p Another important feature of the contemporary revolutionary movement of the working class is that its social basis is expanding with the trend
towards setting up a united front of progressive forces against the capitalist monopolies.

p The monopolies ruthlessly exploit not only workers but also the bulk of the peasants, artisans, small shopkeepers, and the lower and middle echelons of office workers and working intellectuals. For a long time capitalist propagandists had been spreading the legend that the small peasant economy was stable. But now the monopolies have captured this field as well. In the U.S.A., for instance, the number of farms dropped by 2,030,000 in the period 1935-54 and by another 1,078,000 or by 23 per cent in the period 1954-59. In other words, every fourth farmer has been ruined. The situation is the same in the other capitalist countries. The peasants are leaving the villages en masse and joining the army of urban paupers. As for the surviving small farms, they are run at the cost of incredible privation, undernourishment and back-breaking labour.

p Monopoly oppression is forcing the peasants to unite for the struggle for land and civil rights. In recent years there has been audible unrest among the peasants in France, Italy, Greece, the Federal Republic of Germany and other countries. In their actions they make wide use of proletarian means of struggle (strikes, marches, demonstrations, and so on), of the experience of foremost contingents of the working class. The workers give the peasants all-out support and, frequently, workers’ and peasants’ organisations act shoulder to shoulder and help each other. 93 Along with the peasants, the workers demand basic agrarian reforms and the realisation of the slogan: “Land to those who till it!”

p The monopolies are ruining small urban proprietors, destroying handicrafts industries, and absorbing or gaining control of small and medium industrial enterprises. In almost every capitalist country the lower and middle echelons of office workers, teachers, doctors, scientists, writers and artists are being stirred to action by the policies pursued by the monopolies and the bourgeois administration, which is closely linked up with them.

The overthrow of monopoly rule is thus wanted not only by the proletariat but also by the peasants and a considerable section of the intelligentsia as well as the petty and middle urban bourgeoisie. This is considerably enlarging the social basis of the working-class movement and making it possible to unite all progressive forces into a single mighty anti-monopoly front. The working class is called upon to head this front as its vanguard, to mobilise all the anti-imperialist forces for action against the monopolies. It teaches all working and exploited people to take revolutionary action by setting them an example of “mass revolutionary action combining political and economic demands”.  [93•*