CHRISTIANS FOR SOCIALISM 49 system asssumes an openly repressive, even fascist, character, as in Chile and South Africa. Many suffer persecution, jail and even death as police methods and torture techniques become ever more refined. The present economic recession, with its concomitant unemployment and inflation, strikes all workers in the industrialized nations, hitting migrant workers and racial minorities especially hard, and threatening the economic system in its totality. The spectre of crisis looms again, this time in a consumer society which claims to have overcome its contradictions. Transnational Shadows over Capitalism The profound cause of the crisis is the unequal and contradictory character which expansionist world capitalism has assumed. Its tendency is characterized by a concentration of capital and technology in the hands of transnational corporations. The majority of these corporations operate from headquarters located in the United States, and are supported by that country^s. government, invading practically the entire world through their affiliates, The power of these corporations is greater than the power of many nations whose governments are forced to submit to them, and their economic growth rate surpasses that of the more advanced national economies. Their accumulation of capital based on profits obtained from abroad continually grows because they are able to exploit cheap labour and manipulate prices and credit. They also plunder natural resources, thus exhausting them. This type of industrial development fosters the breakdown of ecological equilibrium, increases environmental contamination and, in general, generates misery in dependent countries. This type of socio-economic system has proved itself incapable of resolving the problems presented by rapid population growth, inadequate food supply, and consequent hunger. All over the world, people are reacting in defence of their standard of living by challenging this concentration of capital and technology. Capital, faced with the political and social conflicts which it generates, migrates to areas which permit high profits and provide the conditions of security and order which make profits possible. When representative democracy cannot sufficiently guarantee this security, even by assuming authoritarian characteristics, capital turns to totalitarian regimes whirh obstruct and brutally suppress all political and trade-union activity. Thus, the police apparatus expands, with extensive and scientific use of tortures leading to contemporary fascism. The resulting system is a final consequence of the international division of labour, proper to the imperialist phase of world capitalism. Imperialism does not hesitate to unleash internal subversion, to intervene politically and even to provoke limited wars, such as that in Vietnam which was fought to preserve a threatened hegemony. At the ideological level, a new cultural power has developed through the exercise of control over the media, and educational institutions.