Eighth, many steps were taken toward public or
social ownership of the means of production, including land and other
natural resources. Ninth, repeated governmental efforts were made to
deal with the inflation that attends prolonged exhausting wars. These
efforts included the regulation of credit and debt and the substitution
of new currencies for old ones that had been hopelessly devalued.
Political and economic changes in the life-patterns of western
civilization have been accompanied by far-reaching cultural reforms such
as the provision of free public education; the emancipation of women;
the provision of public recreation facilities; popularized culture
through information, the drama, music, literature, art; equalizing
opportunity and facilitating movement up and down the ladder of
recognition, approval, disapproval.
Political reforms of western civilization date from the Reformation and
the Renaissance. Economic reforms were speeded by the industrial
revolution. Together they are often described as the bourgeois
revolution, which resulted in the power shift from landlords,
ecclesiastics and knights in armor to businessmen, protected and
assisted by the state, the church, channels of information and
propaganda, the police and other armed forces. Cultural reforms
accompanied the reforms in politics and economics.
Underlying the changes and supplementing reforms were improvements in
the means of communication and transportation; the discovery and use of
new sources of energy and the changes in production and merchandizing
which have played so vital a role in the transition from a skimpy
economy of scarcity to an open-handed economy of abundance, extravagance
and conspicuous waste.
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