This is the first work of a series entitled ‘Ideas and Ideologies’. Other works now completed or in preparation are: Bureaucracy; Imperialism; and Human Rights. The general editor, Professor Kamenka, states that the series, which is one ‘of studies in the history if ideas, includes what might be called the history of contemporary ideas (sic). It aims to connect the past, the present and the future, the ‘material’ and the ‘intellectual’, the social and the personal.’

The problem with the five essays is that they are more involved with defending ideas from the past than with fully understanding recent developments. All the authors are professors and are steeped in the doctrines of ‘mainstream social science’. They vehemently attack new developments as a temporary state of dementia. They seek to retain the ‘objectivity’ and ‘scientific method’ that they feel the new advocates have lost sight of.