ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors define the paradoxical nature of modernization. Several themes will be touched upon: industrialization; the philosophies of liberalism, socialism, feminism, and nationalism; the rise of the middle class and the working class; colonialism; and modernism. Western monopoly on what defined progress was of origin and rested on the material prosperity and technological superiority wrought by industrialization and capitalism. The number of people who earned their living from wage labor increased in all countries touched by Western capitalism. In Europe, socialist and labor parties were serious electoral forces by 1914. Social science disciplines took their cue from science and tried, with significantly less success, to use variations of the scientific method to ascertain the truth in their fields of inquiry. Natural science produced anti-science, democracy led to socialism, genius was swamped by mediocrity, and strength by weakness.
