p Social development is a process governed by laws. As mankind forges ahead this process grows steadily faster.

p When the founders of Marxism analysed diverse facts from the life of mankind they established that in any society the various aspects of its activity combine not accidentally but in accordance with definite laws. Every society is, at one stage or another, an integral organism with its own peculiar combination of economic, political and ideological relations. Lenin noted that “the analysis of material social relations at once made it possible to observe recurrence and regularity and to generalise the systems of the various countries in the single fundamental concept: social formation. It was this generalisation alone that made it possible to proceed from the description of social phenomena (and their evaluation from the standpoint of an ideal) to their strictly scientific analysis, which isolates, let us say by way of example, that which distinguishes one capitalist country from another and investigates that which is common to all of them.”  [49•* 

p The concept of socio-economic formation reflects one or 50 another phase of mankind’s development from pre-class to communist society. It allows us to understand a definite society as a concrete community, as a totality of economic, social, political and ideological relations and institutions, as a totality with its own laws of development. A new system appears on the basis of the changes in the preceding formation. One system replaces another as a result of a social revolution.

p Every socio-economic system represents the unity between a certain level of development of the productive forces and the corresponding relations of production.

p Historically, the birth of a socio-economic system on a world-wide scale has always taken place more or less simultaneously. But this holds true exclusively on the historical plane, because the transition from one system to another is a long process and is not accomplished everywhere at one and the same time. It would be impossible to name periods in history which belonged solely to some one social formation. Moreover, every system has definite stages—birth, consolidation, maturity and so forth.

p The Marxist-Leninist understanding of the character of the laws governing the development of a socio-economic system helps to give a scientific definition of the essence of a historical epoch. How does Marxism-Leninism determine the content and boundaries of historical epochs? Let us examine Lenin’s method of determining the substance of a historical epoch, its boundaries, duration and so on.

p Characterising the concept of epoch, Lenin wrote: “...in each of them there are and will always be individual and partial movements, now forward now backward; there are and always will be various deviations from the average type and mean tempo of the movement. We cannot know how rapidly and how successfully the various historical movements in a given epoch will develop, but we can and do know which class stands at the hub of one epoch or another, determining its main content, the main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historical situation in that epoch, etc.”  [50•* 

p He not only defined the substance of the epoch but concretely characterised the features of different historical 51 epochs. For instance he divided the period of new and latest history into three epochs.

p The first epoch covered the period from the Great French Revolution of 1789 to the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. Lenin described it as the epoch of the rise and complete victory of the bourgeoisie, “of the bourgeoisie on the upgrade, an epoch of bourgeois-democratic movements in general and of bourgeois-national movements in particular, an epoch of the rapid breakdown of the obsolete feudal- absolutist institutions.”  [51•*  The leading class of that epoch was the bourgeoisie, and its main contradiction was between dying feudalism and consolidating capitalism.

p The second epoch—from 1871 to the outbreak of the First World War and the Great October Socialist Revolution— witnessed the transition to imperialism. It was characterised by mounting inner contradictions of capitalist society, when “the day-by-day life of the working masses was undergoing an internationalisation—the cities were attracting ever more inhabitants, and living conditions in the large cities of the whole world were being levelled out; capital was becoming internationalised, and at the big factories townsmen and country-folk, both native and alien, were intermingling. The class contradictions were growing ever more acute; the employers’ associations were exercising ever greater pressure on the workers’ unions; sharper and more bitter forms of struggle were arising, as, for instance, mass strikes; the cost of living was rising; the pressure of finance capital was becoming intolerable, etc., etc.”  [51•**  It was an epoch that saw the conversion of the bourgeoisie from a revolutionary into a reactionary force and the upsurge of a new class, the proletariat.

