p First and foremost, Lenin defined the place occupied in history by imperialism, showing that it is moribund, decaying capitalism. In the era of imperialism the basic contradiction of capitalism, that between social production and private appropriation, 48 reaches its bursting point. Imperialism, Lenin wrote, “leads up to the most all-sided socialisation ol’ production" but retains the proprietor principle ol distribution; private ownership relations form “...a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay . . . but which will inevitably be removed”.  [48•*  Imperialism is, thus, the eve of the socialist revolution. Under imperialism, the socialist revolution is not only possible but necessary and inevitable, becoming the direct task of the day for the working class.

p A key element of the theory of socialist revolution is Lenin’s brilliant thesis that socialism can triumph initially in one country taken separately. To substantiate this thesis, Lenin showed that in the capitalist countries development proceeds unevenly, sporadically. Some countries, that had formerly lagged behind, overtake and outstrip the leading countries in both the economic and political spheres. The balance of forces is thus broken, with the result that conflicts break out and the united capitalist front is shaken: the position of world capitalism grows weaker, giving rise to the possibility of breaking the chain of imperialism in its most feeble link.

p “The development of capitalism,” Lenin wrote, “proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois.”  [48•** 

p Lenin regarded mankind’s transition from capitalism to socialism not as a single act but as an entire epoch.

p He took the extremely complex picture of the world of his day into consideration: the existence not only of bourgeois but also of pre-bourgeois countries, where the bourgeois-democratic system had not been firmly established; the existence of various classes and social groups in each country, and so forth. This led him to the conclusion that “pure” socialist revolutions cannot be accomplished in the epoch of imperialism. One cannot think, he 49 wrote, that an army assembled in one place says, “‘We are for socialism,’ and another, somewhere else says, ’We are for imperialism,’ and that that will be a social revolution!... Whoever expects a ’pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.” Lenin pictured the revolutionary process as an outburst of mass struggle by all oppressed and dissatisfied people. This process embraced the working-class struggle, the peasant movement, the national liberation movement and all democratic movements against imperialism.

p In this connection, Lenin emphasised that there had to be a firm alliance between the working class and all revolutionary forces undermining imperialism, and emphatically opposed sectarianism, the isolation of the proletariat from other working people and democratic forces. Here he meant not an alliance in general, but an alliance in which the working class as the main revolutionary force played the role of vanguard.

He did not by any means consider that any revolutionary explosion in any country must necessarily be a socialist revolution, which would lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, although in the case of some countries this possibility was not ruled out. On the other hand, in prebourgeois countries, in colonial countries or countries with strong survivals of feudalism, as well as in countries where bourgeois-democratic reforms have not been completed, the socialist revolution may be preceded by a bourgeois-democratic or national liberation revolution, which, given favourable conditions, develops into a socialist revolution. The question of the growth of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution was dealt with by Lenin in Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. In this work he advanced the thesis that non-capitalist development was possible in pre-bourgeois countries, provided socialism triumphed in other countries.