What have been the effects of utopianism and the growing power of the state during the twentieth century?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: For people who experienced the unprecedented rate of progress in the early twentieth century, utopia seemed attainable: A world improved or perfected seemed within reach. The new power of technology at the disposal of governments constituted an opportunity to reforge society for the better. Ambitions inherited from the past seemed briefly realizable, before disillusionment or realism set in. The social history of the century proved largely to be a story of projects that failed, as chaos undid plans and overpowered progress.Most of history had favored unitary states, with one religion, ethnicity, and identity. Large empires have always been multicultural, but they have usually had a dominant culture, alongside which others are, at best, tolerated. In the twentieth century, this would no longer do. The aftermath of the era of global empires, the range and intensity of migrations, the progress of ideas of racial equality, the rise of new sects and cults, the large-scale redrawing of state boundaries made the toleration of diversity essential to the peace of most states. Those states that rejected toleration faced traumatic periods of "ethnic cleansing." Meanwhile, democracies could only contain the intense competition of rival ideologies by embracing political pluralism—that is, the admission to the lawful political arena, on equal terms, of parties representing potentially irreconcilable views.