I disagree a fair bit with Monbiot but he starts off bang on the money here, that the idea of a social democracy is rare across human history compared to "might is right" (which often means wealthiest) and that everything is cyclical - a strong state for the masses following sorts of once-in-several-generation disasters like world war. He's probably also correct that bland centrism can't really stave off the threats of oligarch-based catastrophe forever, because history shows us that nothing ever has.
But identifiying (or in this case explaining) an obvious problem isn't the same as developing or discovering a solution for it, and the trouble is his offered idea of "mass mobilisation" doesn't happen without a cause or banner to rally around.
These
two things are really very close to being the same thing.
War, revolution, famine, pestilence. Awful close to those four horsemen type mystical beings of change.
Every zeitgeist (I think that's the word) has it's early adopters and have a head start over those that then followed. The printed word, the ball and musket, medicinal advances, the jet engine, the information super highway.
Society catches up eventually, and it still is. What is left of society when it gets there is to be scene. History is littered with successful and powerful men, they all die one day, and then an angle for the big chair is found by the next devious bar-stud.
