News and Views from the People's Struggle
Lenin’s important work, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, is a pamphlet written in 1918, responding to a pamphlet by the principal leader of the Second International, Karl Kautsky, entitled The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Lenin’s important book, “Left Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder, was written in 1920. According to the subtitle of the original manuscript, it was intended to be “a popular exposition on Marxist strategy and tactics.” After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917, the working class in the former Russian Empire had smashed its chains and set out on the road to socialism. Revolutionaries all over the world were eager to understand how the Bolsheviks had succeeded in defeating Tsarism and imperialism. Lenin, therefore, wrote this book to help guide the international communist movement and to sum up some of the critical lessons of the revolution in Russia.
When the first World War broke out in 1914, it threw the socialist movement into disarray. Within the Second International, socialist leaders from all over the world disagreed on how to analyze the causes of the war and the way forward. According to Vladimir I. Lenin: A Political Biography by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, “On the very outbreak of the war he set to work to make a profound and detailed study of the world literature on the economics, methods of production, history, geography, politics, diplomacy, the working class movement, the colonial question, and other spheres of social life in the different countries in the epoch of imperialism.” These Notebooks on Imperialism, over 600 pages of copious research, make up Volume 39 of his Collected Works. The Institute notes, “The fruit of this vast work of research was Lenin’s famous book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Completed in June 1916, this book is one of the greatest works in Marxist-Leninist literature.”
Vladimir Lenin was the great leader of the Bolshevik Revolution that overthrew tsarism and capitalism in Russia and built a new socialist society, for the first time in history. His book The State and Revolution is one of his greatest contributions to Marxist theory and is a cornerstone of Leninism.
The following text was presented by Michela Martinazzi, a member of the Central Committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization at the International Assembly Against Imperialism in Solidarity with Palestine organized by Workers World Party.
Comrades and friends,
On behalf of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, let’s start by thanking the organizers of this important event – Workers World Party – for bringing us together at a truly critical juncture in world history. By sharing views and analyses of the world as it actually is, we can learn from each other, and, from those insights, make plans to challenge the existing order of things.
We are certain this International Assembly against Imperialism in Solidarity with Palestine will be a great success. The old world is exploding, something new is coming into being.
The great revolution that is underway in Palestine is nothing short of amazing. In the face of genocide, the Palestinian people are waging a fight that has the potential to end the Zionist project and limit the influence of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Israel has always existed on stolen land and borrowed time. The clock is ticking.
Holding this Assembly on the 100th anniversary of the passing of the outstanding revolutionary V.I. Lenin was a good choice. This U.S. working class has a proud history that we sometimes lose sight of. For many years following Lenin’s death, revolutionaries held huge memorial meetings right here in New York City to mourn his passing and recommit to the revolutionary cause. For example, on January 21, 1937, more than 20,000 communists assembled in Madison Square Garden for that very purpose.
Lenin and imperialism
Lenin above all else was a revolutionary, who applied Marxism to the world around him and saw that competitive capitalism was giving way to monopoly capitalism. And this monopoly capitalism is what is referred to as imperialism. The two things are synonymous.
For today’s purposes, there isn’t time to recap Lenin’s great work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. If there is anyone in hearing range who has not read it, get yourself a copy and do so. You won’t regret it. If you have done so, there is no harm in going over it again – odds are you will get something out of it.
Lenin drew a number of extremely important conclusions from the reality that capitalism had entered its imperialist stage, and I am going to focus on a few of them.
First, noting the world had been divided up amongst a handful of great powers, Lenin pointed out that wars to redivide the world were inevitable. He stressed that the only way to end imperialist wars was by ending imperialism and replacing it with socialism.
Lenin also appreciated the vital role that the majority of humanity in the colonies and semi-colonies would exercise, and that the contradiction between imperialism and oppressed peoples of the world would occupy a vital place in the era of monopoly capitalism.
In his important 1913 article Backward Europe and Advanced Asia, Lenin contrasts the broad progressive national democratic movement in China with the monopoly capitalist rulers of Europe. Of China, he said “Hundreds of millions of people are awakening to life, light and freedom”, and of Europe’s rulers Lenin stated, “Advanced Europe is commanded by a bourgeoisie which supports everything that is backward.”
Lenin knew what all socialists and communists needed to realize as well, and, quite honestly, it is pretty likely everyone here today gets this – any movement of the oppressed that weakens imperialism is a good thing. It deserves our support and solidarity. It is like the question posed in the old labor song, “Which Side Are You On?”
Every setback for Wall Street is an advance for Main Street. Working and oppressed people in the U.S. have a common cause with all who are oppressed by imperialism. Every ship turned around by Yemen helps those of us who are fighting to end exploitation here in the U.S. – we have the same enemy. Do we want strong enemies? No, we want weak and defeated ones. By the same token, every blow that we are able to inflict on the class enemy aids those suffering under imperialism’s yoke.
Palestine and the decline of U.S. imperialism
The decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating. The people of Palestine are showing the way. All of us need to learn from their will to sacrifice and determination to win.
Lenin stressed that imperialism was capitalism that is moribund; it is dying. And we can see the symptoms all around them, including their political representatives. I invite you to join us at the Republican National Convention, July 15 in Milwaukee, and at the Democratic National Convention, August 19, in Chicago to confront them.
Marx talked about the vampire-like nature of capitalism. Let’s build unity. The many against the few. The people of the world can and will unite. Together we will put a stake in the heart of imperialism.
#FRSO #RevolutionaryTheory #International #Palestine #Imperialism #Lenin #MarxismLeninism
Since the writing of The Communist Manifesto and the founding of the First International, proletarian internationalism has been a cornerstone of scientific socialism, and is a pillar of Marxism-Leninism. Today, in the era of imperialism, putting genuine proletarian internationalism into practice demands that we be consistent anti-imperialists.
To mark the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Fight Back! is circulating the following article by the outstanding Russian revolutionary V. I. Lenin. At the time of the 1917 revolution, the Julian calendar was in use. When the modern calendar was adopted, the revolution of October 25 was celebrated on November 7.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), erected a state of Lenin in front of their party headquarters in Gelsenkirchen, Germany on June 20. More than 1100 people took part in the event.
According to April 23 report in Granma, “On Havana's Lenin Hill, a small group of trade union leaders, headed by Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, Party Political Bureau member and general secretary of the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC), dedicated a floral tribute to the legendary Bolshevik, who played a key role in the Russian Revolution, the greatest lesson in the annals of history of what the emancipated working class can achieve in unity of thought and action, guided by socialist principles.”
On April 22, 1870 the great Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born in a small city of Simbirsk near the Volga River. Lenin stood at the forefront of Russia’s revolutionary movement, at the helm of the world’s first socialist country, and simultaneously brought into being the modern international communist movement. Lenin’s thinking and the movement he helped create shook the world, and with our collective efforts, will shape the future.