The new middle class and democracy in global perspective

High-technology capitalism utilizes computers, robots, and global information networks. It has engendered new classes - technocrats, bureaucrats, service and office workers - who will influence 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?

There is also the question of wealth differential - which tore apart earlier capitalist societies. Will the 'selfish' accumulation of wealth destabilize high-tech capitalism as well? And finally, technological totalitarianism - 1984 - also forms part of the historical potential.

Introduction: Industrial Capitalism and Legal-Representative Democracy: The End of History? -- pt. I. Legal-Representative Democracy on a High-Technology Industrial Capitalist Base. 1. High-Technology Industrial Capitalism as a New Mode of Production. 2. Three Models of High-Technology Industrial Capitalism. 3. The New Class Structure Engendered by the High-Technology Economy, the Bureaucratic State and the Service Sector -- pt. II. The Polis Analogy: The Democratic Potentialities of the New Middle Class. 4. The New Middle Class as an Aristotelian Base for Democracy. 5. The New Middle Class and Law. 6. Maintaining the Middle-Class Majority on the High-Technology Industrial Capitalist Base -- pt. III. The Empire Analogy: Bureaucracy against Democracy. 7. Bureaucracy as a Despotic System of Domination. 8. Does the Empire Analogy Hold, or are Critical Differences Emerging? 9. Political Culture against Democracy.