The Epoch of Socialism and the Integration of World Capitalism

Abstract

The topic, “Economic Development and Human Rights,” can best be understood in the context of the broad historical forces now gripping the world. On the one hand, we are living in the epoch of socialism which is the great social force propelling social development today. This has been so for the past 55 years, much the same as capitalism once dominated the world in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ordinary people in country after country have risked life and limb in their struggle for a better society under the banner of socialism, led by political movements of national liberation and socialist development. We find few historical examples of people spontaneously organizing themselves in sharp conflict with more powerful opponents whose political program embraces the construction of capitalism. For the most part capitalism must purchase its soldiers in much the same way as it transacts any business on a money market. We find few pieces of prose or political writing in capitalist less developed countries which grip our imagination. Who are the heros of capitalism to compare with people like Ché Guevara, Franz Fanon, Mao Tse-Tung, and Ho Chi Minh? And the list of countries embracing the socialist road to development grows every year, from the first socialist revolution in the Soviet Union to Chile’s efforts at the construction of socialism today.