World Capitalist Economic System, an aggregate of the economic complexes of capitalist countries linked by the international capitalist division of labour (see Division of Labour, Capitalist International). The economic links between capitalist countries are implemented by means of the international movement (migration) of capital, goods, labour power, gold and monetary resources (see Migration of Capital; International Trade; Migration of the Labour Power, International; Monetary System of Capitalism). The world capitalist economic system emerges following the transition of capitalism to imperialism as a result of the development of large-scale capitalist industry in many countries, of the international division of labour and of the world capitalist market (see World Market, Capitalist), the export of capital and the subjugation of economically less developed countries by a small group of imperialist powers. "Capitalism,” Lenin wrote in 1920, "has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries" (V. I. Lenin^ Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 191). Under imperialism, one of the major features of the world economy is the concentration of the productive forces in a few imperialist states. Another feature is the huge and widening gap between the levels of economic development of the major imperialist powers and the economically less developed countries. The third feature is the fierce competitive struggle between multinationals for markets, and for spheres of capital investment and high profits. The colonial system of imperialism was a part of the world capitalist economic system. The inherent features of the world capitalist economic system is uneven development, which results in some countries coming to the fore at the expense of other countries. At the same time, there is always a desire on the part of those that lag behind to recover the lost ground by launching an assault against their rivals. Another feature is its spontaneous nature, non-equivalent exchange between the industrially developed and agrarian countries to the detriment of the latter. With the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the capitalist system ceased to be the only system in the world: the world socialist economic system has emerged and is developing. The sphere of the capitalist economy is shrinking. During the period of the general crisis of capitalism and the disintegration of the colonial system of imperialism, the world capitalist economic system has been plagued by a crisis. The sphere of domination by the financial oligarchy of the major imperialist countries is becoming smaller. The system of international economic relations inherent in capitalism is being undermined. The countries that have cast off the shackles of-colonialism are fighting for a new international economic order. At the same time, the imperialist monopolies are trying to retain their positions by maintaining their domination over the developing countries through new forms of inter-state monopoly organisations and neo-colonialism. The rapacious plunder of the world’s natural resources by the transnationals led the world capitalist economic system by the mid-1970s into profound structural crises—energy, raw materials and economic. The unstable character of the capitalist economy and uneven economic development have led to a crisis 393 in the financial and monetary system of imperialism. As a consequence of the struggle by the revolutionary working-class movement and the national liberation struggle, some countries have fallen away from the capitalist system of world economy and embarked on the non-capitalist path of development, resulting in the further reduction of the international financial oligarchy’s domain and in the deepening of the crisis in the world capitalist economic system.