p Social revolution is a radical change in the system of social relations resulting in transilion from one socioeconomic formation In another.

p A social revolution should be distinguished 234 from revolutions occurring in individual spheres of society (the industrial, scientific and technological revolution, etc.) and from qualitative evolutionary changes that occur in every society. Lastly, it should be distinguished from war.

p A social revolution is a process of resolving the major socio-political and socio-economic class contradictions that have developed in a given society. Contradictions that grew for decades or even centuries surface in the course of revolution. For example, the revolutionary process in Cuba resolved numerous contradictions: between the Cuban nation and US imperialism; between the ruling national oligarchy (backed by the US monopoly bourgeoisie) and the other strata of Cuban society, including the urban petty bourgeoisie; between the bourgeoisie, the landlords, the moneyed tenants, the usurers and bankers, on the one hand, and the workers, on the other; between the needs of the national economy and the dominant reactionary superstructure; between Cuban national culture and the North American imperialist ideology, and so on.

p Social revolutions are brought about by objective necessity. The main reason for social revolution is the conflict between the productive forces (the requirements of their development) and obsolete production relations that impede economic progress. Such production relations have ceased to be the social form for the development 235 of the productive forces and have, indeed, begun to act as fetters on them. Consequently, social revolution ultimately leads to changes in the system of economic relations, primarily the relations of ownership.

p Economic contradictions are the deepest reason for social revolution, while their immediate reason is the complex of social-class contradictions, in the first place those between the ruling class and the oppressed masses, between the reactionary superstructure and the elements (or system) of new economic relations that have burgeoned in the womb of the old society.

p Inasmuch as the ruling class and the existing economic relations are held up chiefly by the state, the main contradiction resolved by revolution is the contradiction between the exploited classes and the state of the ruling class.

p The first and principal question of revolution, both in the strictly theoretical and in the practical political sense, is the transition of state power from one class to another.  [235•1  Hence every social revolution is a political revolution, which does not mean, of course, that every political coup is a social revolution. Coups d’etat are frequent in some developing countries. But they do not lead to radical socio-economic and political change. 236 What is changed are only individual (often insignificant) elements of the prevailing regime.

p Henee, social revolution is necessary not only from (he economic point of view, but also from the social-class and political. An overturn in the political superstructure is conditioned by the overturn that has already gradually and essentially occurred in the basis fin the case of prosocialist revolutions) or by the premises for such an overturn in the basis (in the period preceding socialist revolution). It is conditioned by the basis because the political superstructure of the ruling class has come into conflict with the new conditions and requirements of development of the economy and the entire system of social relations. It has ceased to express the interests of the social groups that carry forward the progressive forms of social relations and are able to ensure the satisfaction of the urgent socio-historical requirements and carry out the tasks of further historical development.

p “The destructive force of a revolution,” Lenin wrote, "is to a considerable degree dependent on how strong and protracted the suppression of the striving for liberty has been, and how profound is the contradiction between the outmoded ‘ superstructure’ and the living forces of our times.”   [236•1  237 Lenin’s conclusion was borne out by the experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the Cuban and other revolutions. Their destructive force stemmed from the contradictions that had accumulated for centuries, from the acuteness of these contradictions, and from the coercion that the reactionary classes visited upon the workers and all progressives.

p The conditions for an overturn develop not only in the sphere of economic and socio-political relations. Its premises grow also in the sphere of intellectual culture. The old social ideas and attitudes, and social psychology, which reflect the way of life of the ruling classes, are no longer able to serve the interests of progress and are thus rejected by the new social forces. The latter create their own world outlook and their own ideology. As a rule, an overturn in the socio-economic and political spheres is preceded by a most acute struggle against old ideas and for the new, progressive ideology. Before the revolutionary classes accomplish a revolution, they become aware of the necessity of a revolution and of the ways and methods of carrying it out, and thus assimilate a new ideology. The change in the sphere of ideology, however, is completed on the soil of those new conditions that result from the triumph of the revolution.

p The evolution taking place in many of the contemporary exploiter societies is a persuasive 238 example of the ripening of conditions for an overturn in all the main spheres of the life of society. Here contradictions are mounting between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation, between the monopolies and the people, between the workers and the exploiter classes, between the status of the working class and the other strata of workers as the main productive force and their actual social position and lack of political rights. Today it is no longer possible to ignore the gap between the growing wealth of developed capitalist countries and the poverty suffered by many of the young states that have only recently become independent of colonial rule. More and more staggering is the abyss between the colossal development potential of the productive forces and their onesided and irrational use, the predatory exploitation of manpower and of natural resources, and between the vast prospects of historical development offered by the revolution in science and technology and the imperialist threat to destroy civilisation in the flames of a thermonuclear war. All these economic and social contradictions manifest themselves in the degradation of culture, alienation of the individual, and, more importantly, in the conflict between the interests of the broad masses and the political superstructure of the exploiter classes, the bourgeois machinery of state in the first place.

p As noted in the policy documents of the international communist movement, today the capitalist system has on the whole matured for social revolution. This is seen in the intensification of the numerous intrinsic contradictions of contemporary capitalism.

In sum, social revolution is a law of historical development in class exploiter societies. It occurs when the old social system has exhausted its potential for development and cannot serve as a foundation of society’s objective necessity for further advance in the interests of the broad masses, and when no reforms carried out by the ruling classes can lead society out of the impasse.