November 19, 2016 - No. 45
99th Anniversary
of the
Great October Socialist Revolution
The Birth of the
New
1918
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1927
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1930
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1932
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1937
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1947
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Posters marking
anniversaries of Soviet power -- click to enlarge.
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• Leninism:
An Ideology
Indispensable for Opening the
Path for the Progress of
Society
- Hardial Bains -
• The
Necessity for Analysis of the
Contemporary Conditions
- K.C. Adams -
99th Anniversary of the Great October
Socialist
Revolution
The Birth of the New
Celebration of the 99th anniversary of the Great October Revolution in
Samara,
Russia's sixth largest city, November 7, 2016.
November 7 marked the beginning of the centenary year of
the Great October Socialist Revolution led by the great V.I.
Lenin. The October Revolution of 1917 shook the old world and a
new world came into being. Its victory signalled the end of the
First World War, a terrible war fought between imperialist countries
for the re-division of the world.
The October Revolution
created the first socialist state and the conditions for the
development of Soviet power. This power routed the intervention by 14
countries, including Canada, to overthrow the political and state power
seized by the working class and its allies in Russia. On the basis of
this power, socialism was constructed in the most spectacular way.
Among other achievements, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) was established in 1922, bringing together the nations of the
former Russian Empire. The country was industrialized with
unprecedented speed, and in 1936 it enacted what came to be known as
the Stalin Constitution, the most democratic and modern constitution
the world had seen. The Soviet Union then earned its place in the
annals of history for routing Nazi fascism and Japanese militarism
during World War Two in the most heroic struggle humankind has
witnessed to date.
This is why the Great October Socialist Revolution
became an
event of colossal historic significance. Even though the Union of
peoples and the nation-building project borne from this
revolution no longer exists, the path blazed by this revolution
to give rise to the New still guides all those engaged in the
same today.
Following the fall of the former Soviet Union and the
former people's democracies, reactionary reforms were put in place in
those countries and on the world scale the retreat of revolution set
in. The old world was extremely cocky and exuded confidence that its
nightmare of 1917 had come to an end. However, the results of the
restoration of capitalism and bourgeois rule of law in the former
Soviet Union and the vicious capitalist anti-social offensive carried
out under the guise of globalization and free trade are such that far
from the promised freedom, democracy and human rights, the world is
faced with a monstrous behemoth in the form of the U.S. police powers
wielded by the oligopolies and their champion who now occupies the
presidency of the United States. Within this dangerous situation, the
experience achieved by the proletariat and fighting peoples of the
world which gave birth to the New as enshrined by the Great October
Socialist Revolution has far from dissipated. What took place in the
former Soviet Union and former people's democracies is of utmost
concern to the peoples of the world today to help them find a way
forward out of the crisis into which the imperialist powers have
plunged the world.
The centenary year of the
Great October Socialist Revolution
is the occasion to review this experience, from the perspective of
starting from the present and going into the past, for purposes of
discerning a way forward for humankind today. Since the fall of
the USSR, the imperialist bourgeoisie has managed to impose their
Rule of Lawlessness over the entire world. The conflicts and
worsening conditions of the peoples all over the world are
without precedent. In the countries where imperialist democracy
prevails, the peoples have become completely disenfranchised and the
old way of legitimating bourgeois rule through elections lies in
tatters. Today, anarchy and violence prevail in all spheres of life.
Economics, politics, social and cultural affairs are deprived of the
human factor/social consciousness and societies are imbued with
anti-social aims. Abject poverty on one pole and obscene riches on the
other go hand in hand with the broad scale removal of people from the
affairs of the polity.
From revolution to counter-revolution, history has its
own
twists and turns. But on this occasion, TML Weekly
expresses its highest regard for the working class and people who
made the Great October Socialist Revolution and gave birth to the
New. We express complete confidence that humankind will make sure the
cause of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, when the
salvoes which marked the dawn of the new world were fired, is held high
and taken further to victory. Humankind will again bring forth
revolutions like the one championed by the Great Lenin, informed by the
teachings of the classics of Marxism-Leninism which continue to be a
living guide to turn the successes humankind has achieved to date into
lasting victory.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) will
avail
itself of the centenary year of the Great October Socialist
Revolution to hold seminars and other events to review and
discuss the significance of the revolution today. We call on the
workers and youth to lead the discussions and on all Canadians to
join in.
Leninism: An Ideology Indispensable for
Opening the Path for
the Progress of Society
- Hardial Bains -
V.I. Lenin declares Soviet power at the historic meeting of the Second
All-Russia Congress of Soviets at Bolshevik headquarters, St.
Petersburg, Russia, November 7, 1917.
(Detail from
"Lenin proclaims Soviet power" by Vladimir Serov, 1947)
This article is based on an original manuscript
written in 1994 by Hardial Bains. It was
edited for publication under this title in 2007 by the Central
Committee of CPC(M-L) on the occasion of the 90th Anniversary of the
Great October Revolution and published in TML, November 7, 2007.
***
The victory of
the Great October Socialist Revolution in
Russia in 1917 was the most outstanding example of work guided by
the outlook of Leninism. It proved that for the working class to
be successful in its nation-building project to move society
forward, it must be guided by the most advanced theory at each
stage of its development based on its own ideological and world
outlook. This is not a matter of choice; it is a necessity. Any
individual, collective, political movement or party that did not
take up the outlook of Leninism at the beginning of the twentieth
century failed, and in Europe many degenerated into European
socialism and chauvinism.
