This book anticipated many trends and events in the contemporary world community. It belongs to the founder and permanent head of the European Centre for the Study of Nationalism. Civil society is presented here as a natural product of the development of European civilisation, with Islam and communism as its main historical rivals. The author pays special attention to the role that the slogan of ‘civil society’ played in the collapse of the Marxist system. ‘It was this experiment, which had disastrous consequences, that has led to the notion of civil society becoming a burning political ideal today,’ Gellner notes.