According to sociological theory of structural functionalism all facts of society are interrelated. Thus change in any one fact of society may produce a commensurate change in the other facts. Although this justifies going for certain deliberate social experiments in social processes through institutional changes – sometimes in form of piecemeal change, sometimes in the form of the utopian change or complete transformation– this should also make us more cautious about long term implications of interventions and experimentations, which cannot always be predicted. Should the interventionists be held responsible for the unforeseen and unintended harmful effects of their interventions? This is a debatable issue. You may say that they should not be. They took up a specific cause and concentrated on it. They were not sufficiently aware of its consequences. You may also say that in social experiments at a large scale they should have been more clear about the possible effects of interventions and more careful before deciding to act. For example, we cannot absolve state if it goes for industrialization of a backward area, unmindful of its impact on society, culture and physical environment.

There is another limitation of utopian change. Society is a complex entity. No amount of revolutionary struggle can ever change everything in the desired direction. That is why Mao gave the concept of continuous revolution. One dose of revolution does not end all kinds of capitalist relations and ideology. There can never be a complete change. Many ideas, beliefs and practices of the old system survive into the new system. Cultural Revolution in China did not eliminate the traces of patriarchy. Independence in India did not change the attitudes of civil servants and economic elite towards people. It did not put an end to the age old structural inequalities, age old feudal relations and traditional beliefs and values. In some cases it actually hardened them, proving detrimental to the masses. Revolution may certainly alter the relations of production but it takes time to produce other changes in long held traditional beliefs and values. This point is notable because the combination of the old with the new may prove to be more damaging to the interests of society or to certain groups. You cannot assign simply a blotting paper role to society. The outcome of revolution will vary from society to society. That explains why socialist revolution did not succeed and only replaced economic inequality by political inequality. End of the class relations was welcomed everywhere but rise of political class was resisted again leading to the downfall of socialism in several countries.