The necessary means whereby, according to the communists, the existing or old society will be finally overthrown and the new or communist society established. “Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” (_Marx_) “The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.” (_Lenin_) HISTORIC MISSION: To communists this means the seizure of power, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the abolition of capitalism, and the formation of the new, communist, society. As the vanguard of the proletariat the Communist Party has as its “historic mission” the direction of the proletarian struggle toward a communist society. IMPERIALISM: The highest, the most developed, and last stage of a “moribund” and “decaying” capitalism. As worked out by Lenin, imperialism develops when capital and production (in a capitalist society) become concentrated in the hands of a relatively few individuals on high economic levels. This causes, according to Lenin, capitalist exploitation in colonial areas, as capital seeks an outlet for greater markets. This monopoly stage of capitalism “causes” imperialist wars, as rival capitalist systems struggle with each other (this was Lenin’s diagnosis of World War I). To modern-day communists, the United States is now in this stage of imperialism. INEVITABILITY: To communists the final outcome of the struggle between communists and noncommunists has already been decided in favor of the communists, due to the very nature of the struggle. They consider the victory of communism to be inevitable because it is a “necessary product of historical development.” They view progress to be from slavery to feudalism, to capitalism, to imperialism, to communism. MARXISM-LENINISM: See =COMMUNISM (MARXIST SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM)=. MASSES: The ordinary people of a society who are not “educated” in the science of Marxism-Leninism and hence must be led by the proletariat and its vanguard, the Communist Party, toward the goal of a communist society. “Radicalizing the masses” signifies efforts by the Party, through agitation, to make the masses more sympathetic to communist aims. MATERIALISM: