These quotations come from Freedom, the oldest anarchist journal: The Western industrialized world has been purged of smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis and leprosy; its crop fertility has been quadrupled within this century; our urban poor rarely die of hunger. (Michael Duane 2 May 92) The war of 1939-45 convinced [the capitalists] that wars were no longer… read more »
MICHAEL Gossop reviews Solomon H. Snyder: Brainstorming; The science and politics of opiate research. (Harvard UP) and Ronald K.Siegel: Intoxication; Life in pursuit of artificial paradise (Simon & Schuster). Both authors point out how drug control strategies can do more harm than good. Snyder describes how the American campaign to eradicate the use of opium… read more »
Jean Baptiste Colbert, Minister in charge of finance under Louis XIV, asked the merchants what he could do for them; they added to the common stock of cliches with the reply: “Laissez-nous faire.” Or so the story goes. After generations as an unassimilated immigrant the phrase has now been naturalised as the demand for a… read more »
Systematic ideology has one feature in common with every other theory covering a wide area: when people start to think about it they usually find the predictions it gives diverging from the results of their own observation. A theory undertakes more than an account of self-evident facts, and its propositions often need analysis before the… read more »
From 1815 to 1836 British newspapers had to pay taxes or duties on every sheet they printed, on each advertisement they contained and on every pound weight of paper used. From 1820 to 1836 both printer and publisher had to to enter into recognizances of £300 and also find sureties for the same amount, and… read more »
Systematic ideology posits a range of ‘major’ ideologies, each of them (except the first, which is non-political) finding political expression through one of the main-sequence parties. In moving along the range from non-political through conservatism towards anarchism, economic collectivism strengthens and freedom of action in economics comes under heavier repression. This is not always self-evident,… read more »
‘CLASS’ STRUGGLE? “The curious thing was that the closer one came to [Sacco and Vanzetti’s] own stations in society the more virulent was the judgement. The two were merely ‘Reds’ to shop clerks, ‘damn Reds’ in cigar stores, and ‘God-damn Reds’ to taxi drivers.” Those who tried to avert this judicial murder included Sacco’s employer, Mussolini,… read more »
HEGEL was a humourist. Must have been, since Terrell Carver writes of his “post-humorously collected lectures”. The remark comes from Friedrich Engels, his, life and thought (MacMillan 1989 p. 71) and apart from one transposition of Hegel’s Christian names is the only misprint in the book. ENGELS to Marx: “What the proletariat does we know… read more »
Since 1979 spending on criminal justice has leapt from £2 to £5 billion; an increase of 50 per cent in real terms. The number of police has increased by 13 per cent and of prison staff by 50 per cent; 49,000 prisoners are now managed by 33,000 warders. 28 new prisons are being prepared, with… read more »
According to newspaper reports General Noriega made enough out of dealing in cocaine and marijuana to maintain an army and police force that secured him control of Panama, forcing the USA to mount an invasion as the only way of checking his trade. IC cannot claim to have predicted this in any detail (you won’t… read more »