‘Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to… read more »
Although our critics may find it hard to believe, we read them with enjoyment and take account of what they say. Some of the compliments on the cover of this issue cancel out. Can a theory be both mystical and mechanical? Can mere drivel undermine libertarian impulses? The others show a tendency to dismiss us… read more »
Authoritarian religion and the state appeared together as paired expressions of domination, and the novelty of the original Christian movement was soon brought into line. In Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, Professor Averil Cameron suggests that the Christians in the Roman Empire took care that both what they said and their way of saying… read more »
George Walford published (and often revised) this introduction to systematic ideology in each issue of Ideological Commentary from January 1985 to August 1994. This revision of August 1993, published June 1994, is his final version. – Trevor Blake Ideological Commentary announces itself as a journal of systematic ideology (s.i.), but it does not claim final… read more »
SECURING THE BASE Social development renders the earlier ideologies not less but more secure as, with each further advance, the successors who arose in opposition to them undergo division. Expedience became more secure against any threat from Principle with the emergence of Precision. This brought liberalism, drawing into the new movement (which emphasises the rights… read more »
Having failed to elicit the expected support from the workers, the left now show an increasing tendency to turn to minority ethnic groups, in America especially the blacks. This appeal has met with no better response than the first; in a recent Washington Post survey some 35% of blacks described themselves as “conservative” or “very… read more »
Systematic ideology provides an explanation for the worsening conditions in so many former colonies since the empires withdrew. The high degree of freedom of action in economic affairs favoured by the ideology of Principle and Domination tends to produce (along with other, more desirable consequences), exploitation of the many by the more fortunate, enterprising or… read more »
Issue No.3 of Spanner has just arrived. It concentrates on greenism, and since the journal retains its stance in favour of socialism (though preferring to call it a non-market economy) a question of priority arises. Let us agree, to start with, that the greenists have a solid point. We clearly cannot go on treating our… read more »
Over recent decades ideology has grown more respectable but it still gets valued below science, an activity commonly seen as the impartial and disinterested pursuit of objective knowledge. Alan Gross has studied the way in which scientists present their results, and in The Rhetoric of Science [1] he comes up with a picture differing radically… read more »
Systematic ideology presents political movements as expressions of stages in ideological development. In establishing this view it criticises the Marxist view that they arise, fundamentally, from class interest. Daniel Bell reviews Arpad Kadarkay’s George Lukacs: life, thought and politics. [1] Lukacs ranked with Gramsci and Marcuse as a major figure in Western Marxism. His father,… read more »