ABSTRACT
The Renaissance was the first, when Western man rediscovered an old faith in his capacity for controlling his environment through observation and reason. Liberalism was the second; it embraced twin goals: rational control over governments through democracy and rational control over “economic” affairs through capitalism. Democratic socialism was the third; it held that man’s rational control over both government and “economic” affairs could be vastly strengthened by governmentalizing economic affairs. Classic liberalism and classic socialism1 both underestimated the extent to which an industrial society requires the use of hierarchy. The suddenness of socialism’s decline is easily missed. It was only a few years ago that a socialist party came to power in Britain at the close of World War II. Incremental changes in turn converted the means of classic liberalism into those of neoliberalism, and the means of neoliberalism have converged with those of the socialists.
