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From the dust jacket:
Readers of Parkinson's Law and Other Studies in Administration have suspected all along that there is truth as well as humor in that book. It is not a caricature of life but a satire, and the point of a satire is that it is (well, more or less) true. These suspicions are now swiftly confirmed by the appearance of a book which is frankly serious and yet unmistakably the work of the same author. In this book on political theory Professor Parkinson shows little reverence for accepted beliefs or indeed for established reputations. To the rather drab subject of political ideas he brings an original mind, a fund of information, and a wide experience of life. More than that, he approaches the subject from a new direction. He rejects the teaching which begins with Plato and ends with Woodrow Wilson. He begins earlier and continues later, diverging on the way to include the political ideas of India, China, and South America. The theory that is not based on anthropology he knows to be superficial. The theory that stops short of Mussolini and Stalin he regards as obsolete. The theory that is not world-wide he holds to be false.
Eastern Communism is, to be sure, a sterile variation on the ancient forms of theocracy. But has the political progress of the Western Democracies kept pace with the recent advances in science and technology? The Liberalism of 1788 is confronted by the Marxism of 1947 in a world which the physical sciences have totally transformed since 1900. Nuclear weapons and space ships are being thrust into the hands of men whose political beliefs date from the era of the horse-drawn carriage. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the gap is lessening between the scientist and the politician. On the contrary the history of political institutions and ideas reveals not improvement, but only a process by which monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and dictatorship follow one another in endless sequence. The only possible remedy is to apply the scientific method to the art of government. The fate of mankind may depend upon the speed with which this remedy is sought.
It is not Professor Parkinson's purpose to show exactly what political reform is needed. He clears the way for it, however, by showing that there is nothing peculiarly sacred about the ideas which are orthodox today. He subjects the different forms of rule to a logical analysis, ignoring time and space, and shows that each phase represents only a temporary expedient. The process of evolution was not halted by the invention of representative democracy. It goes on as it has always done, and would ordinarily continue its course back to the starting point. How to break away from the cycle is the problem. Toward solving this the first step is to know that the problem is there. That it exists, no reader of this book will be disposed to question.
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