Is this paragraph okay?

Third, the top ranking officers in the military establishment. It used to be that most people were farmers or small trade’s people, whose lives, while full of hard work, and were largely under their control. Certainly others exercised power, sometimes arbitrary power, over them, but only now and then. Modern society has become so complex and centralized that people seldom make the most important decisions about their own lives, and especially about their work, for themselves. They work as employees, on the projects of their employers, the “projects not their own” of which the author states.