Prospects of industrial civilization

The Prospects of Industrial Civilization is considered the most ambitious of Bertrand Russell's works on modern society. It offers a rare glimpse into often-ignored subtleties of his political thought and in it he argues that industrialism is a threat to human freedom, since it is fundamentally linked with nationalism. His proposal for one government for the whole world as the ultimate solution, along with his argument that the global village and prevailing political democracy should be its eventual results, is both provocative and thoroughly engaging.

The conflict between capitalist and socialist direction of industry, formerly regarded as an internal struggle within each nation, and now relegated to the background by many politicians in the highly industrialized nations, has in fact assumed tremen dous and dangerous importance in the international sphere, in that the world now stands divided between the communist block and the block of nations still committed in greater or lesser degree to the methods of free enterprise.