These sentences appear in the August, 1980, issue of the Socialist Standard, official journal of the SPGB: (Rosa Luxemburg) therefore tried to show where Marx had gone wrong, but only succeeded in exposing her own utter confusion about economics. She made the silly mistake of assuming that the level of Market demand was determined exclusively… read more »
Newcomers to systematic ideology are often surprised at the amount of attention paid to the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). One reason for it is that in this organisation we find fully developed, set out ready for our inspection, the tendencies (in the jargon of s.i. the “eidodynamic” tendencies) which characterise the Left. One… read more »
The Domain of Ideologies by Harold Walsby (1947, William Maclellan, Glasgow, 10s 6d) is a very disappointing book. Purporting to be a new and a scientific explanation of the origin, development and structure of ideologies, it consists mainly of baseless statements, logical fallacies, and the rehash of outworn ideas; the whole of which is presented… read more »
The letter below was sent to the Socialist Standard on 16th February 1977. It has not been printed. It has not been acknowledged. The Editors The Socialist Standard London (Intended for publication) Dear Editors, Robert Barltrop’s article “Question of Intelligence,” in the Socialist Standard of December 1976, has just been brought to my attention. The… read more »
Dear Comrade, You say you will remain a Socialist because you: “hate and are sickened by the present order of things.” You also say that struggling against this present order of things is “a matter of personal integrity, of feeling that we are ourselves. Success is not necessary to make struggle or rebellion worthwhile or… read more »
You have been asking us these questions; they have cropped up at every branch we visited. Here, then, are our answers, once for all, set out for easy reference. Don’t waste our time by asking them again. WHO ARE THE S.S.A.? The Social Science Association was founded by ex-members of the SPGB with the aim… read more »
[“Dear Mr. Walford, Many thanks for your letter of 26th June, and for the pamphlet ‘The Intellectual and the People.’ I have read it with interest and would like to discuss it with you. I have been working along somewhat similar lines for many years, in an unsystematised way.” – George Orwell, 30 June 1945]… read more »
“An adaption of some notes about Walsby and the SSA I wrote in April 1965, when in Ghana […] it was not published […] The 1965 notes were called ‘Thoughts on the African Identity’ and included an account and attempted analysis not only of that question and of ‘Social Rationality’ (the expression I used for… read more »
“A draft Introduction for an intended second edition of Harold Walsby’s The Domain of Ideologies. […] It is important that a new edition of the book, if and when it appears, should have benefited from all possible sources of information about its background and a variety of views about its approach and implications.” Peter Shepherd,… read more »
I liked George Walford, but I do not think that he was a wise man or even a very bright man. Nor do I hold myself to be very wise or bright, but the facts relating to the Socialist Party of Great Britain [SPGB] and Harold Walsby are not very difficult to see. I was… read more »