WHEN people first hear it suggested that the more advanced (eidodynamic) political positions are reached by way of movement along a range of ideologies, they sometimes take this as a claim that every communist must have been a labour-socialist, every labour-socialist a liberal, and so on; seeing that this does not happen they reject the… read more »
Reviewed by Jonathan Simcock in Freedom 17 April. George Walford has contributed articles on anarchism and related issues to both Freedom and The Raven, and regularly features in Freedom‘s correspondence columns. Much of his arguments and ideas in these pieces derive from his exposition of ‘systematic ideology,’ which attempts to examine and explain ‘ideology’ and… read more »
Anarchists themselves recognise divisions within the movement, and the greatest of these occurs between the (Anarcho)-Socialist Party of Great Britain (both sections) on the one hand and the other anarchist groups and organisations on the other. Of these, the (A)-SPGB displays the purer repudiation, declaring the futility of attempts to reform capitalism and refusing to… read more »
Neither rulers nor ruling classes impose the political structure; it grows from the ideological system, it is an attempt to provide formal expression for power-relations between the groups attached to the various major ideologies. Once this has been recognised, the development of democracy begins to appear in a different light. Commonly seen as according progressively… read more »
Let me start by declaring an interest. Donald is a friend of mine, and when reviewing Beyond Politics for Freedom he said some flattering things about it. This obliges me to be extra generous in reviewing his new pamphlet, since compliments will tend to be discounted while any hint of criticism will carry extra weight…. 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 »
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 »
STATE ANARCHISM “Until this year, young people could only learn about anarchism outside of school. Now, anarchism is included in the syllabus for ‘A’ level politics by the London Examinations Board. We learn this from students who have been coming into the Freedom Press Bookshop seeking information.” (DR in Freedom 30 November) Ever since anarchism… 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 »
IC 12, 13, 14 and the Challenge have had a good deal to say about the “Socialist” (more accurately, anarcho-socialist) Party of Great Britain. We expect to have more to say about it in the future but the material now on the table enables us to show the reason for our interest. As far as… read more »