Leninism was not a peculiar leftwing extremist
ideology,
which could be characterized as good or as bad as any other
ideology that one could choose, be it liberalism, social democracy
or some variation. Leninism was the renaissance ideology of that
time and space, the outlook necessary to respond to the
exigencies of the here and now, to deal with the political,
social and cultural problems of the day to move society forward
and open the door to progress. Leninism was the natural
development of the renaissance outlook of 18th century Europe and
the Marxist ideology of the international proletariat of the
nineteenth century.
Renaissance Outlook
The Renaissance challenge to medievalism was the
necessary
outlook guiding the industrial revolution and bourgeois
nation-building projects in England and northern Europe and the
organization and victory of the 1789 French Revolution over the
ruling elite of landlords and clerics and their state-organized
political, intellectual and military forces. The state
medievalist outlook based on Divine Right of Kings had to be
overthrown for society to progress. Scientific discoveries could
not be transformed into consistent practice throughout society
and the economy in the absence of an ideology that recognizes
that the basis for change, development and motion is found in
internal contradictions with external conditions as the
extenuating circumstances. The Renaissance outlook and thinking
provided the ideology for the victory of capitalism over
feudalism, mass industrial production over petty production,
science over superstition and idealism, and modern bourgeois
organization based on bourgeois "people's" democracy over
absolutism, rule by decree and the Divine Right of Kings. The
Renaissance outlook prepared the subjective conditions necessary
to resolve the internal contradictions of the objective
conditions that were ripe for change in medieval Europe, in
particular the main contradiction between the advanced productive
forces and the backward relations of production. The internal
contradiction of medieval Europe, resolved through revolution,
corresponds to Canada's present unresolved internal contradiction
between the advanced socialized productive forces and the
backward private monopoly-controlled relations of
production.
Marxism
In the conditions of the development of capitalism
in the nineteenth century, Marxism was the development of the
Renaissance ideology explaining: the origin of profit from the
work-time of the working class transforming natural resources;
the internal motive force within society as class struggle and
under conditions of capitalism that the leading force can only be
the working class; and, that class struggle led by the working
class must overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism.
Marxism laid bare the backwardness and shortcomings of existing
European philosophy and provided the working class and all
humanity with a consistent outlook of dialectical and historical
materialism and the insistence that "philosophers have hitherto
interpreted the world, the point however is to change it."
Marxism was the required ideology of the period of the infancy of
capitalism, the birth of the modern working class and development
of the objective conditions to replace capitalism with socialism
leading to the emancipation of the working class and the
elimination of social classes and class society.
Leninism
Leninism was the renaissance ideology required by
the working class in the conditions of the development of
capitalism to its mature stage of monopoly ownership and rule at
the end of the nineteenth century. Monopoly capitalism is the
merging of industrial and banking capital into finance capital
and its creation of a bureaucratic militarized state and
aggressive imperialism. The objective conditions for proletarian
revolution were mature, unleashing the necessity to organize the
subjective conditions. Leninism provided the scientific guide and
outlook to accomplish that historic mission. The necessity had
arisen to organize the working class as an independent political
force with its own thinking, outlook, headquarters, defence
organizations and vision for a socialist future free from the
rule of the capitalists and their bureaucratic militarized state.
Only in Russia did Leninism guide the working class and peasantry
with consistency and steadfastness resulting in the Great October
Socialist Revolution of 1917.
Modern Communism
In the conditions of the twenty-first
century, modern communism is the required ideology. Today, modern
communism is the renaissance theory based on the outlook needed
by the working class and people to guide their struggles to
victory. Unless individuals, collectives, political movements and
parties take up the outlook of modern communism and elaborate
modern definitions for all social, political, economic and
cultural issues confronting humanity, the necessity for change
cannot be fulfilled.
Modern communism is not a peculiar leftwing extremist
ideology, which can be characterized as being as good or as bad as any
other ideology that one could choose, be it liberalism, social
democracy or some variation. Modern communism is the renaissance
ideology of this time and space, the outlook necessary to respond
to the exigencies of the here and now, to deal with the
political, social and cultural problems of the day to move
society forward and open the door to progress leading to the
emancipation of the working class and the elimination of social
classes and class society worldwide. Modern communism requires an
individual act of conscious participation in the act of finding
out to build the alternative based on recognition of the
Necessity for Change.
Leninism and the Victory of the Great October
Socialist
Revolution
Leninism built a political organization of the working
class based on dedication to the vision to overthrow the
capitalist state and replace it with a socialist state that could
prepare conditions for the emancipation of the working class. The
Leninist political party of the working class developed rules and
structures consistent with the level of the working class and its
needs in the here and now, especially democratic centralism, a
spirit of sacrifice for the cause of the working class and
contempt for betrayal of the socialist vision, and a sense of
self-confidence that workers and peasants are their own
liberators. The Leninist communist party did everything in its
power to raise the thinking, outlook and organization of the
workers and peasantry to the level necessary to overthrow the
ruling capitalist class.
