Modern state structure goes back through the half dozen centuries during
which it has been developing. Its ancestors may be met with in the
history of previous civilizations.
Modern industrial structure on the other hand is something essentially
new under the sun--newly imagined, designed, constructed, productive. It
has no ancestry before 1750 because its essential building unit--the
modern machine--did not exist previous to that date.
In the last chapter we dealt with the growth of states into empires and
the aggregation of empires into civilizations with the possibility that
the existing states could be welded into a world federation. One of the
chief obstacles to such a development is the centuries of conflict
during which modern nations have been built up and the strong bonds of
nationalism have been established as a means of holding divergent groups
of people in line by particular oligarchies operating in particular
civilizations.
On the economic level such difficulties are minimal. The process of
coordination and consolidation was far advanced before the end of the
last century. The practice of integration--joining productive units in
functional sequences--was also accepted and followed, with little regard
for political or cultural considerations. The result has been an
economic integration which has developed inside the chief industrial
nations and across national boundaries.
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