Abstract

While a definitive evaluation of the 20th century may still be premature, it is becoming increasingly clear that several preliminary judgments concerning its nature are utterly inadequate. Despite widespread liberaldemocratic gloating, the defeat of Nazism and fascism in WWII and the erosion of the components of the old USSR into geopolitical irrelevance through the Cold War are not likely to mark the end of an era — yet. That watershed will probably have to wait for the further decline and eventual disappearance of the last specimen of those post-Enlightenment social systems described by the original Frankfurt School as “totally administered societies.”