p The concrete historical approach, a necessary condition in the Leninist analysis of social phenomena, requires a consideration of the most general features of bourgeois ideology and its main specifics at this stage.

What is the most characteristic aspect of the overall state of bourgeois social thought in this epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism? It is undoubtedly the state of crisis, which is an expression of the spiritual degeneration of a social system that has historically outlived itself. This state of crisis is manifested in a number of general special features of present-day bourgeois ideology as a whole, and is specifically reflected in the basic forms of bourgeois consciousness.