One fact is obvious.  Whether social change is major or minor, local or general, it shifts the social balance.  Any shift in the social balance involves reactionaries, conservatives, liberals, radicals, some of whom will gain, while others will lose in the course of each social transformation.  All will be concerned and involved.

Since political change involves some alteration in the balance of social forces, it behooves those who advocate and those who oppose social change to maximize acceptance and minimize opposition in order to take advantage of the gains and cut down the losses incident to all change.

For present purposes we wish to make seven notes about means and ends.

1. Opportunists propose to act now and win what they can today.  Never mind about tomorrow with its sequences and consequences of today’s action.  Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

2. Pragmatists believe in serving their own interests, on the theory that whatever serves personal interests must have first priority.  “What is good for me/us is good for the universe”.

3. Experimentalists are prepared to try out any suggestion which promises to achieve the desired goals.  Singly and in working teams they test and try out, seeking the most effective means of reaching desired ends.

   4. Innovators formulate projects and test out results, checking
   and rechecking as they search for more effective means
   of achieving results.

5. Radicals seek out the roots, digging, sifting, classifying, assembling their findings, announcing their conclusions and working to apply them in theory and practice to the structure and function of their communities.

6. Revolutionists are in a hurry.  Disillusioned with the past and the present they seek by “direct action” to create a new social order, out of whole cloth, quickly, here and now.  Never mind the means, get results!

7. Totalists have the whole truth, attained through reasoning, experimentation, revelation.  Having learned the truth, they dedicate their energies to the propagation of the faith.  Where they encounter opposition they counter it and, if necessary, annihilate it with its originators and advocates.

As a matter of practical experience, proponents of all seven approaches to social problems and social change employ a wide range of techniques from persuasion to coercion.  To support their projects they advance logical arguments, elaborate half-truths, make emotional appeal; employ trickery, deceit, preferment, privilege, flattery, soft living, bribery, coercion, physical and social violence—­individual and collective extermination.

Civilization as reported in history and in its current practice is based on five faulty ideological assumptions: