Editing Systematic ideology (section)

=== George Walford ===
In his book ''Beyond Politics'', George Walford seeks to analyse ideologies on the basis of its adherents' surface behaviors, their underlying sentiments and assumptions ("ethos") and underlying cognitions ("eidos"). Of particular interest to him are a single group, the non-politicals; and five major political ideologies (conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism and anarchism) which can be listed as a series, with each seeking to repress its predecessor. He forms a series of hypotheses about the nature of those six ideologies, observing that they may be gauged upon different dimensions. According to relative size and political influence of its adherents, their relative reliance upon theory over practice and the degree to which they sought change. He postulates that the non-politicals have the greatest influence and least interest in theory while anarchists exhibit the least influence and greatest interest in theory, with the rest having mixed degrees of those properties.

He also formulates that each is relative to certain ideological ethos: a) (short-term) expediency; b) (traditional) principles; c) precision; d) (fundamental) reform; e) revolution; and e) repudiation. By his formulations, historical change, development of technology and development of more complicated social relations can be explained as occurring in stages along this series:

# For Walford, all societies historically begin in a state where a mass of individuals engage in expediency at the hunter-gatherer level. This state of affairs is characterized by short-term individual economic behavior and collective political action.
# Societies grow to have more advanced and secure political systems at the same time that they make better use of agricultural technology with more long-term goals in mind. In the process, economic behavior becomes more and more collectivistic. From then on, the societies engage in wars and conquer. Empires grow and create obedience with the mask of traditional principles.
# Finally, societies enter a stage where principles espoused actually begin to be followed, enacted, and made more precise. Similarly, economic production becomes more bureaucratic and rationally goal-oriented.
# The remaining three forms of ethos—reform, revolution, and repudiation—when taken together are seen to compose the envisioned fourth stage in historical development.

While some other philosophers have expressed the opinion that political liberalism is the peak or end-stage of historical development (see [[Francis Fukuyama]]'s "End of History" thesis), Walford claims the opposite, saying: "More than ever before, our world is a boiling, bounding, bubbling ferment of ideological novelty, and the rate of change is accelerating. If the ideological system has reached completion it is only in the sense that a newborn child is complete".