The (A)-SP(GB), and many more orthodox anarchists too, think capitalism has gone beyond tolerance; we should abolish it and make a fresh, (anarcho)-socialist start. I do not now propose to bang heads with them over what they say but rather to draw attention to things they do not mention. They speak for the most part… read more »
WHEN one major ideology succeeds in detaching itself, if only for a time, from the restraints exercised by the others, trouble invariably results. The Holocaust finds a better explanation in unrestrained practice of the ideology of domination, driving forward to a chosen end whatever horrors it may bring, than in evil tendencies peculiar to the… read more »
The socialist movement (the phrase to include communists and most anarchists) claims to represent the interests of the poor, the oppressed, the exploited, the interests of the majority. On this ground it expects to receive mass support, but over a century and more this has not been forthcoming. There seems to be something wrong somewhere;… read more »
Interest in theory grows with ideological development. The expedient group hardly attempts to justify its behaviour, while towards the eidodynamic end of the range attention becomes focused on theory, even to the point where practical application drops out of sight. Anarchists tend to place high value upon concepts, logically unassailable, which do nothing to help… read more »
Attendance at lecture-and-discussion meetings of this party often turns out less of a penance than might have been expected. Sometimes a plodding repetition of the same narrow arguments reveals unimagined vistas of boredom, but other speakers display a wit, and rhetorical ability, that turn the occasion into entertainment; one of them used to define truth… 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 »
Systematic ideology points to regularities in political behaviour, one of the more important being that as hostility towards existing society increases, so numbers diminish. At one end of the range, acceptance of existing conditions displayed by thousands of millions. At the other, direct opposition to society as it is, manifested by numbers that approach vanishing… read more »
SPANNER 4, so long awaited, includes both Napoleonics of Marxism (for the appearance of that in SPANNER and IC in the same week see the Editorial in IC 57), and a review of Beyond Politics by Ken Smith. In reprinting the review we omit one paragraph on Popper and another on Huxley and Orwell and… 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 »