Last month marked the 30th anniversary of one of the most colossal events in history. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union formally dissolved itself, bringing an end to the 70-plus year project of building socialism, and reintroducing capitalism to nearly a fifth of the world.

The Soviet collapse marked the rock-bottom low point for 20th century socialism, but it also wasn’t alone. Both before the events in Russia and for nearly a decade after, socialist countries in Eastern Europe saw sweeping counter-revolutions that brought down the ruling workers parties and restored rule by the richest 1%. Large protests, military intervention and ambivalent responses from disloyal or hopelessly despairing party leaders – these were the superficial hallmarks of the era.

In some countries like Bulgaria, the communist party put up a fight and actually won elections under the new capitalist-friendly constitution – a sin that quickly got them outlawed by the new ruling classes, no matter their empty rhetoric about “free and fair elections.” For Albania and Yugoslavia, it took outright military intervention by NATO members well into the 1990s to finally put the proverbial nail in red coffin.

It’s all worth reflecting on because of the untold misery brought about by monopoly capitalism in the last 30 years. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, bringing death and widespread economic suffering to working people in the U.S. and around the world, there’s a growing collective sense that something has to give. This system, ruled by billionaires and banks who get rich off of the labor, land and resources of the rest of us, can’t go on. But as people explore alternatives to the capitalist hellworld of our time, the Soviet socialist project remains an important experience from which to draw lessons.

Let’s be clear on this: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of socialism in eastern Europe was a catastrophe for workers and oppressed people around the world. Born out of the carnage and destruction unleashed on the world by monopoly capitalism, the Soviet Union became the first socialist state in history. It was a society ruled by the working class in alliance with the peasantry, who exercised political power through the communist party. Over the 20th century, revolutions—usually born out of similar conditions of war and devastation—saw other workers parties come to power, eventually encompassing nearly half the world’s population.

That’s fine history, but what was so significant about socialism in the Soviet Union?

Socialism is just a better system for the vast majority of people than capitalism. We know this because it has actually existed for over a century and still exists today in several countries. As the first socialist country in history, the Soviet Union represented a light in the dark for workers and oppressed people around the world. It showed plain as day that capitalism—with its obscene inequalities, rampant poverty and exploitation, war, disease, famine and oppression—was not the only possible way. The working class could take power for themselves as a class and use it to build a new type of society based on freedom and solidarity.

Here’s what the Soviet Union achieved in more than 70 years of building socialism: They created an economy free from unemployment, inflation, poverty, recessions, homelessness and massive income inequality. This wasn’t ‘sharing poverty’ either, as so many liberal and right-wing historians alike allege. The Soviet economy grew at a breakneck pace for most of its existence, mainly due to socialist planning, and increased its people’s living and consumption standards faster than any other country before it.

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, Russia’s industrial output was 12% that of the United States; 50 years later, it had risen to 80% that of the U.S.—and 85% of the U.S.’s agricultural output. That kind of economic growth is transformational, but it wasn’t growth for growth’s sake or for the private enrichment of a few at the top. In the Soviet system, the people as a whole—ordinary working people of many nationalities—enjoyed the benefits of the growth that their hard work made possible.

At a time when inflation in the U.S. is at its highest rate in decades—especially for necessities like housing, gas, food, health care and utilities—it’s shocking to think that rent in the Soviet Union never exceeded about 3% of the family budget. Utilities ran only a bit higher at 5%. Certain luxury goods cost a lot more, but through central planning, the socialist state set prices for food and other necessities lower than their equivalent ‘market value.’

In the socialist bloc, workers had a guaranteed right to a living-wage job. Soviet workers in the mid-1970s took an average of a month’s paid vacation every year, traveling to state-sponsored resorts and neighboring countries with their families. Every worker had paid sick leave if they took ill. There were no health insurance companies, expensive premiums, high deductibles and co-pays or hospital bills at all. Health care was free for everyone.

It may come as a surprise to know that the Soviet Union had twice as many practicing doctors per person as the U.S. for most of its existence, but it shouldn’t. Education was also completely free, from elementary schools to post-graduate university programs. Soviet college students mainly came from working class backgrounds, but they never had to take out a crippling loan from a bank. The state provided living stipends for students, which meant more people could pursue their interests, talents and passions for sciences and arts. That produces more doctors and nurses, but it also produces world-class engineers, mathematicians, filmmakers, authors, architects and more.

