The Only Revolution

Historical concepts always tell us as much about the men who use them as about the events they are supposed to describe. Very little is given in intellectual life; artists, writers, even social scientists must choose the way they wish to see the world and invariably they choose ideas which suit their needs or convenience. American social scientists use the concept “modernization” first of all for reasons of convenience: it groups together all the complex transformations now going on in Africa and Asia and it suggests useful comparisons with similar transformations presumed to have occurred at one time or another in Europe. Modernization is thought to be a single, long-term historical process in which all mankind is destined to participate, but in which some men already have participated. Their experience provides the basis for a theory about the stages, crises and turning points of the modernizing process, and about the character of its active agents and still vigorous o...