ABSTRACT
The third great social revolution in the history of the world has been dealt with so far as a largely national phenomenon. This is because it is in the nature of social revolutions to start in specific places and to spread to other venues as their advantages become too attractive to pass up and dangerous to avoid. Yet as it spreads, the revolution is forced to change and adjust to the political, economic, and cultural systems of the receiving areas, which take from it what best suits their goals and ambitions. The importing communities transmute its organizational and technological innovations to fit their own ideas of the purpose and values of life, and create something new and syncretic, which differs from the pioneers as translations of Goethe or Shakespeare differ subtly from the originals.
