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p In the industrially developed capitalist countries the anti-monopoly struggle is, first and foremost, the struggle of the working masses against state-monopoly capitalism and the international monopoly associations.

p We have examined above the Leninist principles for assessing the nature and essence of present-day statemonopoly capitalism and its influence on the revolutionary struggle. Here it is important to stress, firstly, that statemonopoly capitalism means full material preparedness, the threshold to socialism; secondly, that it embodies, concentrates the growing, increasingly acute contradictions of capitalist development.

p Consequently the material and technical prerequisites for socialism have fully matured in the industrially developed capitalist countries. They include a high level of the development of the productive forces, the concentration and centralisation of production and capital, a developing system of production management, planning and programming, and also the organisation of the education and training of the army of hired labour which constitutes an absolute majority of the population with a comparatively high level of consumption.

p However, as we know, the sum total of material, technical and favourable objective socio-political prerequisites and the existence of the subjective factor of the revolution are necessary for a socialist revolution.

p Such an ideal correlation of all the prerequisites has never existed in practice in the history of the revolution. The historical delays or temporary defeat of socialist revolutions in capitalist countries are explained by the immaturity of this or that prerequisite for the revolution, and particularly by the strength and organisation of the counter-revolutionary subjective factor. In this connection special emphasis must be laid on the need for study, for scientific analysis of the social 237 role of the counter-revolutionary subjective factor, its strength, organisation and ideological and political influence on this or that social stratum.

p The social consequences of the scientific and technological progress have greatly changed the content of the material prerequisites for the revolution, and of the whole system of antagonistic contradictions of modern capitalism by influencing the composition, distribution and balance of the class forces. Together with the basic class contradiction of the whole formation, that between labour and capital, and on its basis other social and national antagonisms are developing. They include, notably, the antagonism between the objective demands of the scientific and technological revolution and the policy of the monopolies; between the growing army of hired workers and the whole system of state-monopoly capitalism; between the true interests of national progress and the supra-national monopoly associations and military and industrial complexes.

p The latter contradiction is acquiring a special significance in the social development of the capitalist countries. The emergence of military and industrial complexes in the largest and most developed capitalist states, and also of supranational closed associations testifies to the anti-national social role of state-monopoly capitalism.

p The financial oligarchy is trying to make use of the objective tendency of internationalisation of production and social life for its own selfish, anti-popular ends, for the struggle against world socialism and the international revolutionary movement of the working class. At the same time, within the "common markets" and economic blocs an acute inter-imperialist struggle is taking place. This is a characteristic symptom of the rot and parasitism of the monopoly oligarchy, which is interested in national economic and social development only insofar as the latter helps to create surplus value, monopoly profits or supports its economic and political supremacy.

p It is highly characteristic that the ideological and political concepts of Atlantism, Eurcpeanism, supra-national power, etc., now fashionable in bourgeois propaganda, correspond to the development of the processes of imperialist integration. Through the mechanism of the "European Parliament" the international monopolies, which are connected primarily 238 with US capital, are hoping to gain control of the economy, policy and defence of the Common Market countries, thereby violating the latter’s national sovereignty. On the other hand, violation of national sovereignty leads to a strengthening of the ideology of nationalism as a countermeasure.

p All in all, both the development of ihe integrational processes and the growth of the international monopolies is aggravating and deepening even more the antagonism between the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people and the monopoly oligarchy and giving the antimonopoly struggle a national, democratic nature.

p The system of contradictions which has grown up under the growth of state-monopoly capitalism is objectively extending the social base of anti-monopoly democratic movements. Serious class shifts are taking place, which are one of the most important social consequences of the scientific and technological revolution in the industrially developed capitalist countries. The practical application of the latest scientific achievements (automation, “chemicalisation”, and the use of cybernetics in management) is changing the balance of industrial and agricultural production and imparting new features to the contradictions between town and countryside, between brain and physical labour. In particular, the industrialisation of agricultural production is reducing the number of peasants and accelerating the differentiation of the peasantry. In the social structure of society as a whole there is an increase in the share of the middle strata, including new detachments of the intelligentsia and officeworkers, a section of which is drawing objectively closer to the working class in terms of status.

p These shifts in the social structure are seriously affecting the whole system of economic and social contradictions of modern capitalism. The turning of the absolute majority of the population into hired workers and the growth of the working class, are imparting new strength to the class struggle and confronting it with new tasks. The scientific and technological revolution is extending the functions of a section of the hired workers concerning production management, while the management of people and political supremacy are concentrated in the hands of the ruling monopolists. Control of the progress and results of production and 239 distribution by the producers of material goods themselves is becoming a demand of the struggle for political and economic (production) democracy.

p The limitation and abolition of the absolute power of the monopolies is becoming the main point of all democratic demands: to ensure the participation of the masses in the affairs of society and the state, to attain the right of control by the working people over the economic activity of the large proprietors, the demands to defend peace against the threat of war and the attainment of genuine national economic independence by shaking off international monopoly exploitation. The contradiction between the monopolies and the majority of the nation have to be resolved before these democratic reforms can be enforced.

p This socio-economic contradiction is nourished by and springs from the contradiction between labour and capital, a contradiction that has today moved into the foreground in some industrialised countries. The solution of the contradiction between the monopolies and the majority of the nation does not directly and automatically lead to the solution of capitalism’s main contradiction.

p The transition from capitalism to socialism is obviously preconditioned by the revolutionary solution of the determining contradiction of the entire process, namely, the contradiction between labour and capital. Moreover, the socialist revolution resolves not only the main contradiction but also all the derivative contradictions. As regards the contradiction between the monopolies and the majority of the nation, its solution can significantly influence the course of the struggle between labour and capital and in many ways change the content of the bourgeois socio-economic and political structure, but it cannot abolish the capitalist system.