p Lenin dated the third epoch, the epoch of our day, as beginning from the First World War and the socialist revolution in Russia. After the victory in October 1917 Lenin characterised the new epoch as follows: “The abolition of capitalism and its vestiges, and the establishment of the fundamentals of the communist order comprise the content of the new era of world history that has set in. It is inevitable that the slogans of our era are and must be: abolition of classes; 52 the dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of achieving that aim; the ruthless exposure of petty-bourgeois democratic prejudices concerning freedom and equality and ruthless war on these prejudices.”  [52•*  He described this new epoch of world history as one of the “rule of a new class, a class which is oppressed in every capitalist country, but which everywhere is marching forward towards a new life, towards victory over the bourgeoisie, towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, towards the emancipation of mankind from the yoke of capital and from imperialist wars”.  [52•** 

p The definition given by Lenin thus embraces all the principal features characterising the various epochs. It shows the leading trend of social development, the predominant class and its main content, orientation and tasks.

p Lenin’s definition of the third, i.e., the contemporary epoch is of particular importance for our analysis. It discloses the substance of the qualitatively new epoch, whose commencement conformed to the objective conditions of social development and the interests of the overwhelming majority of people in all countries of the globe. Lenin’s definition of the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism underlies all subsequent definitions of the present epoch in the documents of the CPSU, of the 1957, 1960 and 1969 International Meetings, and of the fraternal parties.

p The following are excerpts from some of these definitions.

p In the Programme of the CPSU, adopted at the 22nd CPSU Congress, it is stated: “Our epoch, whose main content is the transition from capitalism to socialism, is an epoch of struggle between the two opposing social systems, an epoch of socialist and national liberation revolutions, of the breakdown of imperialism and the abolition of the colonial system, an epoch of the transition of more and more peoples to the socialist path, of the triumph of socialism and communism on a world-wide scale. The central factor of the present epoch is the international working class and its main creation, the world socialist system.”  [52•***  In the resolution adopted by the 23rd Congress of the CPSU on the report of the CC CPSU, it is underscored that “world development has 53 confirmed the conclusion of our Party and of the communist movement as a whole that the main trend of the historical process in our time is determined by the world socialist system, the forces fighting against imperialism, for the socialist reorganisation of society”.  [53•* 

p In the documents of the international conferences of Communist and Workers’ parties it is recorded: 

p 1957: “The main content of our epoch is the transition from capitalism to socialism, which was begun by the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. Today more than a third of the population of the world—over 950 million people—have taken the road of socialism and are building a new life. The tremendous growth of the forces of socialism has stimulated the rapid extension of the anti-imperialist national movement in the post-war period.... The progress of socialism and of the national liberation movement has greatly accelerated the disintegration of imperialism. With regard to the greater part of mankind, imperialism has lost its onetime domination. In the imperialist countries society is rent by deep-going class contradictions and by antagonisms between those countries, while the working class is putting up increasing resistance to the policy of imperialism and the monopolies, fighting for better conditions, democratic rights, for peace and socialism.”  [53•** 

p 1960: “Our time, whose main content is the transition from capitalism to socialism initiated by the Great October Socialist Revolution, is a time of struggle between the two opposing social systems, a time of socialist revolutions and national liberation revolutions, a time of the breakdown of imperialism, of the abolition of the colonial system, a time of transition of more peoples to the socialist path, of the triumph of socialism and communism on a world-wide scale.

p “It is the principal characteristic of our times that the world socialist system is becoming the decisive factor in the development of society."  [53•*** 

p 1969: “The events of the past decade bear out that the Marxist-Leninist assessment of the character, content and 54 chief trends of the present epoch is correct. Ours is an epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism.”  [54•* 

p Let us now see how the present epoch was defined at the June 1969 International Meeting by the leaders of some of the fraternal parties.