Leninism and the October Socialist Revolution pioneered
a
model for Russian communists based on their revolutionary
practice in confronting their own capitalist class and ruling
elite. Leninism developed Marxism under the conditions of the
highest stage of capitalism, imperialism and the proletarian
revolution. Leninism and the revolutionary activity of the
working class and people transformed in practice the Russian
proletariat, turning it into an advanced contingent of the
international proletariat offering its resources to develop the
international communist and workers' movement for the
emancipation of the working class and liberation of the oppressed
peoples from the colonial yoke.
Leninism taught in practice that each and every
contingent of
the international working class had to create models out of their
own revolutionary practice. "We are our own models!" needed to
resound wherever workers were organizing. Revolutionary models
based on the thinking and practice of communists and workers
energize and give material meaning to the difficult work of
communists leading the working class within their national
boundaries, confronting their own capitalist class and ruling
elite.
Marxism developed to Leninism was the theoretical
expression
of the material developments with the maturing of capitalism into
monopoly, its spread throughout the world and the consequent
growth and maturing of the working class itself. Leninism was the
guide to organizing the working class and peasantry and moving
them towards revolution in the early decades of the twentieth
century in every national setting. The unity of the international
proletariat developed with its material expansion and by
successfully organizing the working class in each national
setting as an independent voice and material force for revolution
and as a sure thinking base and contingent of the international
communist and workers' movement for the emancipation of the
working class.
Detractors of Leninism, both within Russia and the
Soviet
Union and abroad, used the Russian model, which emerged from the
revolutionary practice within Russia, to block the development of
revolutionary models based on the practice of the communists and
the working class in each national setting guided by the ideology
of Leninism. These detractors stopped the development of
Marxist-Leninist theory and thinking communists by converting
Leninism into a dogma and not taking it up as a guide to analyze
the concrete conditions prevailing in each national setting and
the actions necessary to create the subjective conditions on the
basis of Leninist organization and tactics. Certain detractors from
Leninism introduced into Canada
models from the Soviet Union to block the development of Canadian
models based on revolutionary practice and thinking in
confronting the Canadian reality and ruling elite. This blocked
the Leninist outlook from taking root among Canadians as a guide
to developing the communist and workers' movement in Canada to
achieve its inherent aim.
On a world scale, detractors from
Leninism did everything in their power to block the use of
Marxism-Leninism as a guide to action and supplanted it with
exceptionalism. This was most notable in the U.S. when Earl
Browder captured leadership of the Communist Party of the U.S.
and introduced the exceptionalist line of "progressive" U.S.
imperialism, which did not require its revolutionary overthrow.
In Canada, the line of exceptionalism declared Canadian democracy
a "model" and gave rise to the Liberal Labour Alliance whereby
the role of the communist was to join forces with social
democrats to deliver the vote of workers to the Liberal Party.
Elsewhere the anti-Leninist line of exceptionalism was pushed in
agrarian countries as socialism with specific national
characteristics, as if fire, gravity or any science has "national
characteristics." These attacks, such as importing models and its
flipside of exceptionalism, were directed against the science of
Marxism-Leninism and to block its development within the concrete
conditions of the here and now and the Necessity for Change.
In Canada, the revolutionary youth confronted
the importing of
models and exceptionalism. Denouncing exceptionalism as an
attack on science and a return to medievalism, the revolutionary youth
insisted on the
necessity to have our own models based on our own revolutionary
practice. This enabled the Canadian communists and the working class
to develop their own work based on their own conditions and
thinking guided by the most advanced ideology. This led to the
affirmation and deepening of Leninism in the conditions of the
last decades of the twentieth century and to the renovation and
reaffirmation of Leninist principles on organization and tactics
when the revolution went into retreat by the turn of the century. The
leadership of CPC(M-L) insisted on contemporary Marxist-Leninist
Thought
as the basic ideology guiding our thinking and on the conscious
participation of each and every individual communist and worker
in revolutionary practice to build an alternative, giving rise to
the Necessity for Change analysis from which arose the motto of
CPC(M-L), The
Party's
Deed
Is
Its
Word. In this way the Canadian
working class can assume its proper place among other national
contingents of the international proletariat organizing and
fighting for the emancipation of the working class and the
elimination of classes and class society.
Leninism and the October Socialist Revolution moved
theory
forward and added to the ideological richness or storehouse of
Marxism and the Renaissance outlook. Lenin showed in practice
that theory is a living thing that must develop with the changing
conditions. This neither negates existing theory nor supplants it
with something else but adds to the basic richness of the science
of communism, which is the movement for the emancipation of the
working class and the elimination of class society and classes
internationally.
The October Socialist Revolution proved that socialist
revolution can be done. Leninism and subsequent developments in
the twentieth century disproved in practice the theory of
European socialism that society could advance through class
conciliation with pro-worker representatives taking over and
winning leading positions within the capitalist state machinery
and pressuring the ruling elite and capitalists to make socialist
concessions for the good of humanity. Leninism proved that
socialism was possible only through the revolutionary overthrow
of capitalism and the ruling elite, and by establishing the
working class as the ruling class with its own state machinery,
especially its own military. The defeat of the Paris Commune of
1871 had already proved that European socialism was the basis for
the bourgeoisie's nation-building project, later establishing
social-democracy as the form of rule after capitalism passed from
its laissez-faire stage into state monopoly capitalism and the
liberal-democratic form of rule. The Marxist conclusion was that
the working class needed to create from scratch its own
nation-building state with its own military and could not simply
take control of the existing capitalist state and its
institutions. The October Revolution showed in practice that the
working class could seize power, discard the capitalist state
machinery and replace it with new governing institutions of its
own making, such as the Soviets of Workers and Peasants and the
Red Army.
