Quotes:

Mannheim nevertheless held that all ideological systems, including utopias, are distorted, because each offers a partial, and necessarily self-interested, view of social reality.

'In political activity', Oakeshott argued in Rationalism in Politics (1962), 'men sail a boundless and bottomless sea'.

the 'new' ideologies are more interested in culture than in economics: their primary concerns tend to be orientated around people's values, beliefs and ways of life, rather than economic well-being or even social justice.

'Great men are almost always bad men'

Democracy thus comes down to the rule of the 51 per cent, a prospect that the French politician and social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) famously described as 'the tyranny of the majority'. Individual liberty and minority rights can thus be crushed in the name of the people.

The central thrust of modern liberalism is therefore the desire to help individuals to help themselves.

'A state without the means of some change,' he suggested, 'is without the means of its conservation'

as Mao put it, 'power resides in the barrel of a gun'.

These elite groups would be 'permeated' by socialist ideas as they recognized that socialism is morally superior to capitalism, being based,

'the capitalist class rules but it does not govern, it contents itself with ruling the government'.

However, following Hegel, Marx envisaged an end of history, which would occur when a society was constructed that embodied no internal contradictions or antagonisms.

'competition when possible; planning when necessary'.

MANAGERIALISM The theory that a governing class of managers, technocrats and state officials–those who possess technical and administrative skills–dominates both capitalist and communist societies.

The goal of anarchism–the overthrow of the state and dismantling of all forms of political authority–is widely considered to be unrealistic, if not impossible.

'many are ruthless and most live in fear'

Anarchists have been even more united in their disapproval of Soviet-style 'state socialism'. Individualist anarchists object to the violation of property rights and individual freedom that, they argue, occurs in a planned economy. Collectivist anarchists argue that 'state socialism' is a contradiction in terms, in that the state merely replaces the capitalist class as the main source of exploitation.