"In the 20th century, egalitarianism has been used principally as the political formula or ideological rationalization by which one, emerging elite has sought to displace from political, economic, and culture power another elite, and in not only rationalizing but also disguising the dominance of the new elite… Egalitarianism played a central role in the progressivist ideological challenge, and the main form it assumed in the early 20th century was that of “environmentalism” – not in the contemporary sense of concern for ecology but in the sense that human beings are perceived as the products of their social and historical environment rather than of their innate mental and physical natures. Indeed, the ideological function of progressivism is de-legitimizing bourgeois society was accomplished by its identification of the society itself as the “environment” to be altered through social management."