The New Middle Class and Democracy in Global Perspective

by R. Glassman

Overview

High technology capitalism utilizes computers, robots, and global information networks. It has engendered new classes - technocrats, bureaucrats, service and office workers - who will impact the structure and values of society. The question most central for us is that of the survival of democracy on this new base. Will the New Middle Class become the carrying class for a modern form of democracy utilizing the sophisticated communications technology, or will democracy decline under the weight of the managerial and technocratic strata essential to the functioning of the modern economic and political institutions?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333683057
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	06/04/1997
Edition description:	1997
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.99(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: Industrial Capitalism and Legal Representative Democracy: The End of History? - PART 1: LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY ON A HIGH TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRIAL CAPITALIST BASE - High Technology Industrial Capitalism as a New Mode of Production - Three Models of High Technology Industrial Capitalism - The New Class Structure Engendered by the High Technology Economy - PART 2: THE POLIS ANALOGY: THE DEMOCRATIC POTENTIALITIES OF THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS -The New Middle Class as an Aristotelian Mediating Class - The New Middle Class and Law - Maintaining the Middle Class Majority on a High Technology Capitalist Base - PART 3: THE EMPIRE ANALOGY: BUREAUCRACY AGAINST DEMOCRACY - Bureaucracy as a Despotic System of Domination - Does the Empire Analogy Hold, or are Critical Differences Emerging - Political Culture Against Democracy - PART 4: PARTICIPATION, POWER LIMITATION, LAW, AND EDUCATION IN TECHNOCRATIC-BUREAUCRATIC SOCIETY - The Extension of Legal Authority over Public and Private Bureaucracies - Mass Mediated Direct Democracy: Television Town Meetings and Computer Referenda: Civil Society Through a Lens - Education for Democracy in a High Technology Mass Media World Culture - Index