The development of the renaissance ideology to Marxism,
Leninism and Contemporary Marxist-Leninist Thought constitutes
the modern communism of today and represents a guide and vision
for the emancipation of the working class and the elimination of
classes and class society. Modern communism is a practical guide
to thinking and action in the present time and space, as Leninism
was in the here and now at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Modern communism is a vision that must be concretized in the here
and now, by recognizing the necessity to build the organizations
that move the working class and society forward towards its
vision. Modern communism opens the door to progress, to
accomplish those big revolutionary leaps, such as the French and
October Revolutions, that take years in the making but when they
occur propel social conditions forward with breakneck speed.
The general task facing the communists is the
organizing of
the working class into its own communist organization and to
prepare itself to assume political and economic power and build
socialism as the transition to the emancipation of the working
class, towards attaining the vision of communism and a classless
society.
Lenin speaking to the workers at the Putilov Factory, May 1917. (Painting by I.
Brodsky)
Modern communism is bound up with the emancipation of
the
working class internationally and cannot reach its goal of
emancipation of the working class and a classless society without
the vast majority of the world's proletariat uniting in this
project. The October Revolution established Russia as a liberated
homeland of the international proletariat providing contingents
everywhere around the world with concrete support and inspiration
for their own organizing and revolutionary efforts.
International unity of the proletariat is concretized
in the
many working class nation-building projects based on the concrete
conditions of the time and space in which they unfold, the here
and now and its necessity for change, which is the alternative
the working class strives for and consciously organizes. The
international movement of the proletariat depends on each and
every nation-building project led by the working class. Every
nation-building project depends on the solidarity and unity of
the international proletariat and the joint effort to defeat the
imperialist system of states. The October Socialist Revolution
established a base from which the support for the international
proletariat was concretized. Detractors of Leninism used this
base as a substitute for building a revolutionary base within
their own national boundaries. They rested on the victory of the
October Socialist Revolution and became organizers of solidarity
for the Soviet Union as their end all and be all rather than
working to transform their own national proletariat into another
liberated contingent of the international proletariat and support
the Soviet Union from that standpoint. The quantification of
liberated contingents of the international proletariat provides a
guarantee that the successes achieved by the movement for
emancipation of the international working class can be
transformed into the victory of the elimination of classes and
class society worldwide. The Russian people and other nations
that were to become the Soviet Union took a step towards the
emancipation of the international working class and a classless
society with the victory of the October Socialist Revolution.
They opened the door to progress. Workers, peasants and revolutionary
anti-colonialists around the world were energized by the October
Revolution, which deprived the imperialists of one world market and an
international system of states under their thumb, creating a flow.
Everywhere, at all levels of struggle whether working class or
anti-colonial, those who called themselves communists became leaders of
the progressive movement.
In practical terms the October Revolution propelled
communism
and the science of Marxism-Leninism to unparalleled heights and
popularity amongst the masses worldwide. Communist parties were
formed in country after country including Canada in 1921. The
quantification of communist parties demanded a new quality, a
development of Leninism to modern communism. For many however,
the existence of an organization calling itself communist and
members calling themselves communist working for social justice
and building solidarity with the Soviet Union became enough,
including in Canada. A new quality of thinking Canadian workers
and communists conscious of their mission and armed with Leninist
strategy and tactics to realize the necessary changes engendered
by the concrete reality was not developed. The quantification of
the communist party as an ally of the Soviet Union was deemed
sufficient. Many communist parties failed to grasp the necessary
missing quality that had been started in the Leninist Party in
Russia but needed to be developed anew in each and every
quantification. This quality of Leninism was the ability to
theorize on the political, social and economic conditions of the
late nineteenth century, which had propelled capitalism to its
highest form, imperialism, which is the amalgam of the state with
the most powerful monopolies. The lessons of the Paris Commune
first touched on by Marx in The
Civil War in France became
central to the new thinking of Lenin.
The Leninist thesis was presented at the Second
International
in the period of imperialist war preparations leading to the
First World War: the working class in each country must oppose
its own bourgeoisie and settle accounts with it by seizing power.
This means first and foremost that the working class must be
organized to oppose imperialist war and the war preparations of
its own bourgeoisie. European socialism opposed the Leninist
thesis and organized the working class of its respective
countries to support its own bourgeoisie in war and peace,
turning the working class into a reserve of the bourgeoisie.
European socialism was dealt a deathblow by World War 1 and the
October Socialist Revolution. However, European socialism
reorganized after the war as representatives of the October
Revolution by turning the Soviet Union into either a sterile
model to be followed for which solidarity was organized or by
criticizing the model of the Soviet Union and its perceived
shortcomings. Both were meant to stop the development of
revolutionary practice and the settling of accounts with their
own capitalist class. New contingents of liberated homelands of
the working class were not established through revolution in the
triad of Western Europe, North America and Japan. Leninist theory
was relegated to phrases used as dogma not as the summation of
concrete experience giving rise to principles that guide thinking
and action. Instead, organizing in the triad ensured social
democratic conciliation of the class struggle and reduced
communists to coordinators of decisions taken behind their backs
in the style of bourgeois parties, which constitute factions that
vie for power within the bourgeois state apparatus.
