'The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World Federation' is a non-fiction book by Scott Nearing. He was an American radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, pacifist, vegetarian and advocate of simple living. His central argument in the book can be best summed up by the following excerpt: “Economic emancipation is the objective. The means for its attainment is a society organized in terms of producers groups, and living in accordance with the highest known standards of intelligent social direction.”