Paralleling these changes in the political life of western civilization there have been a number of drastic economic reforms.  One was the abolition of chattel slavery.  A second was the replacement of serfdom and peonage by free labor receiving fixed wages and salaries.  A third change was the division of large feudal estates and other concentrated landed properties into small units owned and operated by working farmers.  A fourth change was the establishment of free trade areas within and among sovereign states.  A fifth innovation was the transfer of individually operated and family businesses into associations and corporations with limited liability and widespread ownership by bond and stockholders.  Sixth, trade unions and consumers’ cooperatives were recognized and legalized.  Seventh, legal provisions were made for social security against accident, sickness, unemployment, old age.  Minimum incomes were guaranteed.  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.