Book Description

A majority of the world's nations believe that there are claims which can be made on individual nation's wealth that are both considerable and threatening to countries such as the United States. This attitude was demonstrated in the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1974. It may be argued that this attitude is a result of the British revolution which began in 1947 with the granting of independence to socialist India. The British revolution of the second quarter of the 20th century attracted little attention. While everyone recognized that new states were coming into existence from former European and mostly British colonies, it was not generally perceived that they came to independence with a preexisting stable ideological base which was British socialism. The spread of British socialism to the furthest reaches of the globe, with its ascent to dominance in the highest national councils everywhere, gives worldwide significance to the British revolution. Of the 87 states that have joined the United Nations since its founding, more than one-half (47) had been part of the British empire. Socialism, as it developed in Great Britain was anti-U.S. because the United States was viewed as capitalistic. The United States has not dealt with these new nations successfully because they did not recognize this ideology. At the level of world affairs, the United States has learned to deal with communism; the task is now to learn to deal with socialism. (SM)