Such propositions, applied to everyday affairs, produced an economy and
a statecraft which favored the interests of a part before those of the
entire community. Where the whole is favored before any part there is a
possibility of co-existence and even of cooperation. Placing a part
before the whole involves competition all the way from the marketplace
to the chancelleries where the fate of nations is discussed and decided.

The above five propositions or axioms result from preoccupation with
material incentives: profit and power for managers, disciplined
co-ordination for subordinates, affluence, comfort and recognition for
the favored few. They provide the ideological background for twentieth
century western civilization.




CHAPTER FOUR

THE LIFE CYCLE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION


Like its predecessors, western civilization from its inception was
essentially competitive. As it developed, the commercially, technically
and politically supreme Spanish, Dutch, French and British Empires
battled individually, or in rival alliances, for plunder, colonies,
markets and raw materials.

From the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, to the Victorian Jubilee in
1897, Great Britain became and remained top dog economically,
politically and to a large extent culturally. Britain was the workshop.