p The last half-century has demonstrated the world-wide importance of the role of the working class in the history of society. It was the working class that led the way in building US 119 socialism and communism in the countries that had attained their revolutionary liberation from capitalist oppression. It is the working class that stands at the head of all working people opposing the forces of class exploitation, militarism and political reaction. It renders daily fraternal assistance to the peoples fighting for their national independence. The workers are the mainspring of history, fighting for the regeneration and prosperity of all mankind. They are the most consistent opponents of the capitalist system of exploitation of men by men.

p The system of capitalist exploitation of hundreds of millions of workingmen “...rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labour power".  [119•1  The dominant position of the bourgeoisie in social production ensures its class privileges and is the basis for perpetuating the entire system of class oppression and social inequality. As monopoly capitalism evolves and grows into state-monopoly capitalism, the polarisation of bourgeois society becomes ever more obvious.

p Centralisation and concentration of production and capital are now all-embracing. In the early 1960s, for example, the 50 major U.S. corporations held almost a quarter of the manufacturing industry. In the same period, 10 West German companies accounted for the total extraction of iron ore in the country, 10 for 94 per cent of the smelting of iron and steel, 9 for 92 per cent of the shipbuilding, and 5 for 89 per cent of the motor industry turnover. An ever smaller number of finance oligarchs have been gaining undivided control over production, circulation and distribution. In the U.S.A. some 25 finance groups own a third of all the assets of industrial, commercial and banking concerns. In Britain, West Germany, France and Japan a few groups (from 5 to 10) control the whole economic life of the country.

p On this basis, finance capital endeavours to keep control of socio-economic development in accord with its own class interests. Since these interests are anti-social while the objective contradictory course of capitalist reproduction in turn inevitably engenders and extends processes inimical to 120 popular interest (overproduction crises, structural crises, inflation, unemployment, etc.), an increasingly complex hub of antagonistic contradictions between labour and capital takes shape around capitalist property relations. Concentration and centralisation of production and capital, inextricably tied to increased oppression and monopoly omnipotence, breed mass social protest: people will not reconcile themselves to their status of proletarians deprived of economic rights, which turns them into an object of arbitrary monopoly power and a pawn in the play of forces in the capitalist economy.

p This concentration process affects not only the vital interests of the mass of workers; it threatens the very existence of the many millions of small urban and rural producers (small farmers, craftsmen, etc.), for the area of monopolistic exploitation extends far beyond the bounds of enterprises belonging to the finance oligarchy. And the expropriation of the means of production increasingly embraces the nonproletarian sections and classes of bourgeois society.

p As the dictate of the monopolies intensifies, social protest rises not only from among the workers, but also from various intermediate groups of the population whose lot depends on the whim of large-scale capital.

p However, the working class is the most consistent fighter for overthrowing the capitalist system of exploitation and stands at the head of the exploited masses, whom capitalist development itself draws into the anti-monopoly movement. This revolutionary class is the most numerically strong class in bourgeois society.

p On the eve of the October Revolution in Russia, there were just over 30 million industrial workers in the advanced capitalist countries, and 50 years later, there were 90 million. Since the mid-1960s they have been reinforced by some 150 million industrial workers in the less developed countries, and this is one of the most important aspects of contemporary capitalist development for it contains an essential prerequisite for the revolutionary transformation of society. As Lenin pointed out, “the more proletarians there are, the greater is their strength as a revolutionary class, and the nearer and more possible does socialism become”,  [120•1 

p Workers of the industrially advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and North America—the citadel of world imperialism—have vast potential for the revolutionary transformation of society. This area of the capitalist world contains the overwhelming bulk of capitalist industrial production and all the major finance establishments of monopoly capital; this is where the foreign policy of world imperialism is worked out and materially sustained, a policy aimed at hampering the world revolutionary process, underminingworld socialism and keeping the peoples of the developing nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America in colonial and neocolonial bondage.

p The balance of the principal class forces in the developed capitalist countries—the proletariat and broad popular masses, on the one hand, and the imperialist bourgeoisie, on the other—largely determines the prospects for progress throughout the world. The objective processes of social development in this sector of the capitalist world are indissolubly connected with the constant broadening of the basis of the anti-monopoly struggle. This occurs as a consequence of the impoverishment by monopoly capital of small town and country proprietors, subjection to capitalist exploitation of previously non-working sections of the population, clerical workers, engineers and technicians.

p The course of capitalism leads not merely to an increase in the size of the proletariat; it causes profound changes in its internal structure. As capitalist production expands and diversifies, and science and technology develop ever faster bringing changes in the social division of labour, the composition of the working class becomes increasingly complex.

p Bourgeois and reformist spokesmen insist that capitalist society is undergoing a radical change: the working class is disappearing and a “new middle class" is swiftly gaining ground. In fact, the very reverse is true. The development of large-scale machine industry leads to the rapid growth of the industrial proletariat.

p More and more industrial workers are employed in the heavy industry. In the U.S.A., Britain, France and other developed capitalist states, the vast bulk of industrial workers has shifted over the last 50 years to producer goods industries. Increase in the proportion of workers employed in engineering, chemicals and electrical engineering is characteristic of 122 capitalism today. Between 1950 and 1963, employment in U.S. manufacturing increased by 9 per cent, in the chemical industry by 34 per cent, in electrical engineering and electronics by 54 per cent, and in engineering by 23 per cent. Between 1950 and 1959, the number of West Germany’s chemical and electrical engineering workers increased almost four times faster than the overall growth in the industrial labour force.

p The rapidly growing industrial working class is concentrated in the big technically well-equipped plants. This makes it easier to improve its organisational and ideological level. More and more workers are moving into the key points of the anti-monopoly battle—the industrial giants—and are drawn into production requiring higher skills and, consequently, better general and technical training. Despite attempts by the monopoly bourgeoisie to bar the working people from further education, the technological demands of modern industry countermand this and require a wider outlook from the modern workingman, creating favourable conditions for him to increase his class consciousness and political activity.

p The mid-century scientific and technological revolution in the industrially advanced capitalist countries has also enlarged the traditional bounds of the industrial working class through a rapid increase in the number of engineers, technicians and office personnel. Fifty years ago the proportion of engineers and technicians in the industrial labour force was 12 per cent in the U.S.A., 8.6 per cent in Britain, and 7.6 per cent in Germany, but by 1960 it had risen to 28 per cent in the U.S.A., 22 per cent in Britain and 23 per cent in West Germany. Most of these men and women—- technicians, laboratory assistants, engineers, office workers, etc.— either merge with the industrial proletariat or come close to it through their role in social production, their material position and working conditions. Despite attempts by the monopoly bourgeoisie to separate office workers and engineers from the main body of factory workers (by concluding separate collective agreements, establishing special categories of social security, etc.), objective living and working conditions lead increasingly to a unification of the interests of the office and industrial workers and to the formation of a united front of class struggle.

p New contingents of workers emerge, alongside the growth in the industrial labour force, due to the growing importance of non-productive sectors, without which modern capitalist reproduction could not continue. Expansion of the commercial, credit and financial network, consumer servicing, medical and educational services, etc., has led to a growth in the number of employed in the distribution and service industries. Between 1920 and 1960, the proportion of the population engaged in the non-productive spheres grew in the U.S.A. from 31 to 50 per cent, in France from 23 to 45 per cent, and in Japan from 22 to 33 per cent. These were mainly wage workers, commercial and office workers, teachers, health workers, and so on.

p The growing domination of monopoly capital in the service and distribution sectors leads to the establishment there of forms and methods of exploitation common to capitalist industrial production. Working conditions and wage levels in these sectors have been moving closer to those of the main body of the working class, the industrial proletariat.

p Certain democratic developments since the last war allied to scientific and technical progress have led in most countries to a rapid growth in the student body. Many of them are acutely aware of the social vices of capitalist society, and suffer from the material privation and uncertain prospects of their own position. Although the social make-up of the student body is highly checkered, many students grasp the essential elements of the proletarian outlook and take an increasingly active and consistent part in the workers’ struggle.

p The appearance of fresh contingents of workers and the greater approximation of living and working conditions among all employees are leading to an extension and consolidation of the base of the class struggle in bourgeois society. The addition to the labour ranks of employees from nonmaterial production enables the working class to enhance its role in bourgeois society and make its resistance to the policies of monopoly capital more effective.

Today, as never before, the workers of the capitalist world have immense opportunities for achieving their class interests, which also meet those of the vast bulk of the population.