108th Anniversary of Great October Socialist Revolution
November 7, 1917
Appreciating the Significance of Soviet Power Today
What it means to have a society such as the one which came into being in 1917 in Soviet Russia is once again very relevant. Soviet Russia created a new society by establishing Soviet Power which put the decision-making power and initiative in the hands of the workers, peasants, soldiers and patriotic intelligentsia. It put the building of a revolutionary party of the working class on the basis of Soviet power at the centre to make sure the workers were educated and trained to decide all matters of concern in a manner which favoured their interests. On this basis, the working class led the masses of the people to do likewise.
Appreciating the significance of Soviet Power today as a guide to what is to be achieved today on a new basis, is crucial to enable the working class and people to work as one to provide the rights of all with guarantees of their own making.
Today, as the working class and peoples of the world celebrate the 108th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, the dregs of the deposed ruling classes from the time of the Russian Revolution and the reactionary forces of this period continue to be consumed with a spectre of communism. It is a spectre which haunts them every time they engage in practices which go against the people’s interests. They cynically equate with terrorism their own stereotype of socialism and communism and defence of the rights of peoples of the world to wage resistance struggles against their enslavers and oppressors. The stereotypes are figments of their deranged imaginations, dominated by a morbid preoccupation with their own demise.
To keep the peoples out of power, the ruling elites of countries that espouse what is called “representative democracy” and its “liberal democratic institutions” push rule through ministerial prerogative powers that are exercised above the rule of law. This is then called a model of a democracy that should be imposed on others. It is a model which has no credibility whatsoever because its champions sanction genocide and impunity while they claim to defend democracy. The peoples are rising up against the so-called rules-based international order espoused by those who are backing genocide and war which threatens to destroy any who refuse to submit to their dictate. At the same time, maintaining the use of veto power by a select few countries in the United Nations Security Council who are expected to defend the international rule of law, in actuality preserves power relations which keep entire peoples and nations out of power, and is used to shield those who commit genocide and their backers from being held to account.
Propaganda about the “enemy within” and “foreign interference” is used to divert the attention of the workers and peoples of the world both from how decision-making takes place within what are called the paradigms of democracy, and how to create a system which is able to effectively channel all the human and material resources of their countries in a manner which favours them.
The experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution showed that order cannot be imposed from on top or without. It comes from within the conditions inherent to the ensemble of human relations and what they reveal. In speaking about world order, new world order or old world order, international rule of law or rules-based international order, something which has become very apparent is that these are attempts to keep people disempowered on the basis of the belief that order is imposed from above. In fact, it is brought into being by the peoples when they speak freely in their own names and wage resistance struggles in defense of their rights and the rights of all.
It is most obvious today with attempts to consolidate governments of police powers as the U.S. imperialists and their allies, including Canada are doing, as well as the Legault government in Quebec and provincial governments across the country. Never has the system called a representative democracy and its claims been so discredited on the world scale as is the case today. An order is not something which can be imposed from above.
In fact, the more the counter-revolution launched since the fall of the former Soviet Union deepens, the more the significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution and Soviet Power to human history increases. Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989-91 as a result of the restoration of capitalism in that country and imposition of a rule which deprived the people of Soviet Power, the consequences of the U.S.-led brutal neo-liberal anti-social offensive and the wars it has unleashed to achieve regime change and domination continue to cause tremendous damage to the peoples of the world and Mother Earth. The crimes of the U.S. and its allies today are unprecedented. Those committing these crimes include Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand whose intelligence agencies together with those of the U.S., make up the so-called Five Eyes political police services which are dictating policy which permits the takeover of the state by police powers and criminalization of the people in the name of “values.” It is only the peoples striving for their own empowerment who can bring this state of affairs to an end.
In the conditions of the retreat of revolution, the extreme violence unleashed by the U.S./Zionist killing machine in Gaza, as well as the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine and the internecine wars they are responsible for is being challenged as the peoples strive to take the initiative into their own hands by waging unprecedented resistance struggles against the current state of affairs. So long as the U.S. cartels and coalitions of the big powers which include other countries are expected to stop the crimes they are themselves committing, the suffering of the peoples will increase.
The current international system is discredited because it does not stop the violence, the killings, the threats of expanded war. Thus, the peoples are supporting the Resistance Movements, expressing confidence that they will open a way forward which vests sovereignty in the people, not ruling elites.
This is the time to advocate for the mass democratic renewal of the electoral process and a modern Constitution and support the modern conception that our peoples’ identities are and always have been forged in their resistance struggle against exploitation, oppression, colonial rule and Anglo-Canadian arrangements which deprive them of political power. A people is not defined by the identity of two founding “races” imposed on them first by the colonial power, and then sustained by the Anglo-Canadian state to divide the people and permit Canada’s integration into the U.S. war machine and Quebec along with it.
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