London: Calabria Press 1991. 70 pages. Portland: gwiep.net 2017. 168 pages. When did anarchism start? Where did it come from? Where is it going? Were the Gnostics anarchists? The foragers? Did anarchy produce the state? “Anarchism is a movement of the working class, of the poor and the oppressed.” If so, what were Prince… read more »
The George Walford International Essay Prize (2000 – 2022) has concluded. Thank you to all who have participated. No further Prizes are to be awarded, no further essays are to be considered for the Prize. INTRODUCTION Rule Precedence The rules for the George Walford International Essay Prize (GWIEP) listed here replace any and all prior… read more »
Writing on Australian history R. Hughes records the readiness of Australian Aborigines to burn off square miles of territory for the sake of catching a dozen or two small animals, at the cost of destroying all slow-moving creatures in the area. He also gives the background to the practice (shared with other foraging peoples) by… read more »
James Lovelock helps us to grasp the distinction between the two ideologies of Precision and Principle. He points out that the accuracy of predictions derived from them provides the best test of scientific hypotheses (Precision), while facts in law (Principle) are tested in debate between adversaries and established by judgment. He goes on to note… read more »
Any appearance of “absolute” causes IC‘s pointy ears to prick up; NOTHING is Absolutely True. Our present example of an assertion to the contrary comes from Elisee Reclus: “Fundamentally anarchy is nothing but perfect tolerance, the absolute acknowledgment of the liberty of others.” An admirable sentiment, one that will go directly to the heart of… read more »
CORRECTION A Party member points out an inaccuracy in the concluding paragraph of “Are They Not Anarchists?” (IC 53 p.24): at the time of publication the expulsion procedure had not been completed, although this has since been done. He also thinks it unfair to describe the separation of 25 people from a membership of some… read more »
Sir James Goldsmith has delivered, to the Caroline Walker Trust at the premises of the Royal Society, a lecture which Fourth World Review has now reprinted (Issue No. 48). Its title appears in bold print on the cover of FWR and repeatedly inside: “The Fundaments of Life.” That didn’t sound quite right, and on looking… read more »
Speaking of the difficulty of providing reliable evidence in ethnography, Morton H. Fried notes that harder sciences share the problem. The eminently respectable photograph of the night sky taken by the astronomer, for example, “is something of a fiction. The ‘stars’ and other phenomena in the picture never were, are not now, and never will… read more »
Fourth World Review, Issue No. 48, complains: “despite the fact that we have more colleges, schools, professors, students, textbooks, magazines and research workers devoted to the subject of economics than was ever possessed by any previous civilisation we have been unable to solve a single economic problem.” (pg. 3) That sounds deliberately perverse; some of… read more »
Most people – at least, most of those willing to consider such questions – now accept that ideology affects political life; they recognise its influence in the behaviour of their opponents if not in their own actions. Many will also agree that ideology influences some of the more intellectual activities outside politics in the narrow… read more »