Is there something about modern society itself that makes governments inadequate to the tasks they face in the contemporary industrial world? In recent years critics such as Daniel Bell and John Kenneth Galbraith have analyzed postindustrial society in an attempt to illuminate its basic character. Other prominent analysts have spoken about the ungovernability of modern societies and the dilemmas encountered by governments as the demands they face outstrip resources. The daily press obligingly confirms the existence of almost chronic crisis and of persistent political failure in the various capitals of the developed world.

What emerges from all this is the vision of a society that we recognize but do not really comprehend: a busy, complex society that projects new conquests for itself as it discovers ever new latent capabilities; at the same time, a society out of control and deeply dangerous to the individuals who are both its beneficiaries and its victims.

The most perplexing problem which the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China raises for analysts concerns the view of history with which to interpret it. Most Westerners have a unilinear perspective which sees a straightforward transition from traditional society (with its agriculturally based economy, diffuse social relationships, and custom-bound orientation) to modern society (with its industrial economy, rational and functionally specific social relationships and secular mentality). This tends also to be the official view of the social sciences as they have developed in the West as well as that upon which governmental policies, journalistic commentary and individual judgement are most often based. Warren Mason teaches political science at Miami University in Ohio.