It is fashionable today to talk of a revolt against authority and to proclaim that everybodyshould “do his own thing.” This, then, I have to admit, is a most unfashionable book. Itdoes not talk about rights. It stresses responsibility. Its focus is not on doing one’s ownthing but on performance.Our society has become, within an incredibly short fifty years, a society of institutions.It has become a pluralist society in which every major social task has been entrusted tolarge organizations—from producing economic goods and services to health care, fromsocial security and welfare to education, from, the search for new knowledge to the pro-tection of the natural environment.It is understandable that the sudden realization of this change in the crystal structure ofsociety has evoked an angry response, “Down with organization!” But it is the wrong re-sponse. The alternative to autonomous institutions that function and perform is not free-dom. It is totalitarian tyranny