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These common conceptions were not all the time matched by common actions because differences also persisted concerning the - rhythm of change: slow smooth adjustments vs. quick radical changes; - nature of change: political freedom vs. economic equality; - agents of change: enlightened individuals vs. laboring classes; - ways of change: self-generated order vs.
explicitly devised planning. If these differences, sometimes more obvious than real, had been determined, the appearance and evolution of a universal civil society made of free broad-based individuals and autonomous networked communities might have been a matter of one or two generations. This would have required the free and direct elaboration and realization of a plurality of experiments in the areas of production and distribution and in the organization of social concerns and human communication. In consequence, this is what started taking place in the imaginative and practical phase of liberalism and socialism. The authorization of slums, the setting up of educational centers, the industrial and communitarian enterprises of Robert Owen, were some of the signs, amongst others, of the readiness to create a New Moral World that included in practical endeavors so many liberal and socialist activists. Regrettably this period soon came to an end.
Qualified later on, in a somewhat derogatory manner, as charitable liberalism and utopian socialism, it was to be superseded by new ideas and new actors that recognized themselves to be more logically based and more able to deliver better and wider-ranging results. (Groenhout 2002) After the middle of the nineteenth century, nevertheless, the soul of the liberal movement lost its way. In 1848, Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto, and the powerful attractions of socialism made liberalism seem a feeble light. From that time progressive, classical liberals retreated into a defensive posture, struggling constantly against the reforms promulgated by utilitarian dreamers. Individual liberty was no longer the focus. The collectivists claimed superior wisdom; life became the pursuit of pleasure in the total. Aided and abetted by the Hegel-inspired political idealists, these new-fangled intellectuals moved away from the notion of individual realization to that of collective psyche.
The ideal of socialism was so winning that it led to main political and institutional changes - even when the knowledge of history showed it to be extremely flawed. What else but the power of the socialist model can explain its long life in Russia or even parts of Western Europe? (Groenhout 2002)
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Research essay sample on Groenhout 2002 Socialism Change