The Communist camp is composed of twelve states: the Soviet Union, China, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, North Korea, North Vietnam, Albania, Mongolia. Jointly, the Communist-ruled states account for about 38 per cent of the world's population, 24.2 per cent of the world's area, and approximately one-third of the world's industrial output. During Stalin's lifetime the Communist bloc operated essentially through a relatively simple subordination of the various units to the dictator's will, generally expressed by indirect methods of police and party control. This somewhat informal organization reflected in part the old dictator's specific political style; in part it was a function of the relatively immature stage of the bloc's development. As a result, the “maturation” of the bloc coincided with the difficult post-Stalin period of transition within the USSR and was marked by major upheavals and tensions. By 1958-1959, however, the crisis had subsided, and a new and more complex image of the bloc became apparent. While the Soviet Union continued to exercise leadership, acknowledged at the November 1957 conference of the Communist parties and buttressed by Soviet international and technological prestige, the camp had developed more elaborate mechanisms and processes of cohesion that also contributed to its unity. Some of them dated back to the Stalinist days, but were now infused with new vitality. Others emerged during the post-Stalin phase.

SPECIALISTS on Chinese communism are in the habit of brushing responsibility for strange or abhorrent phenomena off onto Soviet Russia. This may be largely justified; communism is clearly a foreign import in China, whatever the reasons for its success or the extent of its adaptation. But to an observer whose understanding of communism is based primarily on the study of Soviet Russia, the history of Chinese communism—now a full decade of national rule, following nearly thirty years of evolution—presents a number of peculiarities. Comparison with Russia suggests several lines of interpretation which may shed light on the past and present status of communism in China and the Far East.

During the decade of the 1950's, considerable popularity was won for the idea that the restructuring of the world economy into regional blocs would mark a great forward step in international economic relations, and might also help resolve certain major international political problems. As the new decade begins, and as a new Administration takes office in Washington, it is timely to reappraise the validity of this idea. To do so is not to suggest that regionalism is the most important aspect of foreign economic policy for the new decade. There come readily to mind at least five other major topics: aid for economic development; stabilization of international markets for primary products; the policy of advanced industrial countries toward imports of low-wage manufactured goods from developing countries; the treatment of trade and aid activities of the Communist bloc; and the reduction of the balance-of-payments deficit of the United States. With respect to broad structural relationships, however, the future of economic regionalism is evidently a matter of special importance.

How stable, how deep, or how genuine is German democracy? The only answers we can provide at present are almost embarrassingly simple; but if instead of trying to arrive at answers we go into the further questions that the questions above raise, the picture becomes more complex—and more interesting.

About the beginning of the present century, the economic historian Werner Sombart proposed an interesting generalization. The share of foreign trade in total national income, he said, was bound to decline in every country as it became more industrialized.