The October Revolution showed in practice the dead-end
of
European socialism. The Bolsheviks put an end to Russian
participation in the imperialist war. The Bolsheviks gave all
power to the Soviets as an institution to mobilize and elevate
the working class, peasants and soldiers to the position of
rulers of society and the new state. The October Revolution
transformed the imperialist First World War into a revolutionary
war on the Russian front to establish peace in Europe. The
October Revolution immediately asked for a just peace treaty with
Germany, which resulted in one that pulled Russia out of the
war.
The October Revolution proved that the working class
can have
its own independent view of how to organize the economy and
politics. Not only can it have its own view and practice but that
it must have its own view and practice if it is to be successful
in opening the door to progress, ensuring peace among nations
based on recognizing all nations big and small as equal and with
their right to self-determination, and moving the world towards
the emancipation of the working class and the elimination of
class society.
The October Revolution put the resources of the Russian
nation behind solving the problems of hunger and want and
providing education and health care for all, and established
concrete state mechanisms that were dedicated to solving social
problems in practice without hindrance from vested private
interests and the theft and draining of added-value by a
privileged idle class.
The October Revolution began the process to bring
ownership
of the socialized economy into the hands of the working class and
collective organizations of the peasantry. This meant first the
nationalization of the major industries and resources. Owners of
capital that gave up opposition to the October Revolution were
rewarded with compensation but removed from all positions of
authority within the economy. All capitalist inheritance was
banned. Those that refused to cooperate with the new working
class state had their capital expropriated without compensation
and were expected to work for a living.
The October Revolution began the process to harmonize
the
production of goods and services and the delivery of those goods
and services to the people. This entailed removing the parasites
from the banking and insurance sectors and eventually from all
sectors of circulation of goods and services, especially the
wholesale sector in the beginning.
The October Revolution began the process to solve the
land
question and organize the liberation of the oppressed peasantry
in Russia, the Ukraine and other peasant nations and regions of
the Soviet Union. This required the most difficult struggle to
move farming from petty production to mass industrialized farming
without destroying the peasants and forcibly removing them from
the land and depopulating the countryside. This meant first
expropriating the land and power of the landlords and secondly to
organize the poor and landless peasants for an eventual showdown
with the kulaks or rich peasants. For the first time in world
history a revolution of a social class, the poor and landless
peasants, was supported by the state and by the urban working
class that went in great numbers to the countryside to assist the
peasantry in this epic battle to collectivize and to transform
agriculture from petty to mass industrialized production and to
bring them machinery and help their peasant Soviets in assuming
real effective political power.
The October Revolution began to reform the methods the
state
used to claim revenue to fund social programs, the government
bureaucracy, the Red Army and police. Government claims were
established and determined at the centres of production of
added-value. Revenue gathered from the wealth produced by the
working class and peasants first had to go towards guaranteeing
the well-being of the masses in all its forms, especially their
social programs and into defending the revolution from
imperialist aggression and subversion. The claims of owners of
equity and debt (foreign and Russian) on realized added-value
were mostly eliminated. This left the claims of the state and the
claims of the actual producers as the sole claimants on the
added-value produced by the working class and peasants. Russian
colonial ownership of land and means of production abroad was
repudiated and handed back to the existing authorities in the
respective countries.
Leninism and the October Revolution unblocked the
movement
for enlightenment in Russia. This gave rise to significant
advances in the field of rights, especially economic rights,
directing the Soviet state to guarantee livelihoods and the
well-being of all throughout life. This movement for rights
culminated in the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, which
was certainly the most advanced at that time and later influenced
the deliberations on the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Graphic honouring the 1936 "Stalin Constitution"
The October Revolution began the historic transition
period
of socialism. Socialism is the heroic period of class warfare
bridging the gap between the four thousand year grip on human
society by ruling social classes and their exploitation of fellow
human beings and the new era of communism, which represents the
emancipation of the working class and the total elimination of
classes and class society. The period of socialism has to solve
the problem of eliminating Bourgeois Right and the arrangements
based on it from the thinking and practice of society, just as
bourgeois society had to eliminate the thinking and practice
based on Absolute Right. Today, bourgeois society faced with the
need for profound democratic and constitutional renewal is
reverting to arrangements based on Absolute Right,
making the recognition of Necessity for Change increasingly
urgent. Among other things socialism is a period of unremitting
struggle against the remnants of class society in terms of
culture, especially in ideological and social forms and for an
international transition to a new socially conscious human being
and societies without social classes and exploitation of humans
by humans.
The October Revolution was the first break in the chain
of
imperialist states. The imperialist system of states was breached
and severely weakened by the removal of such a huge land mass and
population from its control. The breach in the imperialist system
of states deepened the crisis of capitalism in its constant
search for markets to exploit and natural resources to plunder.
The October Revolution added a new contradiction to those
plaguing the imperialist system of states: the contradiction
between the countries within the imperialist system of states led
and dominated by the most powerful versus the new liberated
homeland of the international proletariat, the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.
