Here in the second part of the book, we begin its central task, reconnecting ideology and participation. Most of us are likely to prefer life under a political ideology that values and respects us. However, as we have seen, we are more likely to live under value systems that do the opposite – except for the elites who control them. Yet often we end up as cheerleaders for them. The images that we remember, whether of Donald Trump's first presidential election campaign or Adolf Hitler's endless Nazi party gatherings, are of huge cheering crowds, not the billionaires and large corporations that quietly bankrolled them and which most profited from their victories and who tend to die peacefully in their beds. So how do we escape this enduring contradiction?

First, let's try and untangle what we seem to be learning so far about ideologies. Different ideological perspectives are used by humans to explain, justify or legitimise a political or social order. In this way, ideology may be used to justify oppression, even though it does not oppress in itself. Ideologies are of course closely linked with power. They are used to justify the distribution of power in society.

Ideologies often have a lot to say about freedom and equality. Yet they rarely seem to be constructed or developed in a participatory or democratic way in keeping with such values. This is inherently problematic. It means that in their making they are unlikely to reflect and include everyone's interests, experience, knowledge and perspectives. How then, if that is the case, will they adequately reflect and address everyone's rights, responsibilities and entitlements? We might expect that they would inevitably privilege some at the expense of others, and that is what tends to happen; they reflect ruling cultural, social and political hierarchies – and it is these which tend to shape them.

The paradox that has already begun to emerge in this text is that revolutionaries and reformers frequently seem to seek progressive change through methods that are as exclusionary and narrowly based as those they aim to displace. Not surprisingly, the outcomes are often counterproductive.