Whay have radical political theorsits, whose thinking inspired mass movements for democracy, been so suspicious of political plurality? According to this book, their doubts were involved with an effort to transcend politics. Mistakenly equating all social difference with the harmful way in which particular interests dominated marketplace societies, radical thinkers sought a comprehensive set of true human interests that would completely abolish political strife. In extensive analyses of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Lenin and Arendt, this book seeks to mediate the radical critique of democratic capitalist societies with the concern for pluralism evidenced in both liberal and postmodern thought. It thus escapes the authoritarian potential of the radical position, while appropriating its more democratic implications.