Political thought since world war II

Books on modern political thought do not as a rule carry the discussion of ideologies up to the present day; in nearly all of them, the last chapter is missing. Although they discuss main doctrines, they are not concerned with the temper of current political thought from which future political ideologies will emerge. Modern ideologies tend to be discussed on an abstract level as static "models," without due regard to the modifying process to which they are continually subjected.

The purpose of this book is to present a number of interpretive essays reflecting the current state of discussion on the traditional issues of political ideologies. The selection is not exhaustive. It is not a compendium of all the ideologies that have some adherents today, but only of those that have been specifically formulated (or reformulated) within the existing political systems whose fabrics they permeate. For example, this book does not include a selection on fascism because no significant addition has been made to its original conceptual basis, even though the fascist ideology has survived in neofascist movements in Germany and Italy.