Book excerpt: First published in 1940, this book suggested the basic principles upon which a new international economic order should be built at the end of the Second World War. Particular attention is paid to the possibility of constructing such an international order on the basis of divergent national economic systems – whether liberal or planned, capitalist or socialist. In undertaking this task the author combines theoretical analysis with a description of the immediate pre-war economic situation and writes in a language which is equally accessible to the economist and the layman.