Military Industrial Complex (MIC), alliance of military and industrial monopolies, reactionary military circles and top governmental officials for the purpose of constantly increasing military strength in the interest of reinforcing and expanding class domination by the monopoly bourgeoisie, as well as for personal enrichment. The material base for this alliance is provided by the arms race and the expansion of the military industry. After World War II, the military industrial complex of the USA developed especially fast; however, similar complexes do exist in other imperialist countries. The MIC has become a powerful force, which exerts a great negative influence on the politics, economy, and other spheres of social life; this is largely because the MIC receives most of the multibillion military contracts of the bourgeois countries. Military contracts are a "gold mine" for the suppliers of war materiel, who have always made fortunes from manufacturing armaments. The military industry guarantees huge profits to the military industrial corporations; its rate of profit is far greater than that in the civilian sector of the economy. Although a large number of companies are involved in military industry, the lion’s share of government military contracts goes to a relatively small number of monopolies. Among the largest US military industrial corporations are: Lockheed Aircraft Corp. (between 1961 and 1976 it received military contracts from the Pentagon to the sum of 26,300 million dollars), General Dynamics Corp. (21,200 million), McDonnellDouglas (19,600 million), etc. In Great Britain, the FRG, and Japan there is also a high level of concentration and monopolisation of military industry. The largest arms manufacturers comprise the nucleus of the military industrial complex. To obtain a larger share of the highly profitable military contracts, they establish close ties with the state legislative and executive bodies and secure high posts for their representatives in the war and other departments; in their turn, they often provide jobs for influential retired generals and officers. The MIC makes extensive use of these personal ties, as well as of other levers, such as the mass media and a broad propaganda network to maintain and multiply huge military profits and to strengthen its positions in the economy and politics of the capitalist countries. The MIC tries to increase deliveries of weapons not only to the national armed forces, but to other 226 countries as well; an acute competitive struggle is being waged between the military industrial corporations of different countries for the armaments market. In their bid for fortunes, the suppliers of weapons have always helped aggravate international relations; they have always been party to establishing reactionary regimes and unleashing wars. They resort to all kinds of means to oppose detente, heighten international tensions, and whip up the arms race. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the international situation grew worse under the impact of actions by imperialism’s most aggressive circles closely associated with the MIC. The MIC was able to force through a gigantic increase in military spending, particularly in the USA; in the proposed 1983/84 budget, the figure exceeded 280,000 million dollars, highest by far in the history of the USA, even at a time of world wars. The working people of all countries are stepping up their struggle against the arms race imposed upon the world by the MIC.