Social Thought and Social Change Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Social Thought and Social Change - Essay display case6). For Enlightened thinkers, the desirable direction and final destination they aim for is a place where everyone lives in a perfectly happy existence, free from religious control, aristocratic discrimination and monarchical oppression (Bury 1920, p. 6). This idea is frequently criticised by modern thinkers as a naive belief in soldierys dexterity for achieving perfection (Israel 2001, p. 3). However, Israel (2001, pp. 3-4) argues that Enlightenment attainment breathed a vivid awareness of the great difficulty of feast toleration, curbing religious fanaticism, and otherwise ameliorating human organization, orderliness, and the general state of health. Concurrently, even though far-famed Enlightened thinkers have opposing ideas about how to go about achieving mature, it cannot be denied that they share the same principles and morals. For instance, mend Voltaire did not believe in the notion of equality and moved to educat e and enlighten aristocrats into bettering the world, Rousseau detested them and lobbied for equality through revolution. However, both detested the Church and infinite monarchy and sought to change the status quo (Brians 2000). It is unquestionable, then, that the Enlightenmentthough ripe with strife and conflicting ideasmoved towards the same destination and that is, the achievement of progress through verifying societal changes. The Enlightenment symbolizes civilisations actual forward movement towards a desirable direction. It is progress personified. Both supporters and critics of the Enlightenment and even opposing Enlightened thinkers show that its end-all and be-all is achieving progress through reasonprogress that aims to create a better society at a time when religious tyranny and absolute monarchy and aristocracy ruled the world. II. Stages of History and Revolution Karl Marx views human level as a series of stages wherein man struggles to deal with and control the eco nomic benefits of the resources of the world in order to achieve power and position (Weiner 2008, p. 42 Cohen 2004, p. 23). The growth of human power is the central process of history. The need for that growth explains why there is history (p. 23). Hence, Marx evaluates history as the process of mans struggle for control over the developing agreement of production (Shaw 1978, p. 152). Marx (1904, p. 28) states the first stage of history as primitive communism where goods and property are dual-lane and the means of production include hunting and gathering the second stage is slave society where a class society based on private ownership is established (pp. 285-286) third is feudalism (p. 216) fourth is capitalism (p. 19) fifth is socialism (p. 10) and the final stage is pure communism exhibited through a egalitarian society and the abolition of private ownership (Marx and Engels 1858 qtd. in Schumaker 2010, p. 46). This is a history of class struggle, as virgin forms of society a rise appropriate to the new forms of production when the new classes win power (McCarthy 1995). It can be seen here how each historical stage moves on to the next only with the destruction of a socio-economic trunk through the uprising of the lower classes. For instance, feudalism evolved into capitalism after the landed aristocrats was challenged by craftsmen and merchants (Bowen 2011).