The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings.

One of the most significant results of the industrial struggle during the past fifty years has been the creation of a condition of a vast inequality of wealth and income. This inequality is so extreme that it now constitutes one of the chief sources of bitterness and strife in modern life. ...not that the poor have been getting poorer but that the number and sizes of great fortunes have increased enormously.

the Church took it upon herself to draw attention to the unjust distribution of goods, not only between different social groupings but between different regions of the world. In fact, the gap became increasingly evident between the rich North, which was growing richer, and the poor South, which continued to be exploited and penalized in many ways even after the end of the colonial era. Instead of diminishing, the poverty of the South was constantly increasing. Such are the consequences of unbridled capitalism, which makes the rich ever richer while forcing the poor into conditions of growing degradation.

It is in underdeveloped world that he central, overriding fact of our epoch becomes manifest to the naked eye: the capitalist system, once a mighty engine of economic development, has turned into a no less formidable hurdle to human advancement.

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.

If anything, the breakup of the has brought a colossal victory for global capitalism and imperialism, with its correlative increase in human misery, and a historic setback for revolutionary liberation struggles everywhere. There will be harder times ahead for even modestly reformist national governments, as the fate of Panama and Iraq have indicated. The breakup also means a net loss of global pluralism and more intensive socio-economic inequality throughout the world.

Fractures in the state, divisions in the ruling class and indecision on the part of the intermediate classes pave the way for dual power, which, in Russia, led to the creation of new institutions and later, in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, rested on revolutionary armies with varying class compositions that were locked in battle against their respective state machines.

It has become ever clearer that underdevelopment is the end result of a process. Therefore, it must be studied from a historical perspective, that is, in relationship to the development and expansion of the great capitalist countries. The underdevelopment of the poor countries, as an overall social fact, appears in its true light: as the historical by-product of the development of other countries. The dynamics of the capitalist economy lead to the establishment of a center and a periphery, simultaneously generating progress and growing wealth for the few and social imbalances, political tensions, and poverty for the many.

Without the progress of equality and improvement in the level of living at least beyond the poverty line, for one quarter of the population of the world who live in South Asia, there would be grave repercussions on the rest of the world. The problem of the underdeveloped country is, in one sense, of greater concern to the advanced countries because international rivalries and tensions arise from the desire to establish spheres of influence over underdeveloped areas. The very existence of underdeveloped regions would he therefore a continuing threat to world security, and world peace. A quick transformation of the underdeveloped countries into industrialized economies would reduce the sphere of conflicting interests; and hence decrease the tension between East and West.

By carving up our cities into attendance zones, we are perpetuating the economic and racial divisions that marked one of the darkest eras of our nation’s past.

In the fifteen years following the First World War, and especially in the immediate aftermath, the industrial nations exploited this new freedom in remarkably diverse fashion. The French followed the line of least resistance with, on the whole, the best results. The British followed the line of greatest wounds. The Germans so handled matters, or so yielded to circumstances, as to produce the greatest inflation of modern times. The United States, by a combination of mismanagement and non-management, produced the greatest depression. In all the long history of money, the decade of the 1920s—extended by a few years to the consequences—is perhaps the most instructive.

This war represents the German Revolution, a greater political event than the French Revolution of last century — I don't say a greater, or as great, a social event. What its social consequences may be are in the future. Not a single principle in the management of our foreign affairs, accepted by all statesmen for guidance up to six months ago, any longer exists. There is not a diplomatic tradition which has not been swept away. You have a new world, new influences at work, new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope... The balance of power has been entirely destroyed, and the country which suffers most, and feels the effects of this great change most, is England.

The greatest social consequence of the Darwinian revolution was the grudging acceptance by humans that humans were random descendants of monkeys, neither perfect nor engineered. The greatest social consequence of neo-biological civilization will be the grudging acceptance by humans that humans are the random ancestors of machines, and that as machines we can be engineered ourselves.

The most important political divide in the world is no longer between left and right. It is not even between liberal and authoritarian. It is between those who grasp the sheer scale and potentially revolutionary consequences – in the US and around the world – of what Donald Trump is trying to do in his second term; and those who don't.