All workers in the socialist bloc also belonged to a union, which administered their job benefits and protected them from over-zealous managers and job hazards. It’s tough to imagine in the United States, but unions in socialist countries exercise an enormous amount of institutional power on the job, over the economy and in the government. In the Soviet Union, for instance, unions could unilaterally veto discipline, including terminations, issued by managers. Workers could actually discipline or fire their supervisors and managers by recall petition through their unions.

But perhaps most staggering of all to reflect on 30 years after its collapse is the level of income inequality—or lack thereof—in the Soviet Union. Few features better encapsulate the fear and loathing of life in the United States than its gargantuan wealth gap between the top 1% and the rest of us. “The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure” read a Time Magazine headline from September 2020—and its only gotten worse.

While working people struggle to make ends meet, stay healthy and keep the lights on at home, corporate vultures like Jeff Bezos and dumbasses like Elon Musk—both billionaires—are presented by the establishment media as icons of success and innovation. In this seemingly forever-COVID capitalist system, they have succeeded—in robbing the rest of us blind. Corporate CEO pay in 2020 clocked in at 351 times that of an average worker, according to an Economic Policy Institute report in August 2021. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the enormous wealth gap has led to higher risk of COVID infections and death among the poor and working class, particularly Black workers—although plenty of studies have proven the link anyway.

Just to say, what little income inequality did exist in the Soviet Union is unrecognizable by today’s standards in America. There was no class of millionaires or billionaires in the Soviet Union. People couldn’t own stock in companies they never worked for, collect dividends off the hard work of others and call that a job. Everybody who could work did work. Some people made more than others, but not in the way we’re used to in a capitalist country.

The highest earners in the Soviet Union were teachers and college professors, scientists and engineers, writers, artists, and public administrators. They might take home as much as 1500 rubles every month. Government officials made a little less than half of that at roughly 600 rubles. Industrial directors who headed up particular enterprises made somewhere between 190 and 400 rubles per month, largely depending on the industry and its performance. Workers earned between 150 and 200 rubles. In other words, even at its most egregious, the top-paid earner in the Soviet Union only made about ten times the income of an ordinary worker.

This widespread social and economic equality had other impacts too. The Soviet Union and the socialist countries in eastern Europe produced some of the most interesting, groundbreaking films of the time—even as American studios and theaters refused to show most of them. Ordinary working people packed movie theaters to take in everything from science-fiction like Solaris and Stalker to intense war films like Come and See—all three of which are regarded today as some of the greatest films ever, even in America. Artists produced unique, original art for working people, and state support for the arts insured that workers had unprecedented access to take it in, enjoy and learn. Most households had extensive personal libraries full of books, journals and art. It comes as no surprise that “Soviet citizens read more books and saw more films than any other people in the world,” according to a UN report from the 1980s.

Of course the impact of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries extended far beyond its own borders. Whatever its particular shortcomings or policy mistakes, the Soviet Union unquestionably served as a counter-weight to U.S. imperialism. Along with the Soviets, countries like German Democratic Republic (East Germany) provided tremendous material and diplomatic solidarity to liberation movements around the world fighting colonialism and national oppression. Socialism in action gave oppressed people around the world a living, breathing example of a society free from capitalist exploitation. Titanic freedom-fighters like Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro drew inspiration—and support—from socialism in the Soviet Union, as did countless Black revolutionaries, organizers and activists in the United States.

Driven by an unending desire for greater profit, the monopoly capitalist countries seized on the collapse of the socialist bloc as an opportunity to sink their teeth deeper into Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Even Yugoslavia, which had split sharply with the Soviet Union shortly after World War II, saw itself carved up by NATO in the aftermath. The ongoing ‘forever wars’ of the U.S.’s so-called War on Terror are unimaginable without the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union.

Of course, capitalism’s restoration plunged working people in Russia and eastern Europe into a torrent of poverty, disease, starvation, unemployment, inflation and countless other miseries. Old national and religious prejudices sprung out of the hellscape ushered in by the overthrow of socialism. Vicious armed conflicts broke out among nationalities and ethnic groups that had lived fraternally for nearly seven decades under socialism. Hateful neo-Nazi and right-wing nationalist movements saw a massive resurgence, no longer held at bay by the socialist state. In no uncertain terms, the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union made the world a much, much worse place.

