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The same may be said for the revolt of the colonial peoples, downgrading all European "victors" in the war of 1914-18, and the social revolutions following 1945 that shook up the planetary power structure and opened the way for socialist-communist forces to begin socialist construction in one country after another.
At the same time they are learning, bit by bit, of the spectacular achievements of the billion human beings in socialist-communist countries. The majority of mankind has been unprepared for revolutionary change. When change came they resented it, maybe resisted it at the outset.
It presents an alternative theoretical program for dealing with the transition from the built-in competitiveness of western civilization to the built-in cooperativeness of a planned, coordinated, federated socialist-communist world order.
In practice, an accurate distinction must be made between the conservative bourgeois state, the temporary transitional state and the universal socialist-communist state that will shepherd humanity along the difficult and dangerous path of the political life pattern beyond civilization.
Fifth, with one eye on its need for integration into a socialist-communist collective planetary economy, the other eye must be kept on the planetary chain of which the earth is an essential part. Life is a process operating through the linking of causes and their effects. This is as true of social life as it is of individual life.
Today about a billion human beings live in countries of East Europe and Asia calling themselves socialist-communist. A second billion human beings live chiefly in West Europe, the Americas and Australasia calling themselves capitalist.
Despite these changes, and with the possible exception of its very large and significant socialist-communist sector, the West has retained the structural and functional features of previous civilizations: urban nuclei supporting themselves by trade, commerce and finance; expansion up to and beyond the point of no return; the life and death power struggle within and between its constituent peoples, nations and empires; the use of war as the final arbiter in these struggles; the rise of the military to a position of supremacy in policy making and public administration; an all-pervasive pattern of exploitation within the urban nuclei and between rival provincial factions; speculation in the necessaries of life; the growth of overhead costs far beyond the increase of production and of income; the degradation of currency; multiple taxation; the abuse of credit; inflation, unemployment and chronic hard times.
Third, moving along with the formulation and fulfillment of carefully developed plans for socialist construction in all of its ramifications, to close the door gradually, step by considered step, on exploitation and profiteering. In their places, well-laid plans could be drawn up for developing a people's socialist-communist economy in the more backward areas of Africa, Asia and the Americas.
At the same time, the socialist-communist variant of the bourgeois state pattern is providing the framework within which the institutions and practices needed for the transition from civilization to a newer and more universal social order are being matured.
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