Modernization and the Alternatives of Social Progress

Abstract In recent years, most East European countries have reached a level of economic development, marked primarily by an end to the extensive possibilities for the growth of production. Now, the dynamism of these societies depends on the speed and the means by which the transition to intensive development takes place. Far-reaching changes are simultaneously taking shape in consumption: mass poverty ceases to determine social conditions, and differentiated needs are beginning to spread widely, a circumstance brought about not only by the internal evolution of the countries in questiopn, but also by the influence of the civilizatory model of the more developed industrial countries.