p In the same way as a house or some other structure can be built of the material available to builders, so socialism, this new social edifice, is created from the material inherited by people from capitalism. It is built on the basis of the achievements of capitalist production, technology, science and culture, by people, who have, in the main, reached adulthood and been brought up under capitalism. For all that socialism is a qualitatively new society. Founded on private ownership and exploitation, the economy, social relations and spiritual culture of capitalism serve the interests of an insignificant minority, of the owners of the means of production, while socialism, which rests on public ownership, co-operation and mutual assistance, is a society of working people for working people. Capitalism is a sporadically developing society, while socialism is a consciously guided society. Naturally, socialism cannot be built without radical qualitative changes in all spheres of social life. At this point it would be well to emphasise that these changes are violently resisted by the deposed exploiting classes, chiefly by the bourgeoisie.

p A period of transition from capitalism to socialism is necessary in order to break the resistance of the exploiters and carry out fundamental socialist reforms in economy, social relations and spiritual life with the purpose of placing them in the service of the working man and build a society which is consciously guided by man in the interests of the working people.

p This is a period when the bourgeoisie is already deposed but capitalism has not been completely uprooted and the exploiting classes, though no longer in power, have not ceased their struggle against the victorious working class, a period when fundamental socialist changes are being put into effect but socialism has not yet been built.

This, Lenin wrote, is “a state of transition—of transition from the old to the new—a state of growth of what is new”.  [152•*  In other words, the period of transition is a period of the shaping and growth of socialist society, a period of struggle between dying capitalism and incipient socialism.