Transition theory and social crisis

Abstract

As a group of ideas, theory should explain how society and aspects of society works. As a substitution for a theory of modernization there is a theory of transition whose main interest is in two main problems: 1) to explain the end of the real socialism and 2) to show which way will the countries move on, and what will the future development of mankind be like. The explanation of the end of the real socialism was a smaller problem for this theory because it is underlined that, the real socialism was not able to make a transition from extensive to intensive industrialization, the development to the higher forms of society, which, both the theory of industrial society and the theory of post-industrial society believed in. This theory also stressed out that the present political elites of the real socialism were not able and in temper for a different plan of development and that they blocked all potential changes which led to modernization, in whose possibility theory of modernization was convinced in. Privatization introduction of market, founding of political and parliament systems founding of state of law, pleading for human rights, etc., are the processes which made the countries of real socialism to step into changes. But, in the theory of transition, it is not completely clear where will it take us. Modern society is the society of crisis. That crisis is deep and general structural. The most visible and the most characteristic dimension of that crisis is the economic dimension, with jeopardized life standard and increased misery and poverty. However, the crisis took hold of all the other territories of social life, such as education and culture, family and lifestyle, ideology and systems of values. Central dimension of the modern social crisis is the political crisis, which manifests as a crisis of the institutions of authority, the crisis of democracy and the crisis of the general security and safety of all the citizens. In this moment of human history we should search for an answer to the fundamental ethical question how should we live?.