What were the causes of this fundamental alteration in the world-view of many nineteenth-century intellectuals, which led them to repudiate the ideals of the Enlightenment and of liberalism?

Increasing economic freedom enabled standards of living to rise to levels that would previously have been almost unimaginable, thereby raising an expectation of still further gains. Yet neither the economic principles underlying this progress nor the moral basis of freedom were clearly understood (cf. (3) and (5) below). The progress of the lower and middle classes was instead assumed to be an inexorable and unexplainable historical movement: its cause (namely, individual freedom) remained obscure to most intellectuals. From this perspective, socialism and other policies of enforced economic egalitarianism, which seemed to promise still further progress for the lower classes, were regarded as mere progressive extensions of a supposedly inevitable historical trend.
The plight of the poor, who in past ages had suffered in unrecognized isolation, was brought to light by improvements in transportation and communication in the rapidly developing economy. On the surface, this newly discovered poverty seemed to strengthen the case for enforced economic egalitarianism (cf. p. 5.2:27).

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