science to be as much an ideological activity as politics, for here, too, the course of action depends upon the assumptions accepted, and assumptions are the units of which ideologies… read more »
(Revision of a paper presented to the Walsby Society in 1976). The foundation-work of systematic ideology, Harold Walsby’s Domain Of Ideologies (1947), closes with a declaration that the study is of more than academic interest: With the development of scientific knowledge of the various ideologies… it becomes possible to apply this knowledge… in social and… read more »