The Role of Historical Concepts and Theories in Understanding Modern Society

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The Role of Historical concepts and Theories in Understanding Modern Society
One of the concepts relevant to understanding the modern world is technological determinism, which is a theory postulating that technology plays a crucial role in shaping how individuals in a given society act, feel, think, and how society operates as the world transitions from one technological era to the next (Diamond and Colin, 239). Karl Marx's statement that "the hand-mill gives us feudalism and steam-mill gives capitalism" suggests that the presence or absence of a given technology determines the presence or absence of a particular social structure (Heilbroner 336). The Marx argument is crucial in understanding modern history in that it can help one understand why different modern societies have assumed the social structure they have. For instance, some societies pursued feudalism social structure, which resulted in socialism and others pursued capitalism, which resulted in democratic systems.
In socialism today, the means of production, exchange, and distribution are purported to be regulated or owned by society as opposed to private ownership. In the feudalism system, just like socialism, members of society were given land and protection by individuals from noble families. In return, they fought and worked for loyal families, meaning that there was no private ownership of means of production as later observed in the capitalist system. On the other hand, windmill technology was more complex and required more resources to construct and maintain. Consequently, a class of people with wealth emerged to create this machine, resulting in private ownership. These people sought labor in exchange for money from the class of people who did not have enough resources to own a windmill, and it was from this social structure driven a technological change that capitalism was born (Heilbroner 340). Thus, it...