In a very real sense they are pilot plants designed to correct individual or social maladjustments and substitute new ways for old ones. As pilot plants they experiment with deviations from existing social norms, acting as a social laboratory in which new ideas and practices are tested, modified, accepted, rejected.
Change is one of the essential aspects of every society. There are changes in personnel. In each generation individuals grow old and retire. Others grow up and take over the tasks of organizing the communities in which they live. Profound social changes result from discoveries and inventions: the wheel, the arch, steam and gas engines, electricity, atomic power. Cyclic changes occur in the economy. Social changes follow alterations in the weather. Nations, empires, civilizations are produced by the changing life forms.
During long periods, social changes are so gradual that they are unnoticed save by the more sensitive and perceptive. At other times, social changes tumble over one another in an overwhelming revolutionary flood which sweeps away the old, yielding place to new, "lest one good custom should corrupt the world".
Changes in society beget changes in ideology. Reciprocally, changes in ideology lead to changes in social structure and function. The more rigid the social order, the more stubborn its resistance to change. By the same token, more fluid societies lend themselves more readily to changes in practice and in theory.
It is not possible to discuss ideology without some reference to the closely related problems of means and ends. As we consider our existing social establishment, in the light of unceasing social change, we must deal with goals or objectives, with practicable modifications of social form and function and with the way in which changes can be, might be, will be brought about.
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.