[ch4s3]

I'm not sure how you would measure something like self-awareness.

I don't think interconnectedness presages rapid social change. We could just as easily settle into a sort of long quiet period where people are more or less accustomed to the way society is organized and institutions have been reformed to adapt to present day issues. After the industrialization of the 1early 9th century there was a fairly stable social arrangement until WWI swept everything off the map. It isn't impossible to imagine a situation where WWI didn't happen and the Belle Époque stretched for a long period of time.

[oblio]

> After the industrialization of the 1early 9th century there was a fairly stable social arrangement until WWI swept everything off the map.

That's one way to look at that period with rose tinted glasses :-)

There's a reason Marx & co wrote things during that time.

WW1 was just a more violent outburst of many frustrations, national, social, etc.

[ch4s3]

I’m not looking at it with any judgment positive or negative. I’m just saying it is imaginable that the institutions of the period could have persisted had WWI not happened.

Marx wasn’t writing during the late 19th century. The Revolutions of 1848 were the backdrop of their work.