A social structure which includes imperial nuclei and colonial dependencies is constantly threatened by colonial unrest and revolt. Colonial revolt, endemic in every civilization, became epidemic after 1943. The path to independence had been blazed by North and South American colonials. It was followed after 1943 by the inhabitants of British, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Asia and Africa. The slogan of the independence movement was "self-determination."
Before self-determination can operate there must be a "self" capable of making decisions and carrying them into practice. Identification of the "self," or "nationhood" as it was called in this era, involved bitter domestic struggle, internal reorganization and consolidation. The process was typified in the British Colonies of North America between 1770 and 1789 which produced the United States of North America. Asians and Africans who gained their independence after 1945 faced a double problem: the establishment of nationhood, and regional consolidation.
The British colonies in North America won their independence as a loose confederation of sovereign states. After war's-end in 1783, they were able to form a regional federation: the United States of North America. Despite their efforts, they were unable to include Canada, which was under strong French influence. British colonials in Asia and Africa after 1943 were less fortunate. After winning their independence as Indians or Burmese, they were unable to take the next step and organize a United States of Southern Asia.
The Bandung Conference (in 1955) of representatives from Asia and African countries failed to realize the hopes of its conveners. After prolonged deliberations it was able to go no further than the "five principles" of self-determination and co-existence, under which the independence of each participating nation was reaffirmed and each agreed not to interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbors. The conference adjourned without establishing any form of organization or making provision for further meetings.
After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, hopes ran high for the establishment of a bloc of Latin American States, led by the elected president of Brazil, Joao Goulart, that might act as a bulwark against further "yankee aggression" in Latin America. In 1962 a military coup overthrew Goulart, drove him into exile, jailed and disenfranchised his supporters and lined up Brazil, largest and most populous nation of Latin America, solidly behind the Monroe Doctrine of United States supremacy in the Americas, implemented by Washington's burgeoning "Pentagon diplomacy."
African developments were even less fruitful than those in Asia and Latin America. Asians and Latin Americans generally had reached the level of self-identification necessary for statehood and national self-determination. Large parts of Africa living at pre-national levels of tribal identification, devoted their energies to the realization of nationhood. Their constitutions announced their frontiers and proclaimed their sovereignty, but inter-tribal rivalries and personal ambitions turned each new nation into a battle field for prestige and authority, with the military often making the final decisions.
Asians and Africans had won telling victories in their struggle to drive out their former imperial masters. When it came to the affirmative task of organizing responsible regional federations, their failure was dismal. Asia and Africa were regionally disunited. Former colonial people, still monitored by alien representatives of monopoly capitalism, were fragmented by the self-determination struggle into theoretically sovereign nations many of which lacked the experience and the local expertise which are the indispensible prerequisites of self-determination and of fruitful regional federation.
Another aspect of the world revolution produced more tangible results. The latter half of the nineteenth century brought into being a grass-roots movement of peoples demanding everything from petty reforms of administrative machinery to planned revolutionary transformations of the established monopoly capitalist structure. This movement crystallized as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist national and international struggle. From the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 until the beginnings of socialist construction in 1917, it was a movement of protest against poverty, unemployment, war, waste, inequality, exploitation. After 1917 it became a movement to end imperialism, war and exploitation and substitute a planet-wide social system that would give every human being a chance to play a meaningful part in utilizing nature, improving society and creating socialist women and men, capable of cooperating for the general welfare of mankind.
The Enlightenment had diminished ignorance, spread information and brought elementary education to the masses. Self-government had given people confidence in their ability to make the phrase "we, the people" a working formula for social improvement. The Industrial Revolution had converted millions of superstitious, frustrated peasants into craftsmen and professionals confident in their ability to use nature effectively, to advance their own interests and to improve society. These and secondary social forces laid the foundation for the social revolution that mushroomed across the planet during the opening years of the present century. The occasion for the revolution was four years of destructive war (1914-18) during which two rival gangs of imperialists led their dupes and victims to shed blood and destroy property in a struggle to decide which band of plunderers should exploit natural resources and labor power for its own advantage.
General war presented twentieth century man with a dilemma, an opportunity and a choice. Should he continue the grab-and-keep society that had flowered in Europe and elsewhere during the previous century, with its consequent poverty for the many, unemployment, exploitation and the power-struggle of the empires, or make a revolutionary change? As the stalemated war of 1914-18 with its frightful destruction of life and property continued year after year, the determination in favor of revolutionary change grew and crystalized.