Common Heritage in Magnificent Desolation

One problem with the term "common heritage of mankind" is that it seems to have substantially different meanings to different people. To some it conjures a highly communistic vision of the proceeds from resource exploitation being monetarily distributed to every human being. The record of negotiation on the Moon Agreement shows that the Soviet Union was more jealous of its planetary prerogatives than was the United States--or any capitalist for that matter--in that it was far from desiring the Third World to acquire the legal authority to dictate the disposition of extraterrestrial resources extracted by Soviet labor and which it therefore considered to be the property of the Soviet state.