Philosophers such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution demanded that the rights of the individual be acknowledged by the leading social governing body. But even today, the balance between the rights of the individual and the state is an imperfect one: to what degree do individuals have a right to critique the government, to set their own moral terms of the private behavior, and what ethical as well as legal obligations does the individual have to the community? America's intense individualism tends to deemphasize the obligations of citizens to others.

A third controversial development during this period was the development of capitalism. Before capitalism, the self-sustaining farm or fiefdom was the predominant economic mode. However, mechanized and specialized labor that took the form of wage labor where "humans work for wages rather than for product" became more common (Hooker, 1996, capitalism). Arguably, in a Marxist...
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