The first five parts constitute the descriptive section of the book.
There follows an analysis of the traditional democratic theory of
public opinion. The substance of the argument is that democracy in its
original form never seriously faced the problem which arises because
the pictures inside people's heads do not automatically correspond
with the world outside. And then, because the democratic theory is
under criticism by socialist thinkers, there follows an examination of
the most advanced and coherent of these criticisms, as made by the
English Guild Socialists. My purpose here is to find out whether these
reformers take into account the main difficulties of public opinion.
My conclusion is that they ignore the difficulties, as completely as
did the original democrats, because they, too, assume, and in a much
more complicated civilization, that somehow mysteriously there exists
in the hearts of men a knowledge of the world beyond their reach.

I argue that representative government, either in what is ordinarily
called politics, or in industry, cannot be worked successfully, no
matter what the basis of election, unless there is an independent,
expert organization for making the unseen facts intelligible to those
who have to make the decisions. I attempt, therefore, to argue that
the serious acceptance of the principle that personal representation
must be supplemented by representation of the unseen facts would alone
permit a satisfactory decentralization, and allow us to escape from
the intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us must acquire a
competent opinion about all public affairs. It is argued that the
problem of the press is confused because the critics and the
apologists expect the press to realize this fiction, expect it to make
up for all that was not foreseen in the theory of democracy, and that
the readers expect this miracle to be performed at no cost or trouble