means of holding divergent groups
of people in line by particular oligarchies operating in particular
civilizations.

On the economic level such difficulties are minimal. The process of
coordination and consolidation was far advanced before the end of the
last century. The practice of integration--joining productive units in
functional sequences--was also accepted and followed, with little regard
for political or cultural considerations. The result has been an
economic integration which has developed inside the chief industrial
nations and across national boundaries.

Despite political obstacles, economic integration has proceeded with
giant strides, especially during the past hundred years. Under a well
developed world political federation the world economy could be
integrated and used to provide the necessaries, conveniences and minimal
comforts for the entire human family. There are nationalistic obstacles
to political federation. Economic integration is an obvious must and a
logical outcome of the industrial integration that has gone on so
swiftly during the great revolution of 1750-1970.

When we talk about integrating the world economy we are dealing with a
problem which no previous civilization has faced because no previous
civilization had machines or the social and cultural institutions which
have grouped themselves around the ultra-modern machine phenomena.

World economy in 1975 includes three essential elements: the planet
earth and its resources; the institutional structure of modern society;
and human beings with their diverse concepts and skills which provide
its motive force. These three factors, land, capital equipment, and
human energy, are the three-fold apparatus upon which 3.7 billion human
beings depend for the goods and services which sustain them from day to
day and year to year.

At an earlier period this economic apparatus centered around the land
and its cultivation (agriculture). Since the onset of the great
revolution the goods and services have come increasingly from a
factory-office centered occupational apparatus. When we consider the
integration of the world economy, it is this industrialized, modern
economy that we have chiefly in mind. No previous civilization faced
such a problem. There are no real precedents upon which we can rely. We
must go forward, if we do go forward, experimenting with problems which
face the human family for the first time.

The integration of planetary