ABSTRACT
In the epoch of intact capitalism, law, custom, public opinion, and public administration enforced a certain amount of public planning, while in a society that had adopted the structural principles of socialism there was such a thing as Lenin's New Economic Policy that left room for a certain amount of laissez faire. It follows that, public management or planning being never either absent or complete, our question concerning the immediate future should not be couched in terms of 'capitalism or socialism': there is a great variety of intermediate possibilities. Both in its international and in its domestic aspects, capitalist economy is adapted to the requirements and habits of a normally pacific world. The fact that both in Europe and in the United States the capitalist process displayed unmistakable symptoms of strain exactly since the break in the legislative and administrative attitudes of public authority occurred may be significant.
