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<p>Capitalism is an economic and social system, the main attributes of which are:</p><ol><li>dominance of commodity-money relations and private property in the means of production;</li><li>developed social division of labour;</li><li>increasing socialization of production; and</li><li>transformation of labour power into a commodity.</li></ol><p>The shaping of the globe into a single, coherent system built on exploitation is the direct consequence of the pursuit of the valorization of capital. The current catastrophic state of the world system is a product of both the exigencies of the idealization of capital and the degrees of resistance to it encountered or engendered in the course of the history of the modern period. Since its inception, the capitalist system has combined the pursuit of capitalism with unrestrained geographical expansion. It is this physical, and, where deemed necessary, militarily aggressive, conquest that has given capitalism its world-wide systemic character.</p><p>In its process of development, monopoly capitalism evolves into state monopoly capitalism, which is characterized by the interlocking of the financial oligarchy with the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, the increased role of the state in all spheres of social life, the growth of the state sector in the economy, and increasingly active policies aimed at mitigating the socioeconomic contradictions of capitalism. When associated with imperialism, this engenders a profound crisis in bourgeois democracy, an intensification of reactionary tendencies, and the increased role of force in domestic and foreign policy. It is inseparable from the growth of militarism and military expenditures, the arms race, and tendencies towards the unleashing of aggressive wars.</p><ul></ul>