From Lee Smolin: "A question no longer being asked is how to make the next step in the evolution of a democratic society. Until very recently it was widely understood that democracy was a project with many steps, whose goal was the eventual construction of a perfectly just and egalitarian society. But recently, with the well-deserved collapse of Marxism, it has begun to seem that the highest stage of civilization we humans can aspire to is global capitalism leavened by some version of a bureaucratic welfare state, all governed badly by an unwieldy and corrupt representative democracy. This is better than many of the alternatives, but it is hardly egalitarian and often unjust; those of us who care about these values must hope that human ingenuity is up to the task of inventing something still better. It is proper that the nineteenth century idea of utopia has finally been put to rest, for that was based on a paradox, which is that any predetermined blueprint for an ideal society could only be imposed by force. It is now almost universally acknowledged that there is no workable alternative to the democratic ideal that governments get their authority by winning the consent of the governed. This means that if we are to change society, it must be by a process of evolution rather than revolution. But why should this mean that big changes are impossible? What is missing are new ideas, and a context to debate them."