Introduction: Ideology and the Crisis of Modernity

The aim of this book is to determine whether the central ideologies of modernity are still relevant to contemporary politics, and meaningful as organising frameworks for political debate and action. Ever since the great revolutions of 1776 in America and 1789 in France, political struggle has been expressed as a conflict between Left and Right, a spectrum of ideologies that offred different views of ‘the good society’, of how society should be organised. As Bobbio notes in his recent book defending their continuing relevance today, ‘“Left” and “Right” are two antithetical terms which for more than two centuries have been used habitually to signify the contrast between the ideologies and movements which divide the world of political thought and action’ (Bobbio, 1996, p. 1). The familiar terms of socialism, liberalism, conservatism and nationalism, along with later additions such as communism and fascism, among others, were labels for these different ideologies and for the parties and movements that sought to realise them.