p Never before, in any single preceding epoch, in the life of a single generation, have such stupendous events affecting the lives of tens and hundreds of millions of people taken place as in the present epoch. No previous epoch has known such profound revolutionising processes in all spheres of life, in all continents of the globe, as those we are witnessing today. It can truly be said that the modern world of men is intricate, complex, dynamic and extremely restive. It is now clear to everybody what a degree of intensity the class struggle has now assumed in the world arena. It has sharpened all down the line, economically, politically and ideologically.

p All forms of the class struggle peculiar to the imperialist phase of capitalism have been laid starkly bare. The Main Document of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, held in Moscow in June 1969, states: "Mankind has entered the last third of our century in a situation marked by a sharpening of the historic struggle between the forces of progress and reaction, between socialism and imperialism. This clash is worldwide and embraces all the basic spheres of social life, economy, politics, ideology and culture.”  [10•* 

p Yes, mankind today has embarked on the second phase of the struggle between the two opposed socio-political systems—capitalism and socialism—and their respective ideologies. Never before, on the world’s political stage, has the inexorable question, posed by life itself, been put so bluntly—the question, who will win the race? Who will beat whom in this swift march of history? This objective factor is so obvious that it is impossible to deny or minimise it.

p Imperialism has always been the chief enemy, not only of the communist and labour movement, but of all champions of the people’s freedom and independence, of the working people’s emancipation from social and national oppression. Lenin’s analysis of the social essence of imperialism and its place in history has lost none of its significance to this day. 11 It gives us the key to an understanding of the new phenomena and special features which distinguish imperialism at its present stage of development. Objectively, the strength and influence of imperialism are no longer what they were half a century ago. Ever since the October Socialist Revolution imperialism has been sustaining defeat after defeat and has now come face to face with the mighty power of the world socialist system. World imperialism now is obliged to adjust itself to the new conditions, the conditions of struggle between the two systems. This, in turn, determines the very substance of the home and foreign policies of the imperialist circles.

p “The features of contemporary capitalism largely spring from the fact that it is trying to adapt itself to the new situation in the world. In the conditions of the confrontation with socialism, the ruling circles’ of the capitalist countries are afraid more than have ever been of the class struggle developing into a massive revolutionary movement. Hence, the bourgeoisie’s striving to use more camouflaged forms of exploitation and oppression of the working people, and its readiness now and again to agree to partial reforms in order to keep the masses under its ideological and political control as far as possible. The monopolies have been making extensive use of scientific and technical achievements to fortify their positions to enhance the efficiency and accelerate the pace of production, and to intensify the exploitation and oppression of the working people.

p However, adaptation to the new conditions does not mean that capitalism has been stabilised as a system. The general crisis of capitalism has continued to deepen.”  [11•* 

p Without laying claim to any exhaustive assessment of the nature of the present-day social movement, we should like to point out four of its major features, which in our opinion are most deserving of note.

p The first characteristic feature is the unusually striking manifestation of all the internal and external antagonisms peculiar to imperialism, the deeper and more intense operation of the unalterable law of capitalism—its uneven and spasmodic development. Hence the mounting international tension and the temperature of the ideological struggle, 12 strongly sustained by political, economic and even military means. The scientific and technological revolution has not only not weakened, but on the contrary, has accentuated and laid bare still more the antagonistic contradictions of imperialism. It will be no exaggeration to say that humanity, as never before, is living through an extremely complex and crucial epoch fraught with the grave menace of war.

p Too many combustibles have accumulated in the world today, which are likely at any moment to blaze up in a destructive military conflagration threatening the very existence of the peoples of the globe. The antagonistic contradictions of imperialism have grown so acute and the influence which the sinister league between the great monopolies and the military operating within the government apparatus exercises on the policy making of many imperialist states has become so great that it needs but little to fan the ceaseless local wars engineered by imperialist ruling circles into a general third world war.

p All thinking people the world over should, above all, realise the full import of this grave danger and make the greatest effort to relax international tension and avert the impending but avertable catastrophe that threatens mankind. Indeed, if it were not for the existence of the Soviet Union— that mighty land of socialism—and of the other socialist countries, the world would long ago have been ablaze in the flames of war, the imperialists would long ago have plunged it into a wholesale carnage for a carve-up of the terrestrial globe and for the enslavement of the peoples, undeterred by the fact that they would cut one another’s throat in the melee. For such are the objective laws of imperialism, its bestial, man-hating nature—a thing which we Communists and all progressive forces in the world should never forget. Therefore, nothing is more dangerous and deceptive than playing down the acute antagonisms of imperialism and winking at its predatory actions. And vice versa, the closer and deeper the secrets of these antagonisms will be exposed to the scrutiny of society’s progressive forces and the more active these forces will be in rousing the masses to the struggle against militarism, against imperialist reaction, the more chances there will be for averting another world war. Such is the logic of contemporary social development.

