Populism Against Progress

and the collapse of aspirational values

The increasing complexity of industrial society, together with the prospect of economic and environmental threats on a scale never before experienced, entails an ever-greater demand on the educational and citizenship-skills of the ordinary individual. An appropriately educated public is needed to ensure effective democracy, and also, that suitably qualified men and women are elected to power - and this is something which transcends the narrow factor of party politics.

     A sociological analysis of populism reveals it as the cancer of democracy. The breadth of the subject matter covers such issues as Islamic fundamentalism in barring the path to progress; the self-destructiveness of Western politics tghrough a facile view of our real condition; and a glance at the arts. A broad view canvas, covering many disciplines in the social sciences, is evoked in furthering the crucial arguments in this interesting book.