Intentional communities organized around ethical or social principles are more enduring, lasting through generations and sometimes through centuries.  During their existence they may have considerable influence on the communities of which they are a part.  At best they parallel the life of the civilization against which they protest, while they share its problems.  Religiously oriented intentional communities may be found today in many of the countries composing western civilization.

What concerns us here is the split of western civilization into two broadly divergent groups:  capitalism and socialism-communism.

Capitalism, in its present monopoly form, is the outcome of a thousand years of development.  Throughout its existence it has been politically and economically competitive.  The vehicle of political competition began as the nation, then continued as the empire.  Economically, the vehicle of competition has become the profit-seeking business corporation, backed politically and often subsidized economically by the nation or empire.

As western civilization has developed, nations and empires have tended to form more or less permanent alliances.  Business corporations likewise have tended to establish conglomerates which include widely divergent businesses, some limited to one nation or empire, some international.

Historically, the present-day business community developed out of a segmented European feudal society as a protest against political restrictions.  Its early key-note was laissez-faire—­freedom of businessmen to make economic policy and accumulate profits.  The practical outcome of laissez-faire economy has been monopoly or finance capitalism functioning through the sovereign state or empire.

Marxian socialism-communism, organized and developed largely since 1848, has grown up as a rebellion against monopoly capitalism.  At it matured, after revolutions in Mexico, China, Tsarist Russia and East Europe, it became an alternative and even a competitive life style.  Marxism has been, at least in theory, cooperative rather than competitive.  Its objective has been not private profit but a higher standard of economic and social life for exploited masses of the business community and of the Third World.  Capitalism has had as its slogan “Every man for himself”.  The slogan of Marxism is “Serve the whole people”.

Until 1917 Marxism was a body of social theory and a program of specific political demands.  In the period from 1848 to 1917 Marxism operated through minority political parties organized in each nation, but linked together internationally in loose federations, except during the brief existence of the Communist International from 1919 to 1943.

Beginning with the Russian Revolution of 1917, Marxism became a basic state doctrine, first in the Soviet Union and subsequently in more than a dozen other nations of East Europe and Asia.  The area of Marxist influence, as expressed in socialist construction, spread slowly from 1917 to 1943 and rapidly during and immediately after the war of 1936-1945.