NOTING the absurdity of the belief ‘that it is a sign of economic and spiritual vitality to have lots of people digging for coal, even if it means digging deeper than anywhere else,’ Robert Skidelsky ascribes its persistence to the legacy of Soviet economics and idealization of the working class by left-wing academics. (Review of… read more »
In the late 16th Century John Hawkins, one of those rumbustious Elizabethan sea-captains, commanded a trading fleet intending to buy slaves from African rulers and sell them in the New World. The Spaniards, having been granted exclusive rights in America by the Pope, disapproved of this practice but Hawkins relied on his own ingenuity, and… read more »
We hear little of the virtual disappearance of pauperism from the advanced countries, but much about the spread of poverty. Poverty is a tricky concept, for it does not have to mean a shortage of what is needed for life, even for healthy, enjoyable life. It means, in one of the more widely-accepted definitions, an… 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 »
Sir, I was at the Anarchist Forum on the 4th June to hear George Walford speak on From Anarchism to Ideology. It was a stimulating and well-delivered talk and I’d like to thank him again for presenting it. I find it difficult to make immediate, off-the-cuff criticisms or observations so excuse me if I take… 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 »
POPULATION: Between 1960 and 1990 the population of Kenya quadrupled, from 6.3m to 25.1m. In the same period the population of Africa (including the North African states) has jumped from 281 to 647m; it is expected to treble, reaching nearly 2,000 million, by 2025. The only serious prospect (it can hardly be called a hope)… read more »
Humanity may have arisen from the apes rather than descended from the angels, but some thinkers see its later history as a decline; condemning our present ways of living they look back with nostalgia to the life of the original stateless communities. Engels set the theme with ‘primitive communism’ in his Origin of the Family,… read more »
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 »
NIAT: ‘Perfect co-ordination is achieved only when there is nothing to co-ordinate.’ (C. N. Parkinson). NIAT: Bob Black offers a statement (from Harpo Marx) which is absolutely true, not in any way false, questionable or even conditional: ” .” NOTHING washes whiter than Persil. CAPITALISM causes war? Might as well say that computers cause calculation…. read more »