Socialism was born into a world whose limits were those of capitalism itself. North-Western Europe, with its American extension, was the sole, sovereign source of history; the rest of the world simply the arena of its annexations. Inevitably, socialist thought itself was influenced by this unique supremacy: the liberation of society would be inaugurated in the capitalist countries themselves. Europe, even in its recovery of man, would retain the initiative.
Events proved this belief both right and wrong. Socialism remains the vocation of our time; the dethronement of capital has proved both possible and necessary. But the revolutions were not made in Europe. Two vast upheavals have destroyed the racial and social absolutism of the West. The Russian and Chinese revolutions resulted in a continuous Communist world stretching across the length of Eurasia, numbering one-third of mankind. And since 1945, a third world has emerged, in violence and war. The decolonization of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which is forcing capitalism back upon its homelands of the nineteenth century, has created an immense community of newly or imminently independent nations.