on.

Human communities have sought and found different means of dealing with
the problems of community administration. At one extreme of social
administration are various types of arbitrary, personal dictatorships.
The Greeks called them tyrannies--arbitrary rule by individuals or small
groups subject only to their own decisions.

At the other extreme are social groups that arrive at decisions as the
outcome of discussion in which all group members may take part. Group
decisions may require unanimity or they may be the outcome of voting,
with a majority or plurality vote carrying with it the right and duty to
put decisions into effect as part of the public life of the community.

Various forms of government have been established locally and
regionally. At the level of a civilization, the government has been
established almost universally as the outcome of armed struggle and
military conquest, and has been exercised through the use of armed force
in the hands of armed minorities.

A century without general war, 1815 to 1914, led to a widespread
balance-of-power assumption that planet-wide peace and prosperity could
be established and maintained by preserving a balance between the armed
forces of individual nations or alliances. Hence there need be no more
general wars fought for survival or supremacy.

The bitter struggle for markets, raw materials and colonies that
followed the French-German War of 1870 developed into an armament race
after 1899. From the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 to the outbreak of
general war in 1914, desperate efforts were made to maintain the
power-balance and avert a general war. The failure of these efforts
proved the ineffectiveness of the balance-of-power formula.

Today it is generally taken for granted that a balance of power between
armed nations is no guarantee of peace and order. It is also taken for
granted that frivolous talk like that of an "American Century" after
1945 has no justification in the light of present-day history. As
matters now stand neither a balance between rival armed powers, nor the
domination of the planet by any one power can be relied upon to maintain
world order and keep world peace.

Forms of self-government and representative government developed during
the bourgeois revolution and advocated and partially applied during the
proletarian up-surge, are being continued or are reappearing during the
current struggle for power and prestige at the planetary l