送交者: mangolasi 于 2006-2-03, 14:46:42:
This article is very interesting. Need deep thought to have any comment on it (because its conclusion is not entirely comfortable with me, though neither is its opposite). But I like its way of not talking about doctrines (economic first/democracy first/democracy but not crowd madness etc), but focus on the concrete cases.
His Son Brad has provided some of its theorectical background:
"[the article] gets flamed by Jacob Sullum and many others for making an argument about Google.cn that is, I think, fundamentally derived from Barrington Moore's old Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.
One of Moore's major points was that mass politics--ideology-based political parties, popular mobilization via media, universal suffrage, et cetera--appeared, in the history of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe at least, to be a poisonous recipe for fascism or worse unless a strong, confident, independent, articulate, powerful middle class had already established itself."