p Sometimes one hears people say that peaceful coexistence means the reconciliation of the antagonisms between socialism and capitalism, between labour and capital, and the rejection of the class struggle and the socialist revolution.

p While championing peace and friendship, Communists energetically promote the revolutionary and national liberation struggle. The revolutionary and national liberation struggle cannot be counterposed to the struggle for peace. All forms of struggle are interrelated.

p Peaceful coexistence does not smooth over the antagonisms between socialism and capitalism, nor does it rule out the class struggle. Marxists-Leninists have always championed the class struggle, the struggle of the proletariat and all working people against the bourgeoisie, holding that only the class struggle and the socialist revolution, which is the highest form of this struggle, are the means of destroying capitalism and establishing the new, socialist society. They have no doubt whatever that peaceful coexistence facilitates the struggle of the international working class against the bourgeoisie, furthers the world socialist revolution and helps mankind to accomplish the transition from capitalism to socialism. The Statement of the 1960 Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties declares: “The coexistence of states with different social systems is a form of class struggle between socialism and capitalism.”

p One of the most acute antagonisms of capitalism is that between labour and capital, and it manifests itself in a class struggle, in a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This struggle has traversed the long and arduous road from scattered and unorganised actions by small groups of workers at the dawn of the socialist movement to action on an international scale. Moreover, with the formation of the world socialist system it has become a struggle between the capitalist and socialist systems and embraces all spheres of human activity—economic, political and ideological.

p The struggle between the two systems centres round the peaceful economic competition between capitalism and socialism on a world-wide scale. This is a competition for the highest rates and scale of industrial and cultural 145 development. As this struggle proceeds it shows all nations that socialism is capable of satisfying people’s material and cultural requirements more and more fully and wins them over to the cause of the new society.

p Under peaceful coexistence the political struggle between the two systems is expressed in the all-out support of the socialist countries of all forms of struggle for social and national liberation, for democracy and socialism. It clears the way for the struggle of the working people of the capitalist countries against exploitation. This is shown by the scale of the strike movement in the capitalist countries and by the growth of the international communist and workingclass movement.

p Peaceful coexistence sustains the national liberation struggle. Under conditions of peace many Asian and African countries have won liberation from colonial dependence, the people’s revolution triumphed in Cuba, and the liberated peoples acquired the possibility of expediting their national rejuvenation and advancing along the non-capitalist road of development.

In the same proportion that peaceful coexistence creates favourable soil for the class struggle in the capitalist countries and for the national liberation movement in colonial and dependent countries, the gains of the class struggle and the national liberation movement help to consolidate peaceful coexistence.