p In the industrialised capitalist countries the struggle for anti-monopoly democracy is thus directly linked with the socialist prospect, with the socialist revolution.

p The historical situation, the socio-economic contradictions, the balance of class forces and the combination of democratic and socialist objectives are recorded in the programmes of the Communist parties of the developed capitalist states.

p For instance, in its new programme, adopted in 1969, the Communist Party of the USA has charted three stages of the advance towards socialism: political pressure on the 240 dictatorship of the monopolies, the struggle for political power and socialist transformations. It accentuates the importance of the struggle for reforms, regarding them as a component of the process speeding up the alteration and replacement of the existing system. The struggle for reforms, it says, must lead to the formation of a popular anti-monopoly government committed to give effect to American society’s socialist reconstruction.  [240•* 

p This line of strategy was set out concretely and precisely in the main political resolution of the 22nd Convention of the Communist Party of the USA in 1979. Of ideological interest is the problem, posed in the resolution, of the "advanced stage" of state-monopoly capitalism in the United States, the new level of the monopolisation process and the new role of the state, which are imparting a new scale to the antimonopoly and class struggle.

p The general idea of a struggle for a new, anti-monopoly democracy and its growth into a socialist democracy is to be found in the Programme documents of other Communist parties of the countries of state-monopoly capitalism. Most of these documents contain an independent development of the concept of anti-monopoly democracy and the search for practical forms of realising it. For example, the Programme of the Communist Party of Great. Britain "Britain’s Path to Socialism" adopted at its 35th Congress in 1977 stresses the need to win a new popular majority, to create a new type of Labour government, and the revolutionary transfer of state power into the hands of the working class and its allies.

p The Theses of the 15th Congress of the Italian Communist Party (1979) advance a new interpretation of the "strategy of a democratic path to socialism": democratic planning of the economy, democratic political power, associations and cooperatives as the main feature of the transition to a more advanced socio-economic system under the leadership of the working class.

p The complex questions of the dialectical relationship of the evolutionary and revolutionary lines, the democratic and socialist tendencies in the anti-monopoly struggle and antimonopoly revolution, are at the centre of the present-day 241 ideological struggle. Monopolist ideologists and opportunists of all kinds distort and falsify the true content, tendencies and driving forces of modern social movements, particularly the problems of the anti-monopoly struggle. A secondary role in distorting the present picture of the socio-economic contradictions in the developed capitalist countries, between them, and also between world capitalism and world socialism has been played by the well-known bourgeois theories of the "industrial society”, the "developed society”, the "convergence of the two systems”, etc. The concept of the so-called proletarian and bourgeois nations, which shifts the internal class antagonisms of state-monopoly capitalism to the international arena and replaces them by national ones is basically a similar attempt to conceal the growing contradictions between the monopolies and the peoples. In order to demoralise the anti-monopoly democratic forces, the West German monopolies are preaching the theory of "German national unity”. Fascist, militaristic, nationalistic and racist ideas are being revived under the flag of "German national unity".

p The socio-economic role of state-monopoly capitalism, the prospects and driving forces of social progress are also distorted in the concepts of present-day opportunists. They regard and assess state-monopoly capitalism as a refutal of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. From their point of view, this is a new formation in which elements of socialism are developing in production relations and there is a change in the role of the state, which is becoming an instrument of supra-class economic regulation. Lastly, the opportunists depict state-monopoly capitalism as a new society that is replacing the old capitalism and the present socialist system.

p From the gnosiological angle the theories of the Right opportunists that state-monopoly capitalism is evolving into socialism and their concepts of “humane” and “democratic” socialism are founded on their absolutisation of evolutionary changes, of reforms as the fundamental objective, on their absolutisation of the social role played by intellectuals, students, young people, the middle strata, and so on.

p In the industrialised capitalist states the actual prospects for the revolutionary process are in many respects 242 determined by the subjective factor. The realisation of democratic aims and tasks and the political leadership of the working class in the anti-imperialist alliance have become the prime condition of the fulfilment of the proletariat’s historic mission.

p Lenin formulated the methodological principle of the correlation of socialism and democracy. In particular, he wrote that "socialism is impossible without democracy because: 1) the proletariat cannot perform the socialist revolution unless it prepares for it by the struggle for democracy; 2) victorious socialism cannot consolidate its victory and bring humanity to the withering away of the state without implementing full democracy.”  [242•*  The struggle for democracy is not a transient tactic. It is the fundamental policy of the working class and the Communist parties, who act in line with the common basic interests of the proletariat, the peasantry and the middle strata. Both in theory and practice the actual turn of the masses involved in the anti-imperialist and democratic movements towards scientific socialism is determined largely by the ideological struggle not only against anti-communism but also against nationalism and modern opportunism. The overall shrinkage of the social basis of monopoly rule is compelling international imperialism to modify its strategy and tactics and have more frequent recourse to ideological, political and military subversion. These circumstances make it incumbent upon Communists to heighten their revolutionary, ideological and political vigilance.

It is vital that in the ideological struggle and in their organisational and political work the Communist parties should correctly understand and use the experience of the socialist revolution in the USSR and of the people’s democratic revolutions. Of cardinal importance in this experience are the problems of the immediate and end objectives, the motive forces and the changes in the policy of alliances at the different phases of the struggle and the actual revolution, in particular, the problems of the growth of democratic movements into the socialist revolution.