A main theme of systematic ideology is that the major ideologies form a determinate series, in the sense that the people who move along the range develop the successive ideologies in a predictable order. But in doing this they do not abandon the earlier ones; these are, so to speak, carried along with them so… read more »
Everybody who tries to introduce new ideas has to face the problem of terminology. It is sometimes solved by inventing new words, but to go far in that direction is to isolate oneself. Another method is to use standard words in a specialised sense. Thus “atom,” an established term meaning a body incapable of further… read more »
From Byron onward the rebellious artist has appeared as a stock figure in the social drama, joined later by the revolutionary worker. The one character stands on no better ground than the other. Some artists have rebelled as some workers have taken part in revolutions, but artists as a group, like workers as a group,… read more »
Erect upon the barricade, sledgehammer in one hand, Das Kapital in the other, Red Flag whipping overhead, the classic figure of communist revolution wears overalls. Anarchism flies the Black Flag and repudiates all dictatorship, even that of the proletariat, but it, also, sees itself as a movement of the oppressed; the idea that those on… read more »
An article in the Observer (15 September) opens with a ringing declaration that under the series of Conservative governments which began in 1979 crime figures have more than doubled, from an annual 2.2 million offences to a “staggering” 5 million projected for 1991. (Why we should be staggered by 5 million and not by 2.2… read more »
The Marxists have overlooked one of the biggest events in recent history: their revolution is over and the workers have taken control. When Marx spoke in the Communist Manifesto of the capitalists exercising “exclusive political sway” [1] and in Capital of “the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class” [2] he… read more »
What happens at anarchist meetings, often enough, is that someone rehearses a particular argument for the anarchist case, and other anarchists present pick holes in the argument, point out errors of fact or reasoning. This is enjoyable because anarchists in general enjoy arguments, and instructive because it helps you to avoid looking silly when arguing… read more »
This review first appeared in The Australian Journal of Politics and History Volume 39 Number 2, October 1993. Systematic ideology is not a well known body of theory. In fact it is largely due to two men. Harold Walsby and George Walford. The work under review is an elaboration and refinement of earlier studies: Walsby’s… read more »
Later on we shall need to look back to the beginnings of humanity, but now we turn to Western Europe in the middle years of the 19th Century. By the mid-1840s Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had begun to use ‘ideology’ in something approaching its modern meaning. They showed themselves aware of having broken through… read more »
Books on ideology usually invite the reader to join the author in looking down, comfortably, on the antics of those suffering from the infection. Our approach will have to be more modest, for we shall find good reason to believe that ideology affects all of us and all our thinking, playing a part not only… read more »