Inequality is still with us. For all of the talk (and worry) about the appeal of egalitarianism in modern politics, the benefits which derive from living together in organized society continue to be distributed in highly unequal ways. The reports of the death of privilege are greatly exaggerated. Some people live in opulence while others live in squalor. From birth some have secure life prospects while others survive, much less flourish, against enormous odds. Some people live comfortably well into old age, while others suffer and die from curable diseases in childhood or youth. In certain respects and in certain societies there no doubt has been some progress toward more equality, but in numerous other respects inequality persists. Indeed, it has grown.

Methodological controversy and self-awareness have been endemic in international relations. Yet it is curious how little genuine debate this has engendered, if we understand by “debate” an arena in which arguments are joined rather than one in which assertions are juxtaposed. One has instead the sense of a number of separate guilds, each of which proceeds on the basis of its own indigenous premises, conscious of the work of other groups only as caricature. The various guilds, or intellectual groups, may be distinguished on the basis of their central notions as to the most important data in the field, the appropriate manner of investigating that data, and the character of the knowledge which can result. Occasionally exercises in critique or defense, ostensibly directed outward, are undertaken, but the effect of these sallies remains internal to the group of origin. One finds little evidence of essential change in major premises brought about in response to external criticism.

In Knowledge and Politics Roberto Mangabeira Unger offers an extended critique of liberalism. He formulates a conception of liberalism as a framework of ideas that is embodied in particular institutions and practices, constituting a way of life and a form of consciousness. He evaluates this liberal framework, its crystallization in the seventeenth century, its powerful but unacknowledged hold over developed Western societies, its fragmentation into specialized perspectives, its dilemmas of thought and practice, and the possible emergence of an alternative framework. Our reading of Knowledge and Politics initially led us both to a provisional agreement with Unger and to the realization that if his project is successful he has made a contribution of great importance to political theory. Our hesitation in fully endorsing his theory was due to this characteristic of Knowledge and Politics: while Unger often refers to individual liberal thinkers for purposes of illustration, he does not systematically apply his critique to any theorist. He realizes that he might be accused of erecting and toppling a “straw man,” for he states that “it might be objected that the view I discuss is a view nobody has ever held.” He acknowledges that the liberal framework he constructs is not intended to fit exactly the thought of particular liberal theorists, that his references to philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Hume “are designed to illustrate rather than to prove their adherence to the doctrines that are the subject of the critique. In this sense, the critical argument remains hypothetical.”

To speak of the self is to fix one's attention inward; to speak of social and political things is to direct one's attention outward toward those with whom our life is mysteriously and often involuntarily bound. What do “they,” those fellow citizens, want from us? Shall we approach them openly, guardedly, or perhaps not at all? Shall we look away, turn inward and thus fulfill ourselves? What, precisely, is involved in responding to the others?

Although born a slave and held in bondage until past his twenty-first birthday, Blanche K. Bruce escaped the worst cruelties of the Peculiar Institutions. He was born in a slave cabin near Farmville, the county seat of Prince Edward County, Virginia, on 1 March 1841. Youngest of eleven children born to his slave mother Polly, Bruce was an octoroon or quadroon, with light skin and Caucasian features; his father's name and race, however, are apparently unknown.

The importance of the countryside (rief) for the social and economic development of Arab societies whose populations are still greatly peasant in composition and whose wealth is still based on agriculture seems incontestable. Less obvious, but equally important, is the political role of the peasantry and the rural areas in the process of transition from traditional to more modern types of social and political systems in the Middle East. There is plenty of evidence that political modernization cannot take place without a solution to the peasant problem — without their incorporation into the political system. Huntington holds that in modernizing countries where the bulk of the population is rural but where politics remains a predominately urban game, governments are likely to be ephemeral, unstable and ineffective. He argues that the establishment of stable and effective regimes requires bridging the urban-rural gap through some coalition of urban and rural forces which will bring the peasantry into the system. Furthermore, both Huntington and Barrington Moore argue that the particular type of leadership under which the peasants are brought into the political system greatly shapes the whole subsequent development of the system. The countryside, according to Huntington, plays a crucial swing role and this role varies from very conservative to very revolutionary. Three possibilities seem to be typical. One outcome is where peasants are brought into the system by upper-class leadership, sometimes through a formally liberal type electoral system, informally based on patronage and traditional symbolism, sometimes through a conservative authoritarian system.