p Leonid Brezhnev: “...a realistic assessment of the present state of affairs in the world, a comparison between the development of imperialism, on the one hand, and all the forces opposing it, on the other, warrants only one conclusion: the main lines of world development continue to be determined by the activity of the forces of revolution and socialism, of the peace forces and the national liberation movement. "  [54•** 

p Walter Ulbricht (Socialist Unity Party of Germany): “...the 20th century is an epoch of the general crisis of capitalism and the downfall of the capitalist system, an epoch of struggle between the two world systems, an epoch of democratic and national revolutions, an epoch of social revolution of the working class and the victory of the socialist social system.”  [54•*** 

p Waldeck Rochet (French Communist Party): “ Imperialism as a world system has definitely weakened in the past ten years as compared with the socialist system, as compared with the forces of peace, independence and progress.”  [54•**** 

p Gus Hall (Communist Party of the USA): “The transition from capitalism to socialism is history’s greatest happening. . .. This turning point has given rise to, and is propelled by a world-wide, three-pronged revolutionary development that is now converging into a single process. There are periods when the process does not produce a shift of state power in any country. There are setbacks, frustrations, and periods when the process levels off to a new plateau. There are moments of explosions and periods of revolutionary development. There are violent transfers of class power and some transitions that are not so violent.

p “Through all this, the revolutionary process goes on, 55 the maturing and gathering of the forces of the revolution.”  [55•* 

p Shripad Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India): “The decisive force in world development was no longer imperialism but the forces of socialism, of the working class and national liberation. Rightly was the present epoch characterised as an epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism.”  [55•** 

p There is a number of general propositions in the definitions of the modern epoch as given by the Marxist-Leninist parties and in the documents of the international communist movement. Briefly, they may be reduced to the following:

p First, a complete identity of views on the character, assessment and motive trends of the epoch with the views expressed by Lenin. This is further testimony of the viability and unfading significance of Lenin’s analysis of the epoch and of the greatness of his genius.

p Second, the Communist parties and the communist movement as a whole creatively approach the new phenomena of the past few decades and analyse them scientifically, in other words, they enlarge on Lenin’s definition of the epoch.

p Third, the entire period from the Great October Socialist Revolution to our day is characterised by the parties as an unbroken epoch. True, like every other epoch, the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism has its own stages and periods. Three such periods may be named conditionally.

p The first is the period of the establishment and development of a national dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., of a proletarian dictatorship in one country—the Soviet Union. In that period socialism influenced the course of world development and the growth of the revolutionary struggle in the countries of the capitalist world mainly by force of its own example, through the consolidation of socialist ideals and relations. Already then the class struggle was raging in individual capitalist countries, where it was headed by Marxist-Leninist parties, and, at the same time, a struggle was waged between the two opposing social and state systems. The Soviet Union’s influence over the revolutionary process spread in depth and breadth, being expressed in direct 56 military assistance to fighters against imperialism and fascism, in the defence of the national interests of the oppressed peoples, in material assistance and the provision of political asylum to political fighters, revolutionaries, anti-fascists, democrats, and so on. But, on the whole, the course and character of international relations were determined by imperialism. The second is the period of the formation of the world socialist system. It is characterised by a frontal breach of the chain of imperialism and the conversion of the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national into an international force. However, there have been not only qualitative changes. Capitalism and its laws ceased to be the dominant factor in the world and imperialism irrevocably lost its positions in many countries of Europe and Asia.

p One cannot accept as tenable the assertion that the formation of the world socialist system signified that mankind had entered the fourth historical epoch. This assertion is wrong because the creation of the socialist community does not change the substance of the present epoch in world history. Its main contradiction has been and remains the contradiction between socialism and capitalism, and the working class and its creation, world socialism, continue to remain in the centre of the epoch.

p The third period witnesses the strengthening of socialism’s position on a global scale: the successful building of communism in the USSR, the triumph of socialism in a group of European and Asian countries, the victory of the Cuban revolution, the collapse of the colonial system, the choice of the non-capitalist road of development by a number of African and Asian countries, and the further serious erosion of imperialism’s positions in its own citadels.

p In our day the revolutionary process has become worldwide. The revolutionary changes have acquired greater depth and maturity. Various revolutionary torrents have converged and economic, social and political revolutionary changes have become more rapid. In the world today it would be hard to find an area unaffected by the struggle for social and national liberation.

The principal and decisive feature of the present epoch is that the course of world history is determined no longer by world capitalism but by world socialism. This concerns all its spheres and trends.