Herman Melville opened Moby Dick with quotations. He did not get them all quite right, and in 1979 Thomas G.Tanselle published an essay entitled ‘External Fact as an Editorial Problem,’ advocating that they be brought into agreement with their sources, even though some of Melville’s alterations seem to have been deliberate. John Worthen has taken… read more »
Mae West did not say ‘Come up and see me sometime,’ Humphrey Bogart did not say ‘Play it again, Sam,’ Voltaire did not say ‘I disagree with every word you say, but would fight to the death for your right to say it’ (the phrase first appeared in a biography of him published early this… read more »
From time to time IC draws attention to confirmation of parts of s.i. appearing in independent sources, often unexpected ones. Here we offer a small collection. Andrew Rutherford has written Criminal Justice and the Pursuit of Decency (OUP). It reports three ways of treating criminals, favoured by different groups working in the criminal justice system:… read more »
IC has pointed out that every political movement, not only anarchism, places a high value on freedom; even the Nazis valued freedom of action for anti-Semites. To the list of freedom-lovers we now have to add the Bible: GAL. 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ has set us free. JOHN 8:36 If the Son… read more »
Whiteway Colony, the social history of a Tolstoyan community, by Joy Thacker. Published by Joy Thacker, Fairhaven, Whiteway, Stroud, Glos. 13.99 pounds. Reviewed by George Walford. This community has a particular interest for IC. The early members included Francis Sedlak, escapee from Czechoslovakia via the Foreign Legion, and partner of Nellie Shaw (herself a founder-member)…. read more »
As capitalism advanced it divided people, in the main, into two classes; the small number who owned enough (sometimes much more than enough) to be able to live without working and the great numbers who did not; the few lorded it over the many. From the early Nineteenth Century the socialist movement strove to alter… read more »
NIAT: Is it not absolutely true that the earth moves round the sun? ‘There is no privileged position in space. In one sense it is therefore as true to say that the sun moves round the earth, as it is to say that the earth moves round the sun.’ (M. Payne, S&MN Newsletter 51) DEPRESSED… read more »
At last! This issue contains the four extra pages to make up for the shortfall in IC 61. On November 27th last year Freedom, the anarchist fortnightly, started a Good News column, intended to present instances of positive, practical anarchism growing within the capitalist system. So far the instances given have comprised: homeless people getting… read more »
The success attending physical science has won enormous prestige not only for the activity itself but also for the mathematics that plays such a large part in it. So much so that the sciences are sometimes arranged according to their degree of mathematisation, mathematical economics for example being ranked above researches in the same field… read more »
Ideological development is a many-sided process displaying, as one of its main features, the persistence of the modes of behaviour characteristic of the earlier ideologies. As these are transcended modes come to be disvalued and disavowed, but they do not thereby cease to influence action. The person developing the ideology of domination is likely to… read more »