Recreating Liberty?

The New Liberty: Survival and Justice in a Changing World by Ralf Dahrendorf, Stanford: Stanford University Press. 99 pp.

Ralf Dahrendorf, the author of Class Consciousness in Industrial Society and Society and Democracy in Germany, is an American-style academic liberal who has worked to expand democracy. He was a leader in Germany’s Free Democratic party, then a commissioner of the European Economic Community, and now is director of the London School of Economics. This, his latest book, is not one of the high points of his distinguished career. Nevertheless, to Dissent readers The New Liberty is useful if they find ways of dealing with the issues with which Dahrendorf here is wr...