The study written in the form of a review describes the three great revolu­tions, the American, the French and the Russian through their description by contemporaries and by doing so, he calls attention to the fact that some of the great personalities of the liberal pantheon were far from sharing the aversion of today's theoreticians of the new right towards social justice, the opposition to private property, direct democracy and towards the ideals of re­volution in the world historical sense.

The crisis of socialism is at the same time the crisis of social democracy. The author denies the concept that social democracy could become a paradigm trend even without an appropriate theoretical basis. He also de­bates the view that through the paternalism of the welfare state, the histo­rical achievement of social democracy, it would have lost its progressive character. He points out that the multis are much more aggressive when in­terfering in the "spontaneous processes". If social democracy can be criticised for anything, then it is the far too strong absence of criticism towards representative democracy (to the expense of the mechanism of direct democracy that can be put up against international capital gaining strength with globalisation).

The study written more than three decades ago is an interesting document of the type of social democratic thinking which created the welfare state as a class compromise. This moderate programme seems to be far too social­ist int the eyes of many people. The author criticises and refutes as anti-de­mocratic the social injustices of the highly advanced democracies. He de­nies the necessary contradiction between democracy and planning. Apart from the sober compromise between the elite and the employe