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This book focuses on the processes that help stabilize democracy. It provides a socio-historical analysis of the future prospects of democracy. The link between advanced capitalism and democracy is emphasized, focusing on contract law and the separation of the economy from the state. The book also emphasizes the positive effects of the scientific world view on legal- rational authority. Aristotle’s theory of the majority middle class and its stabilizing effect on democracy is highlighted. This book describes the face to face democracies of the past in order to give us a better perspective on the high tech democracies of the future, making it appealing to students and academics in the political and social sciences.
High technology capitalism utilizes computers, robots, and global information networks. It has engendered new classes - technocrats, bureaucrats, service and office workers - who will impact the structure and values of society. The question most central for us is that of the survival of democracy on this new base. Will the New Middle Class become the carrying class for a modern form of democracy utilizing the sophisticated communications technology, or will democracy decline under the weight of the managerial and technocratic strata essential to the functioning of the modern economic and political institutions?
As recent events in the Far East have demonstrated, China is a nation that is in the midst of a massive social and political upheaval. The Chinese leadership is as uncertain as the populace on the future course for modern China, and remains dramatically split over capitalism and communism, pragmatism and realism, and democracy and despotism. In this work, Ronald Glassman analyzes the remarkable changes that are occurring in China, and examines the country's difficult movement from state-run economics to free enterprise, and from Communist Party dictatorship to electoral democracy. The book focuses on the emergence of a modern middle class in China, illuminating their political and economic d...
This volume presents an in-depth study of the commercial middle class and its link with legal-democratic processes. The material presented is critical for understanding both the future of democracy, and its past.
This book analyzes the many threats to democracy that exist in the 21st century and tries to understand how democracy can survive economic, social and political crises. It focuses on issues of oligarchy, tyranny, totalitarianism, and ochlocracy. It discusses how these forms of governance manifested themselves in ancient and medieval worlds, and how socio-economic transitions in the 21st century have created conditions that increasingly pose similar threats to modern democracy. The author discusses broad transitions in the contemporary world: economic transition to advanced, high technology capitalism; cultural transition from traditional religious and family values to norms focusing on racia...
This four-part work describes and analyses democracy and despotism in tribes, city-states, and nation states. The theoretical framework used in this work combines Weberian, Aristotelian, evolutionary anthropological, and feminist theories in a comparative-historical context. The dual nature of humans, as both an animal and a consciously aware being, underpins the analysis presented. Part One covers tribes. It uses anthropological literature to describe the “campfire democracy” of the African Bushmen, the Pygmies, and other band societies. Its main focus is on the tribal democracy of the Cheyenne, Iroquois, Huron, and other tribes, and it pays special attention to the role of women in tri...
This socio-historical analysis describes the critical role of the middle class in democracy, in class struggle, and in the development of capitalism.
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While the romantic notions of social and economic equality once espoused by the socialist movement have been overshadowed by the realities of government power, bureaucractic inefficiency, and class divisions, Glassman claims that the quest for equality and social justice can and must be pursued within legal-democratic societies. He contends that the quest for equality within the democratic framework is politically, economically, morally, and socially beneficial. Using the theoretical principles of Aristotle, Rawls, and Keynes, Glassman demonstrates that the development of practical programs can allow an expansion of the middle class and a greater degree of equality within capitalist democrat...