How Many Worlds?

This article focuses on the U.S.-Soviet Relations. Current wisdom in the West takes it for granted that the cleavage between the "Free World" of democracy and the "Slave World" of Marxist totalitarianism is all important and will determine the global shape of things to come. The sizes of these two worlds were revealed by the United Nations study of per capita income in 1949. No survey of comparable scope has since been made. Current figures would be appreciably higher for the U.S., Russia and Western Europe, but much the same for Poorland. Soviet big business is so organized for the accumulation and investment of capital as to make possible an annual rate of economic growth roughly double that achieved in the U.S. In the decades to come, despite current American wealth and relative Russian poverty.