Four ages of modern man

A survey of international relations from World War I to early 1990s is the main focus of historian Eric Hobsbawm's book 'Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991.' While discussing the foreign relations of Europe, China, Latin America and Japan, Hobsbawm justifies Lenin's dictatorship in Russia. He further argues that the welfarist planning adopted by capitalist democracies was compelled by an apprehension of the spread of Communism. Though Soviet disintegration has undermined Communist ideology, it still exists as it is evident in the political ideology of the Chinese state.