p Large-scale machine production is the specific feature of the productive forces of capitalism. Huge factories, plants and mines took the place of artisan workshops and manufactures. “Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, 215 steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground"  [215•* —this is how Marx and Engels described the capitalist productive forces in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. In a century or two capitalism accomplished much more in developing the productive forces than had been done in all the preceding eras of human history.

p This vigorous growth of the productive forces was facilitated by the capitalist relations of production, based on private capitalist ownership which gradually but inexorably ousted feudal ownership. Under capitalism the producer, the proletariat, is legally free, being attached neither to the land nor to any particular factory. He is free in the sense that he can go to work for any capitalist, but he is not free from the bourgeois class as a whole. Possessing no means of production, he is compelled to sell his labour power and thereby come under the yoke of exploitation.

p The production relations and the economic basis of capitalism gave rise to a corresponding superstructure—-bourgeois ideas and institutions. The growing resistance of the working class to capitalist oppression and also the reactionary domestic and foreign policy of the bourgeoisie led to a gigantic growth of the state machinery, particularly of the armed forces and other organs of coercion. Spiritual life (political and legal views, art, morality, philosophy) is permeated with the spirit of capitalist profit, violence and inhumanity. The mission of the capitalist superstructure is ideologically to substantiate the permanence and inviolability of capitalist ownership and exploitation. The ideology of the working class arises and develops alongside bourgeois ideas and in the struggle against them.

p Capitalist relations of production brought into being capitalist profit which is a great stimulus to the development of production. It is in the drive for profit that the capitalist extends production, improves machinery and production methods in industry and agriculture. These relations, however, not only determined an unprecedented 216 growth in production, but also gave rise to productive forces which placed the capitalist system as a whole on the brink of doom. Marx and Engels likened capital to a sorcerer, whose incantations brought into action forces so powerful that he was unable to control them.

p With the titanic growth of the productive forces, capitalist relations of production cease to correspond to them,and fetter their development. The deepest contradiction of the capitalist mode of production is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation. Production in capitalist society bears a strikingly pronounced social character. Many millions of workers are concentrated lat large plants and take part in social production, while the fruits of their labour are appropriated by a small group of owners of the means of production. This is the basic economic contradiction of capitalism.

p Towards the end of the last century capitalism grew into imperialism, its highest and last stage. The main feature of imperialism is the domination of monopolies, which replaces free competition. Monopolies are large associations of capitalists who concentrate in their hands the production and marketing of the bulk of commodities. The aim of the monopolies is to extract the highest profits possible.

p To this end the imperialists intensify the exploitation of the working people in their own country and in the colonies and dependent countries. Having divided up the world among themselves, the imperialists engage in a bitter struggle for its re-division.

Imperialism aggravates all the contradictions of capitalist society to the extreme, especially the contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation. This contradiction gives rise to economic crises and unemployment, causes fierce class battles between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and constitutes the economic basis for the socialist revolution. The victorious socialist revolution abolishes the capitalist production relations and ushers in the new, communist socio-economic formation.