You had me up until this paragraph. Are you trying to write ayn rand fan fiction?
Also, keep in mind that when americans say "socialism" they mean "government funded infrastructure projects", it sounds like you weren't aware of this.
And yes, society only moves forward due to a small number of leaders. In the past this has been more focused on state leaders and conquest, but in the modern day more so industrialists and technologists. It's not controversial that the vast majority of people just want to be provided a comfortable lot in life by others.
> It's not controversial that the vast majority of people just want to be provided a comfortable lot in life by others.
It's not controversial in the same way that saying the earth is flat isn't controversial, it's just wrong.
Society "moves forward" because every day that passes there are literally billions of humans working to build/harvest/grow/research/construct/etc different things.
Nobody actually believes e.g. elon musk is out there putting rocketships together, right?
President kennedy said "lets go to the moon" then he went back to the white house to attend state dinners and sleep with whoever came near. Ten thousand nasa employees went to work every day and actually built rocketships.
(The generic argument here is something like "well elon musk gave them money to build rocketships" except then you have to ask where musk got the money to give to other people in the first place and the argument rapidly breaks down)
That should teach us that we can't look at soeciety from some sort of logical principles. It bears all the markings of sociologically created in-groups, or as the kids would put it, "identity politics". It doesn't have to make sense.
LOL
edit:
In English it some how makes sense to use a word like "progress" without defining whereto. It isn't very sophisticated.