The reality, however, is that in a globalised economy, an American or West European cannot possibly compete with someone in China, India, or wherever, who is able to offer the same skills for a fraction of the price? A wage that would place an Indian in the more affluent echelons of his society, would put an American below the poverty line.

Not surprisingly, globalisation poses no personal threat to those who are its strongest advocates: the legal profession, for example, from whose ranks most politicians are drawn, or big business, whose managers and shareholders profit from keeping employees earnings as low as possible.

If it were, to be sure, they would have us all dance to a very different tune.

Yet those profiting from globalisation still expect the sons and daughters of those who are not (have perhaps lost their jobs or pensions, or are having to work themselves to death for a pittance) to put their lives on the line to protect their super-affluent way of life.

America is ripe for a second, more radical revolution. Not the violent overthrow of the existing order, but the kind of revolution that is only possible in a free and democratic society: the creation of an alternative socio-economic order, within but distinct from the existing order, which it will increasingly replace. An order (particularly its economy) based not on the values, attitudes and aspirations of man’s primitive, more animal than human nature, as at present, but on those of his more enlightened, human nature.

And it is not just a matter of creating a more just and humane society, but also of human survival: the creation of a sustainable global economy and ways of life for what will soon be Earth’s 7-9 billion inhabitants.

It will be the most radical and important revolution in human history. Either that or our history will soon come to a sticky end. 

We are well behind schedule and need to get a move on. Time is running out.