ABSTRACT
The civilisation of the last few centuries is disintegrating; it suffered a stroke in 1914 and has been moribund ever since. It served its members indirectly, relying on the half-understood laws of private profit and supply and demand, and its whole system of beliefs and values was appropriate to such a mechanism. The type of economic system which will replace it is already clear in outline: it will be centralised, and totalitarian in the sense that all the major aspects of the economic development of large regions are consciously planned as an integrated whole. The application of conscious control to economic functioning of society is actually a step forward along the path of man's evolutionary advance. The inter-war period has been a time of pupation; the capitalist world has been in the chrysalis of the Great Depression, breaking down its caterpillar economics and culture and preparing to emerge as a quite different-looking butterfly.