As Lenin predicted: after the working class seizes
power the
bourgeoisie becomes even more ferocious and determined to regain
political and economic power by any means. The history after the
October Revolution is one of constant and unremitting class
struggle for the working class to retain power in the Soviet
Union and resist the attacks of those determined to restore
capitalism. The working class under the leadership of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Stalin fought heroically
to defend the nation-building project of the working class from
the imperialist system of states and from the intrigue and
subversion of the overthrown classes within the liberated
homeland of the international proletariat.
The industrialization of
the Soviet Union, spread of
science
and the application of technology to production and distribution,
especially during the 1930s when the imperialist system of states
was gripped by a devastating worldwide depression, was an heroic
feat accomplished without plundering foreign lands for investment
funds, raw materials and markets. This was the first time that
any large country accomplished the transition from petty
production to mass industrial production without foreign plunder
for investment funds and without mass dislocation and devastation
of the peasantry. This showed the world that a socialist
self-reliant economy can be built and that accumulated-value
(investment funds) for social programs and extended reproduction
can come from within the economy, from the hard work of the
working class and peasantry combined with science and modern
technology. However, this is only true when the society is free
from the claims of an idle ruling class, which owns the
socialized economy and directs it for its own narrow aim towards
recurring crises and war. With a self-reliant socialized economy
under the control of the working class and peasantry and freed
from an idle ruling class, the added-value from production can go
to the living conditions of the people, investments in social
programs, the needs of the state and into extended reproduction
of the socialized means of production and distribution.
The socialist transition period to communism in the
Soviet
Union was sabotaged when those in authority refused to continue
the class struggle against the remnants of class society in
political, economic, cultural, ideological and social forms. This
led to a block in the leadership to resolving in particular the
political problem of raising the working class to the position of
ruling class in practice. This refusal to lead the socialist
transition period to deal with its contradictions opened the
floodgates for a return to capitalism; this refusal and
capitulation to capitalist restoration was officially announced
by Nikita Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. The October Revolution came to
an unofficial official end at that time whereupon the Soviet
Union was converted into a social-imperialist power competing for
world domination with its nemesis, the United States. But the
lessons and glorious accomplishments of the October Revolution in
all fields of human endeavour will live forever. The rule of the
working class lasted far longer than the Paris Commune of 1871
creating an enormous wealth of direct experience to assist the
international workers and communist movement and its future
nation-building projects.
Socialist society is the most revolutionary and dynamic
of
all human societies that have hitherto come into being; it must
be so in order to mobilize the masses to oppose the remnants of
class society especially in political and social form and in
culture especially its ideological and social forms.
The key issue is that communists and the revolutionary
working class must rise to the occasion of the here and now and
the necessity to change the world they face. The working class
and communists struggle in the conditions that they have been
handed whether as revolutionary communist cadre within the former
Soviet Union fighting to advance socialist society, fighting
might and main to stop the remnants of the capitalist class from
retaking political power or fighting to organize the working
class in the imperialist countries for proletarian revolution
whether that revolution is in flow or retreat. There is no good
time or bad time or worse time or better time for communists and
the working class; there is only this time and space, the here
and now and the necessity for change. Sometimes communists forget
the long difficult days for the Bolsheviks during the period of
Stolypin reaction after 1905 following the cruel defeat of what
Lenin called the "dress rehearsal for the October Revolution."
The situation for the Bolsheviks became even worse still when
communist parties, especially in Europe within the Second
International, deserted revolution and betrayed the working class
by supporting their own capitalist class and its war preparations
prior to and during World War One. It must have seemed for Lenin and
the Bolsheviks that they stood alone as the only defenders of
communism and the international proletariat. But the important
and great thing was they persisted, and they led the working
class and peasantry to the victory of the October Revolution and
the "Ten Days that Shook the World!"
Whatever level of
development of the productive forces in the era of imperialism
and its mature stage of capitalism, the working class and its
communist party are confronted with the task of working out their
strategy and tactics to open society's path to progress by
ensuring the working class constitutes the nation and
vests sovereignty in the people. That is what is required, just
as Marx pointed out in the nineteenth century and Lenin achieved
in his time and space and others are doing in their conditions.
By
elevating the working
class to political power to begin its
own heroic nation-building project for socialism and the
transition to communism, historic successes will be transformed
into historic victory. As a contingent of the international
proletariat, the working class in all countries whether large or
small, in the midst of changes from petty to mass industrial
production or within a fully developed monopoly capitalist
system, all are charged by history to make a real contribution to
the international struggle for the emancipation of the working
class and the preservation of world peace, and the march forward
to the elimination of classes and class society once and for all.
The Great October Socialist Revolution led by Lenin and Leninism
made such a contribution. Let us mark its anniversary by upholding
modern communism and redoubling our efforts to prepare conditions for
the coming revolutionary storms and to accomplish our own plans to turn
historic successes into historic victory!
The Necessity for Analysis of the
Contemporary Conditions
- K.C. Adams -
Since Karl Marx presented his
economic analysis to the
world, the proletarian movement has gained enormous experience
and maturity and extended its reach throughout the globe. Many
well-meaning people quote Karl Marx's analysis of capital using
all the same terms and classifications from his works. It does
Marx a great disservice to keep repeating his thesis without
accounting for changes in the objective and subjective
conditions.
