Theory of General Welfare State, a modern bourgeois theory, camouflaging the anti-popular nature of the contemporary bourgeois state. The term was first used at the end of the 1940s, although its fundamental principles emerged before World War II as a reaction to the active intervention by the capitalist state in the economy. The supporters of the theory want to prove that the function of the state in the developed capitalist countries is to " promote the general well-being of all its members”. They are trying to substantiate the thesis that the bourgeois state has turned today from a dictatorship of the exploiting classes into a supra-class organism that is abolishing the exploitation of labour by capital, equalising the rich and the poor, etc. Besides providing for material well-being and smoothing over class distinctions, the apologists of capitalism say, the " general welfare state" ensures broad political rights and freedoms and an “abundance” of cultural benefits, and conducts a policy of extending “welfare” to the developing countries. The concept of the " general welfare state" has been acclaimed by reformists, right Social-Democrats included, who see the bourgeois state as a means of "eliminating class antagonisms" and “transforming” capitalism into socialism. Capitalist reality explodes myths about "class harmony" between labour and capital, and the bourgeois state’s activities that are claimed to lie outside the class context. Facts prove that the state under capitalism is a tool utterly at the disposal of monopolies, and the much lauded “welfare” is only for barons of finance capital, while spelling misery and suffering for hundreds of millions of working people. Especially relevant today is the issue of the working people’s political rights in the capitalist countries. Bourgeois ideologists are extolling the capitalist state, which, they say, " ensures the exercise of human rights”. In practice, however, bourgeois democracy has always been a form of domination by the capitalist class and, as such, can only ensure real freedom to the propertied classes. The theory of the general welfare state is an apologetic theory which distorts the social and economic principles of 364 bourgeois society and interprets its political superstructure from false positions.