p While the new world of socialism, full of strength, vigour and health, is growing and advancing, the capitalist system is in the throes of a deep-going process of decline and disintegration.

p It is undergoing a general crisis.

p This crisis was inaugurated by the Great October Socialist Revolution which resulted in the emergence of the USSR, the world’s first socialist state. The undivided rule of capitalism in the world came to an end.

p The victory of socialist revolutions in a number of European and Asian countries as a result of which socialism turned into a world system, was another powerful blow sustained by imperialism.

p The principal characteristic of the present stage in the general crisis of capitalism is that the correlation of forces in the world has radically shifted in favour of the world socialist system. More and more countries are falling away from capitalism and the forces fighting for socialism and social progress are rapidly growing throughout the world. The positions of imperialism in the peaceful economic competition with socialism are being inexorably weakened. The unprecedented advance of the national liberation movement has led to the break-down of imperialism’s colonial system.

p But contemporary capitalism 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 ever before of the class struggle developing into a massive revolutionary movement. Hence, the bourgeoisie is striving to use more camouflaged forms of exploitation of the working people, and is ready now and again to carry out partial reforms in order to 325 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.”  [325•*  The events of the past few years prove this convincingly.

p The Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 25th Congress of the CPSU notes that the crisis of capitalism has become all-embracing. A profound crisis has gripped capitalist economy and politics, ideology and morals. In recent years an economic crisis erupted in the capitalist world whose intensity and scope can be compared only with the crisis of the early thirties. It spread simultaneously to all the main centres of capitalist economy over the world and has afflicted the highly developed state-monopoly economy which emerged in the post-war period. The sharp cutback in production and the growing unemployment in most of the capitalist countries intertwined with the monetary, energy and raw materials crises. Impelled by the continuously growing military expenditures, inflation has made the crisis processes especially acute. Inter-imperialist rivalry and discord within the Common Market and NATO have grown sharper. The increased power of the international mono_: polies has made the competitive struggle still more ruthless. Capitalism’s instability is becoming increasingly apparent. The reformist myth that present-day capitalism is able to get rid of crises has collapsed.

p A distinctive feature of the contemporary stage of the general crisis of capitalism is the deepening of the crisis of imperialism’s foreign policy which is expressed in the loss by imperialism of its decisive role in international affairs.

p The politico-ideological crisis of imperialism has also become more acute. It afflicts institutions of power and 326 bourgeois political parties and undermines elementary ethical standards. Corruption is increasingly manifest, even in the top echelons of the state machinery. The decline of intellectual culture continues and the crime rate is rising.

p Bourgeois ideology, too, is in the throes of an intense crisis. Pessimism and fear of the future, mysticism and mistrust in science and man’s creative powers and abilities, negation of progress, anti-communist slander and protection of the system of hired slavery and oppression which is hated by the people—such are the main features of this ideology. For a long time now bourgeois ideology has been unable to conceive ideas that would carry away the broad masses; it is an ideology of a class which is on its way out of the arena of history. Therefore its utter bankruptcy is inevitable.

p In our time the conflict between the productive forces and production relations in capitalist society has attained the extremes of intensity. Mankind has entered a period of a great scientific and technical revolution. But capitalist relations of production are too narrow for this revolution. Besides inhibiting the development of the productive forces and the application of the achievements of the human intellect in the interests of social progress, capitalism frequently turns them against man himself by converting them into monstrous weapons of devastating war. This profound conflict of the capitalist mode of production confronts mankind with the task of breaking the narrow limits of capitalist relations, unfettering the mighty production forces which man has created and employing them in the interests of the whole of society. The only way to do all this lies through the socialist revolution.

“Imperialism” notes the Final Document of the Moscow International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, “can neither regain its lost historical initiative nor reverse world development. The main direction of mankind’s development is determined by the world socialist system, the international working class, all revolutionary forces. "  [326•*