‘Small earthquake in Chile, not many dead.’ Whether the headline ever appeared or not it makes a good story, and Martyn Lewis, a BBC newscaster, may have had it in mind when making his suggestion. He wants the media to pay greater attention to ‘positive news’; not packing the bulletins with cheerful trivia, but weighing… read more »
Reviewing Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science (Faber), Steven Rose notes that modern science differs from Greek and other ancient sciences by being powerfully interventionist. Science as we know it originated in the 17th Century, with Newtonian mechanics and Bacon [1]. (And, we may add, with the rise of Nonconformism and what was later… read more »
Having failed to elicit the expected support from the workers, the left now show an increasing tendency to turn to minority ethnic groups, in America especially the blacks. This appeal has met with no better response than the first; in a recent Washington Post survey some 35% of blacks described themselves as “conservative” or “very… read more »
Writers in Freedom often traduce the state. They speak as if it were imposed on us by the rich, the rulers, the bosses, when in fact it is established and maintained mainly by the great body of citizens and subjects. Those who wield the power of the state, the prime ministers, generals and police chiefs,… read more »
In spite of all the horrors for which anarchists hold the state responsible, we have little reason to believe that getting rid of it would be enough, by itself, to bring the reign of sweetness and light. In 1989 the Italian authorities admitted that the state no longer controlled Sicily and parts of southern Italy,… read more »
Erect upon the barricade, sledgehammer in one hand, Das Kapital in the other, Red Flag whipping overhead, the classic figure of communist revolution wears overalls. Anarchism flies the Black Flag and repudiates all dictatorship, even that of the proletariat, but it, also, sees itself as a movement of the oppressed; the idea that those on… read more »
The point has now been reached from which this book really sets out. That is to say, we have now reached, in our account, that stage in the intellectual development of the individual where his further progress depends on his recognition of an independent, self-determined ideological domain – i.e. as a domain, realm or class… read more »
We have now reached the position (a), wherein we recognise that the qualitative-intellectual or ideological development of the individual from mental dependence on the group (politico-ideological collectivism) towards complete mental independence (politico-ideological individualism) necessarily – through the development of its economic content – involves the adoption of what we shall call “the mass-rationality assumption,” and… read more »