ABSTRACT
The national health service and a wide range of social services, together with public ownership and operation of a number of productive and distributive services, have all been attained without any concessions to the authoritarian political machinery of the communist state. The political and the economic cannot be wholly separated, and the cleavage between the communist and the western forms of government are inevitably reflected in different degrees and forms of coercive elements in the economic systems of the different groups of countries. But if the non-communist countries will not voluntarily abandon representative government for communist autocracy, the question remains whether a well-organised minority could seize power by a surprise coup d’etat and establish a communist state by force of arms. “Non-recognition”, and exclusion from the international organisations, are dangerous practices the chief responsibility for which rests with the non-communist countries.
