SOME BACKGROUND IC undertakes to print any statement of up to 1,000 words carrying the approval of this party, or one of its branches. Letters from individual members will appear if they are cogent, interesting and concise, and if space permits. If you want your letter to appear unedited or not at all, please say… read more »
Science has been showing up badly lately, “dozens” of its practitioners in the US having been exposed as willing to stretch a point – or two, or three – if there was profit or kudos to be had. Things are no better in Britain, although stricter libel laws have restricted publicity, and the early scientists… read more »
Sacred and Profane Cannibalism; They Rotted in their Own Dung, The Fickle and Verminous Colony; Putrid Worms and Vile Snails Those are some of the chapter-headings from Camporesi’s Bread of Dreams, [1] not a work for the faint-hearted or weak- stomached. Neither is it a work for the evidence-collector, being impressionistic and uncritical; for Camporesi… read more »
Secrecy is a great evil, defeating democracy and frustrating the reformers; if only the people knew what their rulers were really up to they would arise and assert themselves, sweeping away the old conditions. So the argument runs, but American experience does not do much to confirm it. They have a Freedom of Information Act,… read more »
Harold Walsby used to speak of the economic collectivism of the left and the economic individualism of the right. The terms are accurate and comprehensive, but also polysyllabic and highly general. When these general tendencies appear so to speak on the surface of social life they always do so in particular forms and direct mention… read more »
Francis Galton was one of those estimable, highly intelligent but slightly flat-footed investigators who flourished during the Victorian era; one of his enterprises was a statistical inquiry into the efficacy of prayer, the results appearing in the issue of the Fortnightly Review for 1 August 1872. “God Save the Queen!” may be more a command… read more »
A character of T. S. Eliot’s claimed to have measured out his life with coffee-spoons; other people see themselves differently, and the groups out towards the revolutionary and repudiative end of the ideological range like to think they are engaged in the political part of a struggle between classes, with the trade unions fighting on… read more »
The Labour Party Conference of October was remarkable for the prevalence of agreement; unlike earlier ones it did not justify Norman Tebbit’s description of the comrades and brothers as “firmly united in fraternal hatred of each other’s guts”. An editorial in the Independent of October 7 spoke of “a respectable measure of unity at most… read more »
RAVEN, the anarchist quarterly, [1] includes a review-article by Brian Morris. Against the writers who seem to be kidding themselves that as a serious critique of marxism anarchism doesn’t exist [p. 278], he insists that it does. He is, of course, right. Anarchism exists as a critique of marxism, but marxism has no theory capable… read more »
Quentin Crisp wrote How to Become a Virgin. Whether he would call himself an anarchist we have no idea, but he has come up with a phrase that hits off, with grace and economy, the relationship between government and anarchy: “The function of government is to create a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.”… read more »