This is an analysis of the increasingly differentiated regions of the South, the former Eastern bloc countries and Western Europe. The author integrates his economic arguments about the nature of the crisis with political arguments based on his vision of human history as the product of social response to material realities. The book analyzes the rise of ethnicity and fundametalism, and deconstructs the Bretton Woods institutions - notably the IMF and the World Bank - as managerial mechanisms proptecting the profitability of capital.