The Limits of Pure Democracy : Routledge : 9780765808462 : 0765808463 : 15 Dec 2006 : The 1910s was a decade in which theories of socialism, pacifism, and collectivism flowered. Publicists and playwrights from Sidney Webb to George Bernard Shaw expressed not just belief in "utopianism" but a vigorous assault on the existing political and economic order. Less well known is how a group of Tory thinkers laid the foundations of a conservative counter-attack expressed with equal literary and intellectual brilliance. Foremost among them was W. H. Mallock. In The Limits of Pure Democracy he argued that the pseudo-populist leaders of the political party system promise everything but deliver only the end of parties as such. For Mallock, what starts with populism ends in dictatorship. The Russian Revolution was simply the historical outcome of utopian socialist visions that were more dedicated to destroying the present system of things than bringing about a revitalized future. Mallock's book ex