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What about history not just 'sort of happening' but instead, changes in the means of production lead social change. e.g. Industrial Revolution, Factorization of production.

This is how a marxist views histories progression and I feel it is more applicable and holds up under backtesting than 'history just sort of happens'

Mao was a man of the people, who led his country to greatness, no backpedaling necessary.

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Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly, technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man theory, where social change is enacted by the decisions (good or bad) of powerful and important individuals.

Read Marx, but read Tolstoy too. Tolstoy argued that we all have 20/20 hindsight, and we like to argue how well our individual ideas or pet theories explain stuff that, well, just happened.

edit: I'm suddenly thinking of Bruce Sterling's novel Zeitgeist, a sort of magical-realism SF set around Y2K. When asked who would win the culture war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism, the central character said "The side with the most televisions".

See also Cliodynamics http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/

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