ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical presuppositions of our society and of the broad outlines of general tendencies in its socioeconomic development. In this context, it is first necessary to reconsider the theory and practice of the transition period and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the light of our revised orientation, the chapter systematizes the stages of our concrete postrevolutionary development, which coincides with Marx's transition period. It gives a short account of the original position of Marx, Engels, and Lenin on the problem of the transition period. This Marxian conception of the transition period was supplemented by Lenin, who defined state capitalism as a transitional phase of the organization of social production, in the direction of socialism. The transition period is one of fierce struggle with the residue of the old capitalist socioeconomic system, a struggle in which the triumph of the new social order will only be assured after complete transformation of the society's economy.