p The second characteristic feature is the extremely high 13 dynamic force of social development and the swiftly changing situations in the world which testify to the maturity and intensity of the working people’s intellectual development, their active perception of their environment and active influence upon it. More and more people in the capitalist world are beginning to realise that imperialism is a threat to their conditions of life and their very existence, and they are trying to take their bearings.

p Perhaps the most striking and remarkable feature of this plumbing process is the fact that the headlong tide of the socio-political movement has swept up the broad masses of the people representing the most diverse social strata. All over the world we see spontaneous mass demonstrations and protests; on the one hand, a flowing stream of “ peacemaking” slogans for unity, brotherhood, humanity, and freeacting personality; on the other, a thundering cannonade of barricade fighting, flying revolutionary banners of the liberation struggle. True Marxists-Leninists are confident that from this mighty human tide, from this, at times spontaneously developing revolutionary process, there is bound to emerge in the end a big and real organised movement of the masses which no reactionary force in the world will be able to resist.

p It is good to realise that all this is the brilliant achievement of all social development, which prepared, inspired and evoked such a powerful movement of protest in the world directed in one way or another against the reactionary forces of imperialism. It is gratifying to know that against the backcloth of this sweeping movement of the world’s peoples the beneficial influence of the revolutionary transformative ideas of Marxism-Leninism materially embodied in the brilliant victories of socialism in the U.S.S.R. and other socialist countries is more and more clearly felt with the progress of time.

p The third characteristic feature is the complex interlocking of social forces involved in the revolutionary liberation movement. From different positions, with different aims, all kinds of people are joining the fight against imperialism— workers and peasants, students and professional men, art and literature workers, some of the clergy, tradesmen, the petty and sometimes middle bourgeoisie, civil servants of the lower ranks, including policemen, all those who, often still instinctively, feel imperialism to be a threat to their 14 existence. At the same time this creates serious difficulties, for this social heterogeneity frequently stands in the way of the movement’s purposeful orientation and organisation and sometimes places upon it the seal of spontaneity, anarchy or simply riotousness. We see here a confusion of democratic and socialist aims, of strategic and tactical tendencies, of political programmatic goals and current economic demands, of peaceful and violent methods of struggle. Imperialist propaganda makes skilful use of this by foisting on the movement shoddy ready-made ideas and platforms for every taste in order to seduce it from the revolutionary path.

p It can be said that the present-day social movement against imperialism, despite its mass character and to a certain extent even because of it, is so far in a state of underdevelopment. The spontaneous nature of the heterogeneous social forces often inhibits consciousness, and petty- bourgeois amorphousness gets the better of class, proletarian organisation. The mass social movement cannot abide for long in such a condition. Objectively speaking, it must either peter out or rise to a higher level of consciousness and organisation. But to win through it must be headed by the working class and embark upon the road of political, class struggle. Such is the objective logic of things.

p But how can this be achieved? The answer to this question can only be given by the scientific theory of MarxismLeninism and the international experience of the class struggle. And the answer is a simple one: in contemporary conditions the task is to impart to the spontaneously growing anti-imperialist movement an organised, purposeful class character. In the handling of this stupendous task a great historical role belongs to the Communist Parties and to all the world’s progressive revolutionary forces.

p The fourth characteristic feature is the appearance upon the surface of the social movement of the most diverse political currents with a multitude of platforms and doctrinal conceptions. To our great chagrin, however, we must admit that throughout this multiform maze of ideas no small part is fathered by out-and-out apologists of imperialism. There are also what might appear at first sight as uncommitted currents, which, voluntarily or not, are orientated against scientific socialism, are aimed at taking the edge off the class struggle, at hoodwinking the public, at revising the 15 spiritual values which have given so much light and warmth to the working classes. The so-called concept of “ democratic”, "people‘s” and suchlike capitalism, of all kinds of attempts at “modelling”, “programming”, and “forecasting” aimed at proving the viability of capitalism in its competition with socialism, have literally addled the minds of many bourgeois and revisionist theoreticians, who have abandoned themselves completely to the idea of the capitalist system’s perpetuity and stability.

