Some Questions of Noncapitalist Development

The colonial system of imperialism rapidly fell apart in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. It was then that the "Third World" actually took shape as a set of young national states liberated from the political rule of imperialism. In those years, bourgeois politicans and sociologists expressed the hope, even the confidence, that the "Third World" would become a reserve, a fountain of youth for capitalism. However, they underestimated the power of the contemporary revolutionary process, its depth, sweep, and diversity of forms. The mighty influence of the world socialist community on the destinies of the peoples, and the growth of the international workers' and communist movement, created the preconditions for a revolutionary change in the development of "Third World" countries.