p The economy and political affairs of the colonies and dependencies were dominated by foreign capital which put down any manifestation of political and economic independence, slowed down the development of the economy 336 and deformed it, and turned these countries into its agrarian and raw materials appendage.

p The colonies and dependencies were turned into the nearest strategic reserve of imperialism. Quite often they were used as a bastion against the growing forces of world socialism, and a military bridgehead for imperialist aggression. They were an inexhaustible source of cheap raw materials and free labour power, and an extensive and extremely profitable consumer market.

p Imperialism not only directly oppresses the people of the colonies and dependencies, and suppresses all their manifestations of political and economic independence; it is also the principal bulwark of internal reactionary forces and above all of the rich landowners and tribal chiefs, the main bearers of feudal and pre-feudal relations.

p That is why imperialism and foreign monopolies are the greatest enemies of the oppressed peoples; that is why the national liberation revolutions have a clear-cut anti-imperialist character.

p The principal aim of these revolutions is to abolish the political and economic domination of foreign imperialism, win political and economic independence and, consequently, set up a sovereign national state.

p Yet it is impossible to shake off the oppression of the monopolies without first wiping out the survivals of feudalism and tribal, pre-feudal relations whose bearers were imperialism’s principal social mainstay in the colonies and dependencies. That is why national liberation revolutions also have an anti-feudal character. Liquidation of the survivals of pre-bourgeois relations inhibiting economic and political progress is yet another important task of the national liberation revolutions.

p The solution of such vast and complicated problems is inconceivable without the participation of the people who are the real makers of history. That is why the uprooting of the survivals of colonial domination in domestic policy and democratisation of social life constitute the third important task of the national liberation revolution which thus acquires a democratic character.

p It follows that the national liberation revolution has an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and democratic character. As Lenin wrote, it solves “democratic tasks, the tasks of 337 overthrowing foreign oppression".  [337•* 

The national liberation revolution owes its general democratic, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal character not only to tasks which it sets itself, but also to those social forces which are called upon to solve these tasks, i.e., to the motive forces of the revolution. Let us see what these forces are.