Perspective: Conservatives, Liberals and Progressives

For most of the twentieth century, Marxists mostly argued among themselves about who should lead not the proletariat but rather ever-tinier micro-sects of true believers. Trotsky's Transitional Program set the pattern but, as Uhlmann's approach demonstrates, it is characteristic of a broad swath of human beings, left and right, who do not believe in anything resembling the direct democracy so central to contemporary movements that have made serious political questions once again the order of the day in the United States and shaken, when not toppled, deeply entrenched governments globally.