In the 1850s, when Marx wrote his analysis of the
stupendous economic developments taking place in the world, the working
class was in its infancy, arising in step with the overthrow of petty
production and the feudal autocracy. Even in
its infancy, comprised of first and second generation
proletarians still mostly uneducated, exploited to the bone, and
without any say or control over their lives, the working class
movement showed to the world that it was the class of the future.
The rapidly developing objective and subjective conditions were
poised to transform workers into modern conscious beings capable
of fashioning modern socialized relations of production in
conformity with the socialized productive forces that gave rise
to them, and capable of leading humanity in a historic struggle
to eliminate class privilege and the inhumanity of humans
exploiting humans.
As petty production crumbled throughout the world under
the
onslaught of socialized industrial mass production, the greatest
product of the new productive forces, the working class, set the
world on a course towards socialism, internationalism,
empowerment, democracy, a modern definition of rights and a
nation-building project of its own making.
In 1871, the working class stormed
the barricades and
seized
control of Paris but failed to consolidate its grasp on power for
reasons Marx analyzed and explained in his Civil War in
France. The experience taught the working class that to
succeed in its own nation-building project, it must replace the
existing bourgeois state, including importantly the police power,
with institutions and a state of its own making.
The failure of the Paris Commune
was corrected in practice a
little more than four decades later when Lenin led the Russian
proletariat and its allies to victory in the Great October
Socialist Revolution of 1917, smashing to smithereens the
existing Tsarist/bourgeois state and replacing it with a
socialist state under the control of the working class in
alliance with the peasantry, which was still numerous in the vast
countryside.
The socialist victory in Russia quickly put an end to
the First Imperialist World War. Under the leadership of Lenin's
Communist Party the revolution spread widely, soon creating the Soviet
Union. The nation-building project of the working class in close
alliance with the peasantry became a beacon of hope for oppressed
humanity everywhere, inspiring the growing legions of workers and their
allies to organize their own Communist Parties to lead their movements
for emancipation from class and colonial oppression.
Worldwide, the working class was undergoing immense
transformation in both quantity and quality as socialized
industrial mass production swept aside petty production in region
after region. The increasing demands of industrial mass
production for the application of science and technique spurred
the need for educated workers. The Soviet Union spearheaded the
rapid development of mass public education, health care and
journalism to serve the people and their movements for change.
The working class formed Communist Parties in every country and
involved workers in actions with analysis to defend their rights
and achieve their immediate and long-term objectives.
In quality, the working class was rapidly transforming
itself
from an uneducated, downtrodden mass to optimistic literate
individuals and activists within their collectives capable of
analyzing the concrete conditions and formulating their own
independent agenda and theory. The reality of a modern working
class reaching into every nook and cranny of the world, not just
as the most numerous class but with a new quality and ability to
think and analyze and sum up its vast experience in politics and
nation-building is a far cry from the working class and concrete
conditions when Marx wrote his famous economic works.
Marx made it clear that the analysis of the economic
developments in those early days of the overthrow of petty
production could only be explained from the vantage point of the
owners of the means of production, the descendents and inheritors
of the bourgeois merchants and their intelligentsia who led the
attack on petty production and the feudal autocrats. To serve the
working class and communist movement, Marx set himself the task
to dissect the cell of the capitalist economy, a commodity, into
all its bits and pieces and trace its tortuous journey from
production as use-value to exchange-value and back again as
use-value while viewing the process from the vantage point of an
owner of the means of production.
Marx explained how the economy forced bourgeois owners
of the
means of production into spontaneous actions beyond their control
and fashioned their aim to exploit the working class for private
profit without concern for humanity or the environment. He showed
how the owners of the competing parts of the capitalist economy
engaged in actions dictated by the way the economy directed them
to act, forcing them to spread throughout the world in a
relentless competitive drive for resources, investment
opportunities, markets and workers to exploit, all the while
engaging in unbridled exploitation of workers in their own
countries and unspeakable violence against the colonial peoples
and robbery of their wealth, land and resources.
Marx showed how the anarchy of
production without
conscious
control results in recurring economic crises and that the whole
was pushing the competing owners of parts of the economy into
increasingly violent clashes amongst themselves and with the
working class. He and Engels revealed as early as 1848 with the
publication of the Communist
Manifesto that the working class,
the most important product of the transformation to socialized
industrial mass production, was destined to resolve the
contradictions of the period and put humanity on a conscious
planned pathway towards the elimination of classes and class
society.
The working class through organizing itself and
strengthening its quality as a socially conscious class for itself and
for all humanity was marching inevitably towards a climactic
confrontation with the owners of the means of production over the
control and direction of the economy. This confrontation is centred on
the necessity to bring relations of production into conformity with
socialized industrial mass production.
Marx left a legacy of material that not only teaches
how people should view the concrete conditions of his day in the
nineteenth century but a guide as to how they can analyze their own
concrete conditions today in a similar manner to point the way forward.
Simply to restate Marx's economic theories will not do. More is
expected of the working class than the ability to cite already existing
theory.
Marx's analysis lifted a heavy burden of doubt and
uncertainty from the minds of working class leaders and the
intelligentsia of the time. It clarified for all and sundry that
the working class was the producer of all goods and services and
that in doing so produced the profit so coveted by the bourgeois
owners of the means of production.
