In the course of reading one accumulates notes of insights and phrases, to be written up in a future that does not always arrive. Some seem worth recording, if only because others may perhaps find them useful or provocative. In writing of Mussolini’s lieutenant Italo Balbo, Claudio Segre stresses the extent to which his prominence… read more »
He calculated happiness, invented both the modern jail and the word “intentional” and now sits, though with a waxen head, in University College. He published little of his own work, but produced some 70,000 sheets of manuscript to be turned into books by other people, some of the most influential first appearing in French and… read more »
Perhaps we should pay more attention to science fiction. In Soldier, Ask Not Philip K. Dick envisages a future in which the human race has not only spread to planets scattered over the galaxy but also separated off into specialised races. Bodily specialisation determined by the conditions of the planet inhabited is of course a… read more »
For evidence that this society is pervaded by political-intellectual collectivism, and economic-material individualism, look at well, almost anything manufactured for general use; cars, houses, pens, clothes… All of us, as far as we can, possess our own individual ones and, at any time, all of them conform within narrow limits to the same pattern; it… read more »
Conrad Hopman, The Book of Future Changes – living in balance in the electronic age. London: Institute for Social Inventions 1988. A4, 153 pages, perfect bound in glossy wrappers. The edition said to be limited but the number of copies issued not given. £9.95 (£14.95 libraries and institutions). Conrad Hopman’s title echoes that of the… read more »
In my last article I said, in effect, that in considering the future development of the socialist movement, one of the things we must take into account is the fact that social evolution is changing its character in a significant fashion. I stressed the fact that the nature of social development changes in proportion as… read more »
With this issue we present the new, improved IC, itself to be improved in future numbers. The reduced number of pages contains rather more than the former amount of material. The (A-)SPGB have been squeezed out of this issue, but it is an omission we shall try hard not to repeat: “My fires are banked,… read more »
Readers who think IC worth paying for are invited to subscribe. The standard annual subscription is £5; smaller amounts at your discretion. Subscribers will receive six issues, normally covering twelve months. Subscriptions paid during 1988 will remain valid until each subscriber has received six issues. If your name on the envelope is followed by “X”… read more »
In a piece entitled Canon to the Left of Them, IC 32 spoke of: … the enduring absorptive power of the ediostatic ideologies, of the Establishment… the process that turned Darwin, Newton, Galileo and Copernicus, each of them a revolutionary in his time, into heroes of orthodoxy, the process that is not far from having… read more »
This passage by Friedrich Engels goes to the roots of Marxism: The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life… is the basis of all social structure; that in every society… the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders… read more »