This is an abstract by Joan Veon of another important book on Socialism and its affect on society.

The creation of an efficient institutional framework for regulating international economic relations is one of the fundamental concerns of economists’. Theorists and practitioners recognize that international trade has been one of the major sources of economic well-being; they know that no state can renounce such a wealth-generating activity.

Yet the increase of obstacles to the interchange of goods and services between nations since 1914 has led to what is generally termed economic disintegration.

This study is an inquiry into these fundamental determinants of international economic co-operation.
Two determinants are:
1. Individuals residing in different areas of the world who deal with each other on the basis of private interests.
2. The second aspect of the problem is inherent in the existence of sovereign national states. For centuries, men have attempted to devise a system of international law that could subject states, as private law subjects individuals, to the rule of commonly accepted codes and to the judgments of an international arbitration agency in cases of disputes between national governments.

All these systems have been frustrated by the fact that the creation of an international coercive force which would automatically enter into action when any state refused to comply with the provisions of international law has been regarded as an inadmissible interference with sovereignty.

It is not difficult to see that individual human relationships are characterized by a tendency toward UNIVERSALISM, as distinct from the real of political domination which presupposes a clearly defined national territory. The economic laws work independently of any single human will. They result, via the price mechanism, in the coordination of millions of individual decisions.

The principle of COORDINATION IS HERE REPLACED BY THAT OF SUBORDINATION. It becomes important ot know which fields of human activity are subject to imperium (sovereign national power) and which are left to the regulation influence of market values and private law.

DEFINITION OF SOCIALISM:
P. X – Socialism indicates a social order in which all economic activities are consciously determined (planned) by a restricted group that represents society. This group is conceived of as an elite, due to its members’ alleged superior character, knowledge and intelligence and is regard to be best qualified to determine society’s real needs and to use society’s productive apparatus to best satisfy those needs.

The socialist concept of the future international economic order is that of a world united under a single government and centrally planned by experts for the benefit of all peoples.

INTRODUCTION
Socialists have concluded that something is fundamentally wrong with the “society” in which they live and consequently, they feel compelled to change it.

This will to reform is directed toward a thorough transformation of existing social and political institutions. Concurrently, it postulates a basic change in human character in freeing men from their narrow, egoistic outlooks. Human beings must be taught to place more value on the well-being of the COMMUNITY than on personal comfort.

A third element is added by the socialist’s contention that history moves in the (evolutionary) direction of more perfect social conditions which is aided and accomplished by a restricted group of individuals (aristoi) who possess the indispensable insight to what is just and right.

Different types of socialists:
1. First group devote attention to construction of an abstract, ideal commonwealth and place special emphasis on the internal set up of that commonwealth.
2. Second group ignore the existence of national states and conceive the future world as consisting of small, socialistically organized communities whose relations are governed by brotherly love and mutual existence.
3. Third group start with the assumption that the greatest evil is to be seen not in the existence of distinct political units, but in the division of man into two classes: the exploiting and the exploited. Abolish exploitation and the system on which it rests and you will create perfect harmony. This is the Marxist approach.

SOCIALISM IS USUALLY REGARDED AS A PROFOUNDLY INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT because it emphasizes human equality, solidarity and brotherhood.

Marx’s theoretical structure is comprised of: commodities, abstract labor, and surplus value.
1. Surplus value is derived from the capitalist’s power to comple the suppliers of labor to work more hours and are “socially” necessary to produce their means of subsistence. Accumulation is the expansion of surplus value which he regards as the driving motor of the capitalist mode of production. . The capitalist wants to “expand the value under his control or to accumulate capital. Accumulation means the production of more capital goods. More productive equipment sets labor free, more labor than can be employed in the manufacture of new machinery—this is called by Marx, “Reserve Army”. The process of capital accumulation and the Reserve Army are subject to cyclical fluctuations.

Properly understood…underconsumption and over-investment are opposite sides of the same coin and re due to the fact that “in capitalistic society the means of production cannot become effective unless they have been turned beforehand into capital, ile. The menas of exploitation of human labor.