ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines not only in Russia, but throughout the world- and first of all in Europe- the greatest events have taken place, or processes of great importance have developed, undermining the last buttresses of Kautskianism. It discusses the Western countries, the 'old democracies' of France and England-crowned as they are with victory, afford a picture of a healthy, normal, peaceful, truly Kautskian development of socialism, is one of the most puerile illusions possible. The book serves the ends of an irreconcilable struggle against the cowardice, half-measures, and hypocrisy of Kautskianism in all countries. It also reviews the possibility of socialist economic reconstruction. In spite of a mad confusion of external forms, watchwords, and appearances, history has extremely simplified the fundamental meaning of its own process, reducing it to a struggle of imperialism against Communism.
