4. When a revolutionary situation develops, a revolutionary leader well-established in a community trembling on the brink of a revolutionary overturn may seize the reins of power and establish a regime founded on opposition principles, dedicated to another set of principles and practices. When such a revolutionary coup is successful the bells of history have tolled for the older order and the trumpets of victory have sounded for the new society.
5. The intensity and the direction of the social changes which radiate out from the climax of a revolutionary situation and the consequent, subsequent attempts at counter-revolution, are the outcome of active, purposive intervention by all of the social groups present at the center of revolutionary activity.
The current shift from a laissez-faire economy ("letting nature take her course"), to a planned, managed, controlled economy is a precedent which gives us a foretaste of what will lie ahead when a planet-wide federal government undertakes the planning, direction and management of a planet-wide economy and society.
The outcome cannot be determined in advance. Unexpected situations will arise, the resolution of which will shape the fate, present and future, of mankind. In a very real sense, our eggs are all in one basket—the Earth. Our future, for generations to come, may be determined by the decisions we are making or the social policy we are initiating at the present moment.
Large scale research and experiment should go a long way toward developing the skills required by competent and successful planetary leadership. Political experiments like the United States of North America or the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics or the League of Nations or the United Nations, the planet-wide search for petroleum or the joint scientific efforts that went into the splitting of the atom, have given us opportunities to develop the science and art of planet-wide leadership.
Behind and beyond our training courses—our formal educational system (which should be in the front rank of our priorities)—we could train apprentices in every occupational field, selecting the most apt, the most eager, the seemingly best qualified and giving them every opportunity to try out their skills and improve their qualifications in their chosen fields of endeavor.
Aspirants for any occupational assignment would divide themselves into three groups: those who feel that they have chosen wisely, find themselves in congenial surrounds and want to spend coming years in the occupation of their choice; those who are uncertain and still unable to decide upon the field of their life activity; and third, those who have chosen badly, are dissatisfied with the occupational groove in which they find themselves and who are ready to move into another field at the first opportunity.
The well adjusted will constitute the elite of their chosen occupations, learning its skills and joining with other well satisfied professionals in passing on their enthusiasm and knowledge to the next generation of aspirants for inclusion in the same production teams. The undecided should be the object of special attention. They have entered an occupational field on an experimental basis and should be advised and helped during the experimental period when they are deciding to make a go of it or to try for something more congenial or at least more acceptable.
Misfits who have made a wrong choice and who have no clear call to stay where they are should be advised and helped to find more congenial occupational surroundings.
We may think and experiment with this selective process as though it was easy and probably final. Nothing could be further from the reality. Even the best adjusted have moments of uncertainty and indecision about their occupational futures. The less adjusted spend a part of their lives looking around for a more attractive field.