This book is a direct, lucid and intelligent challenge to the budgets of much of the sociology and political science of the United States of America and Western Europe. Any social science, implicitly or explicitly, in its choice of subjects and in the way they are treated, refers to the kind of society that social scientists consider possible. By accepting a caricatured "classic doctrine of democracy" or ignoring the diversity of thinking of authors such as Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Cole and others, most contemporary social science simply assumes the impossibility of any form of social organization based on genuine people's governance. Pateman tries to rekindle the arguments of "classic" theorists and examine them in the light of empirical evidence on political socialization and self-management of workers.