HUNDREDS of books have been written to describe the ways in which particular groups or individuals have come to exercise domination over large numbers of their fellows. Despite this tempting wealth of factual material, or perhaps because of it, modern social science has very largely avoided any attempt to discover and explain, within a strictly empirical framework, what recurring patterns there may be in these myriads of events. The following pages represent a very modest effort in this direction.

If there is indeed a distinguishable process of acquiring power, or, as is more likely, a series of such processes, the attempt to distinguish them must be formulated in terms of a time sequence. It should indicate the conditions in the society as a whole that lead to a concentration of power. In addition, it should indicate the sequence of stages through which the concentration takes place.

NO analyst of Soviet Communism has failed to express surprise that a Marxist movement should have triumphed in a prevailingly agrarian society. Equally trite has been the observation that the Russian Marxists have not been able to solve the problem of the peasant and his full integration into their socialist system. Marx was a city boy, we are told, and that is why Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, has to spend his time discussing the failure of Soviet agriculture to keep up with the industrial sector of the economy. We are left with a truly confusing picture. Marxism, on its own premises designed as a movement for fully industrialized societies, comes to power or is a serious contender for power in societies that are mainly agrarian, while mature industrial countries adhere perversely to something (but something that is definitely non-Marxist) variously described as “the social welfare state,” “liberal capitalism,” and the like. Perhaps Marx was wrong and—for reasons unforeseen by him—his system is peculiarly suitable to what we now term “backward” countries, with predominantly agrarian economies and a low standard of living. Then why cannot Marxism solve its central problem of the agrarian economy? Or is it perhaps merely one form of Marxism—Soviet Communism—which is thus incapacitated? No wonder that scholars, first secretaries, and the rest of us tend to become confused.

WITHIN the past year, the Italian government has revealed a ten-year program, known as the Vanoni Plan, for the development of the Italian economy. By the investment of $56 billion, the government hopes to conquer the problem of chronic unemployment and to revitalize the laggard southern regionof the country. The plan is a bold and imaginative one, replete with government controls, and probably too optimistic. Nonetheless, it has forcefully drawn international attention to Italy's basic economic problems. Hence it is opportune to examine those problems against the perspective of what has been attained by the Italian economy in the past ten years.

Compared with northwest Europe, Italy has always been economically poor. Capital is much scarcer and the endowment of natural resources is much less favorable. Deposits of coal and metallic minerals are negligible or lacking, though natural gas production is growing and petroleum has recently been discovered. Arable land is poor in average quality. Only 1.78 hectares areavailable per person engaged in agriculture, one-third less than in France, while total arableland is one-quarter below France although the population of Italy is 10 per cent larger (47.1 million in 1951).

THE problem of disarmament can be studied under two principal headings: that of politics and that of the technique of control.

From the stand point of general politics, disarmament is linked to every aspect of the cold war, since it appears to be the essential condition to any real reduction of international tension. From the technical stand point, disarmament raises a host of special difficulties which it becomes necessary to examine, if only to appreciate fully the broad ramifications of the subject.

MOST American forecasters in the first half of 1955 were optimistic about the United States economy, but many were gloomy about the prospects for Asia. The head-shaking over Indonesia was particularly grave.1 Such a pessimistic outlook was perhaps a natural reaction to the sanguine attitude that followed the Indonesian achievement of freedom from the Dutch on December 27, 1949. In Indonesia itself, a battle raged in 1955—culminating in the overthrow of the Ali cabinet—between those out of power who blamed the cabinet for inflation, insecurity, and corruption, and those in power who tried to place the onus on previous cabinets, the Dutch, and remnants of colonialism. Indonesian newspapers played up these disputes with perhaps even more vigor than the American press handles party differences within the United States.

Indonesia is a classic example of a recently freed, former colony. Winning sovereignty from the Netherlands ended the first and basically the simpler phase of the revolution. The second phase, more difficult and much more gradual, must evolve new institutions to make the country a truly independent power and ensure economic development with a rising standard of living for her people. She is struggling with the usual boom-and-bust cycle that characterizes araw-material producing country. In the 1930's, she suffered through the sugar depression. Since she gained her freedom, rubber, tin, and copra, comprising over 70 per cent of her exports, have give hera hectic ride on the roller coaster of world prices.