p Under the fashionable flag of objective scientism a shameless undisguised attack is often mounted against the scientific world outlook of Marxism-Leninism in all its component parts. Sophistry and abstract scholasticism devoid of lifeblood and assurance are set off against true science; the historical processes of society’s development are subjected to revision, in which subjectivism and idealism are substituted for the materialist interpretation of history; the objective laws of social development are repudiated with an increasing accent on misinterpreted philosophical categories in the sphere of morals and ethics, stripped of their class content; Marxist economic science is debased and offset by all kinds of apologetic and vulgarising economic concepts.

p This whole conglomeration of out-and-out apologetic ideas and theories, both the new-fledged and the old longrejected ones, did not appear all at once; these ideas and theories accumulated gradually in the course of decades. Today we can merely establish the fact that there has been sufficient time for these diverse streamlets of ideas and theories to merge into two mainstreams of political theories aimed at reconciling mankind with capitalism, known as “convergence” and “pluralism”. At the present time it is these two major outgrowths of bourgeois ideology, serving not only as the ideological basis of anti-communism but as nutrient soil for revisionism, that represent a very considerable danger. These theories and their ramifications are particularly harmful in that they have here and there penetrated into the Marxist-Leninist movement and found a following there. Therefore, the primary and most urgent task is to safeguard Marxism-Leninism against contamination with pseudoscientific figments and to wage an all-out fight against its ideological opponents and distorters.

p Thus, the ideas of scientific socialism are forming and 16 spreading in the world under conditions of a sharp class struggle. With the growth of the forces of socialism and the acceleration of the process of transition to socialism on a worldwide scale, which constitute the main content of the present epoch, the class struggle in the world arena will not die down, as the Right ideologues of reformism try to prove, but, on the contrary, will grow and sharpen more and more. You can’t get away from this natural process. Therefore, the primary and urgent task facing genuine Marxists- Leninists, a task set by life itself, is to rally all the world’s revolutionary, progressive forces under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and scientific socialism and lead them in the fight against the obscurantist forces of imperialism.

p All Right-reformist ideas about non-class and supra-class conceptions, about pure democracy and harmony, about liberalisation and humanisation, are illusions, which, under the conditions of capitalism, have no ground to stand on, have no justification. Just as strongly to be rejected are the Left-adventurist conceptions about present-day social contradictions being resolved only by means of a world war or by armed putsches. In the final analysis both these political trends play into the hands of imperialist reaction.

p Frankly speaking, under present conditions imperialism would never be able to keep its senile feet were it not for the splitting activities of the Right reformists and the “Left” adventurists, who are propping up that rotting old tree from different sides. As far back as 1915, when the political bankruptcy of the Right leaders of Western SocialDemocracy had become an historical fact, Lenin wrote: "The whole struggle of our Party (and of the working-class movement in Europe generally) must be directed against opportunism. The latter is not a current of opinion, not a tendency; it (opportunism) has now become the organised tool of the bourgeoisie within the working-class movement.”  [16•* 

p He had just as hard and angry words for the adventurists in the garb of “Left” revolutionaries, of whom he wrote: "The whole history of revolutions has shown many such revolutionary phrase-mongers and nothing is left of them but stench and smoke.”  [16•** 

p He stated emphatically: "Hysterical impulses are of no 17 use to us. What we need is the steady advance of the iron battalions of the proletariat.”  [17•* 

p In our day, when the basic contradiction of the epoch is that between imperialism and socialism, it is important to remember Lenin’s words about imperialism’s link with opportunism within the labour movement. Summing up his famous work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin wrote: "The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.”  [17•** 

p Hence the logical conclusion—that our generation must keep a strong grip on the militant banner of Marxism- Leninism and carry on an unremitting, uncompromising struggle both against Right reformism and against “Left” revolutionarism. By paralysing these main ideological opponents of Marxism-Leninism within the labour and communist movement we help to weaken and destroy the whole framework of imperialism. To the present-day generation of revolutionaries has fallen an extremely difficult and important mission—that of directing the world process of social development into such a majestic channel as would bring the multifarious rivulets and currents together into a single mainstream heading swiftly towards the complete liberation of mankind from imperialist oppression.

Naturally, this imposing objective can be achieved only on the firm basis of Marxism-Leninism, which requires international unity of the world communist and labour movement. It is towards this aim that the advance cohorts of Marxism-Leninism are courageously battling their way: "To wage a successful struggle against imperialism and to ensure the victory of their cause, Communists will propagate the ideas of scientific socialism in the working-class movement and among the broad masses, including young people; they will consistently uphold their principles and work for the triumph of Marxism-Leninism and, in accordance with the concrete situation, fight against Right- and Left- opportunist distortions of theory and policy, against revisionism, dogmatism and Left-sectarian adventurism.”  [17•***