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p Social revolutions are distinguished by their character (type), driving forces, and objective and subjective conditions. The type of social revolution is determined by the historical tasks it carries out and the social forces that accomplish it.

p From history we know of such types of revolution as anti-feudal (bourgeois) revolutions accomplished under the leadership of the urban bourgeoisie, anti-imperialist, national liberation, and socialist revolutions (in the imperialist epoch). In many countries socialist revolution is to be pre- 240 ceded by anti-imperialist, national liberation or people’s democratic revolution.

p The first stage of the Cuban revolution, for example, was of a people’s democratic and antiimperialist character. It consisted of the establishment of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the people (the working class and the peasantry), radical agrarian reforms, elimination of the foundations for imperialist domination, and other democratic social changes. The driving forces behind the Cuban revolution were three classes: the working class (roughly one million people), the working peasants (around 300,000 people), and the urban petty bourgeoisie, from which many students and office workers came. These forces were in effect fighting three wars: for national liberation, against pre-capitalist (feudal) survivals, and against capitalism. The radical petty bourgeoisie aspired to leadership. But already at this stage, the working class was the actual leader of the revolution. The composition of the driving forces and the leading role of the proletariat determined the character of the Cuban revolution and its uninterrupted advance to the socialist stage.

p The socialist revolution is the highest type of revolution; it secures transition to socialism, i. e. to the social system that eliminates any and all exploitation of man by man and, consequently, social-class antagonisms. Its tasks are of a larger 241 scale and of a creative rather than destructive nature.

p The socialist revolution creates conditions for a gradual elimination of society’s division into classes, i. e. for establishing a system wherein social evolution will cease to be a political revolution.

p Marxist-Leninist theory singles out the following features of the socialist revolution:

p (a) The socialist revolution is an objective law of society’s transition to socialism. The need for it derives from the main contradiction of capitalism, that between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation. It is begotten by the basic class antagonismthe antagonism between labour and capital-as well as other intrinsic contradictions that resulted in the general crisis of capitalism. The objective necessity of the socialist revolution is a topical issue in the current ideological struggle.

p (b) The socialist revolution is -the peak of the class struggle of the working class and its allies against the exploiters. Only a class struggle that has attained the stage of a proletarian revolution can secure radical change in society along socialist lines.

p (c) The socialist revolution is at one and the same time an objective process and the result of the conscious historical activity of the masses, which they gear to their scientific ideology and in

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242 which they are led by the Marxist-Leninist party.

p (d) The socialist revolution signifies destruction of the old bourgeois machinery of state and the establishment of a new type of state-the state of the working class.

p (e) The socialist revolution is an entire era in the historical overturn of the system of social relations, an era of building new social relations based on social ownership of the means of production, an era of establishing the economic and social system essentially aimed at satisfying as fully as possible the needs of man and of his allround development.

(f) The socialist revolution, in any country, is not only conditioned by the development of intrinsic class contradictions and the struggle against the exploiters, but is also closely linked with the proletariat’s international struggle against world capital. Proletarian internationalism is a principle of the socialist revolution and a necessary condition for its ultimate triumph.