To end four millennia of class privilege and
exploitation of humans by humans, history has directed the working
class to gain control of the means of production and importantly the
new value it produces and put the entire amount to use in the people's
interest. It is in their interest to move society forward in a
nation-building project in accordance with modern definitions and its
own agenda to emancipate itself and eliminate class privilege and
social classes.
With the historic feat of
the victory of the Great October
Socialist Revolution and the spread of communism, mass education
and socialized industrial production worldwide, the international
working class became a class of itself, for itself and by itself
with its own thinking, politics and ability to analyze
independently. The necessity arose to let the original Marxist
economic analysis play an even greater role in the lives of the
working class by developing it from the perspective of the
antithesis within the social relation, the working class.
The social relation between the working class and the
owners
of social wealth called capital
has already been breached and is
bound to resolve itself again into a synthesis -- a new working
class liberated from the social relation. The transitional
capitalist form between petty production of the feudal autocrats
and socialized industrial mass production of the modern working
class can and should be explained from the perspective of the
antithesis in the social relation, the working class.
Workers in the former Soviet Union or wherever they
have
gained control over the means of production within a
nation-building project or anywhere for that matter in today's
world of socialized industrial mass production did not then and
could not now view themselves as producing a "value over and
above the cost of production -- as the source of profit, interest
and rental incomes." Such a view is that of the thesis, the
bourgeois owners of social wealth in the social relation capital.
The working class has taken Marx's economic analysis
and
developed it, just as it should with any science. Any economic
analysis today has to start from the present concrete conditions
and their developments just as Marx analyzed the concrete
conditions during his period. The objective conditions to
complete the transition to socialized industrial mass production
with matching socialized relations of production are evident in
the massive growth of the socialized productive forces throughout
the world, international trade, the dominant size of the working
class everywhere and the accumulated experience of class struggle
and theory and the ideology of Contemporary Marxist-Leninist
Thought.
Theory lags behind practice and the concrete
conditions. It
could
not be otherwise, as theory and ideas emerge from practice and
the summing up of experience, not from previous ideas or from the
sky. The working class needs its own leadership and independent
politics and to put into practice its ability to analyze,
theorize and ideologize. The summing up of the experience of the
nation-building project in the Soviet Union and an economy under
the control of the actual producers, the seizure of control from
the Soviet working class by a new bourgeoisie that emerged from
within its midst, the current retreat of revolution and the
analysis of the contemporary economic conditions around the
world, which are fully mature and ready to make the final break
with petty production of the feudal era, require modern
definitions and economic terms and classifications from the
perspective of the actual producers of value, the working class.
The antithesis in the social relation capital, the
working class, has two hundred years of experience in the class
struggle and a wealth of theory and its own ideology. The working
class is poised for the historic battle to resolve the oppressive
dialectic once and for all and become a dynamic synthesis, the
new working class marching forward in a direction set in
accordance with the objective and subjective conditions.
The terms and classifications from Marx as formulated
in his
earthshaking work Das Kapital have served us well and
continue to enlighten us. The working class today is charged with
the responsibility of turning the terms and classifications
upside down and making the actual producers, the working class,
the centre of the economic analysis. Putting the working class at
the centre expresses in theory what has already happened in
practice in the former Soviet Union and what is poised to happen
again throughout the world in a yet more conscious manner -- the
resolution of the oppressive social relation capital and
its elimination within nation-building projects of the working
class all over the globe.
The
source
of
profit
is
indeed
the
work-time
of
the
working
class
on
means
of
production:
-
workers
produce
the
added-value
that
is
seized
as
profit
by
those
who
own
and
control
the
means
of
production;
-
workers
reproduce
their
own
value,
the
reproduced-value
they
claim
both
individually
and
socially
in
payment
over
a
lifetime
for
their
capacity
to
work
and to guarantee their reproduction and availability to work;
and
-
workers
transfer
and
preserve
in
the
social
product
the
transferred-value
from
the
machines
and
material
they
use
during
the
production
process.
Through work-time, workers transfer into production the
consumed value
from already
existing fixed and circulating value from machines and material, which
Marx classified as
"fixed and circulating constant capital," which in modern terms is
classified as fixed and
circulating transferred-value.
In the modern world view, the human factor, the working
class, sits at
the centre of
production and all emanates out from its work-time on the means of
production and is
explained from this vantage point.
Workers are the producers of what Marx classified as
"surplus value,"
which in modern terms
is classified as added-value.
Workers are the reproducers of what Marx classified as
"variable
capital," which in modern
terms is classified as reproduced-value.
From its own perspective, the modern educated working
class with
its own thinking, analysis,
theory, ideology and independent political agenda is not a "cost of
production" to anyone,
including itself, those who own and control the means of
production or to the economy.
Through work-time, workers produce new value comprised of added-value
and
reproduced-value. Those two forms of new value remain in constant
contradiction until the
social relation capital is resolved through revolution. Freed
from the domination of
the oppressive social relation, the economy and all the value workers
produce, reproduce and
transfer, the new and old value come under the control of the
actual producers and their new
state institutions to serve the people's interest, the general
interests of society and to guarantee
the well-being and rights of all.
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