Only at the end of the nineteenth century did a worldwide civilization begin to take shape. During the first seventy years of the twentieth century, however, which have been marked by a speeding up of the historical process, the division of the world into « developed » and « underdeveloped » countries has not become less pronounced; on the contrary, the gap between them continues to grow larger and has brought about the first crises of a capitalist system that had only just begun to be a world system. The Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution that took place between 1930 and 1950, the revolutions in Vietnam and Cuba are all so many stages in a process of development beyond capitalism, in the name of socialism. The fears that Marx expressed in the middle of the last century, to the effect that a socialist Europe might find itself up against a capitalism still on the upgrade in Asia, have not proved justified. The opposite, indeed, has occurred. At the very center of the system, however, in the advanced capitalist countries, an all-round challenging of this system has begun, through a thousand indirect and unexpected channels.(…)