The Soviet socialist system wasn’t perfect. Starting in the 1950s, the Communist Party began to stray from its commitment to Marxism-Leninism and walk back important parts of its practice. The reasons for this shift, to revisionism and opportunism are myriad, but over time a deeply compromising ideological trend came to predominate among the Soviet party’s leadership. Many other communist parties in eastern Europe and elsewhere followed suit. Party leadership began tolerating and eventually encouraging economic and social trends that weakened the socialist system and strengthened the forces committed to bringing back capitalism. The re-emergence and rapid growth of the black-market ‘second economy’ helped lay the groundwork for the events of 1991. Outside pressures by the imperialist counties led by the United States had a hand in this too.

Thankfully though, the fall of socialism in the Soviet Union is not the end of the story. Facing a reversal of fortune for socialists everywhere, a few countries took a different path and resisted the tidal wave of capitalism’s return. Cuba stands strong, even after suffering under the U.S.’s barbaric economic blockage for more than six decades. Just last year, Cuba stunned the world with its ingenuity and efficiency in developing its own COVID vaccine and distributing it to more than 90% of people, giving it one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Vietnam, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Laos have all seen similar success in the fight against COVID while protecting the livelihood of their people.

Socialist China and its unprecedented, roaring economic success stand out as a particularly important part of this story. Like it did in the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc, the grim reaper of capital eventually visited China in the form of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, which were plainly aimed at overthrowing the socialist system as similar protests had done elsewhere. A section of the Communist Party even supported these aims. At the decisive moment though, the party did the right thing and put its foot down. They used the socialist state to stop the slide back into capitalist oblivion and misery. For whatever mistakes and errors these parties have made in the last 30 years, their decision to continue building socialism has made life better for the vast majority of working people, both in their countries and around the world.

Point-blank, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc was a catastrophe for the working class around the world. Workers in countries like the United States might not have seen it that way at the time, but monopoly capitalism’s largely unimpeded 30-year reign has made life worse for all of us.

Between the carnage and torture of endless wars for oil, economic crisis after economic crisis, rampant police crimes and racist vigilante violence, the apocalyptic weather events brought on by climate change, and the explosive spread of COVID-19, it’s all too clear that December 26, 1991 did not represent “the end of history,” as liberal academic Francis Fukuyama famously wrote. The same class struggle that drove workers, soldiers, sailors, peasants and oppressed people to overthrow a centuries-old monarchy in Russia rages on in 2022.

People committed to ending our collective misery and creating a better world for ourselves and our children should look at the Soviet experience and learn from it. Socialism is not an elaborate system neatly worked out in the brains of intellectuals and academics, nor is it a political science checklist. Workers and oppressed people of many nations have built and are continuing to build socialism. It exists, past and present, for us to learn from its victories as well as its defeats in the hopes of building a future world worth living in.

Editor’s note: For those interested in learning more about the causes and history of the Soviet Union's collapse, Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny's book Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union remains a must-read English-language account. Several of the points in this essay are drawn from their book, which is still as thought-provoking and important for socialists to read as it was in 2004 on its release. For an equally insightful account of China's experience in the same period with the Tiananmen protests of 1989, as well as the CPC's different response, readers should check out Mick Kelly's Continuing the Revolution is Not a Dinner Party: Looking Back at Tiananmen Square, the Defeat of Counter-Revolution in China.

#UnitedStates #Socialism #PeoplesStruggles #USSR #SovietUnion

On May 8, 1945, at 11:01 pm Central European Time – already May 9 in the USSR – the German surrender took effect, ending World War II in Europe. The war with Germany and her fellow members of what we now call fascist allies in Europe – Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Slovakia and Finland – had already claimed the lives of perhaps 50 million people. In the ensuing years, oceans of ink have been spilled by right-wing historians and polemicists in an attempt to distort or even minimize the significance of this date. The purpose of this rewriting of history is in some cases to defend fascism, but in many more it is simply to diminish the prestige of the Soviet Union, the first socialist state. We think it is appropriate to call to mind a few facts.

First, the Nazi empire was guilty of the most astounding crimes, some without any real parallel in history. Over the summer of 1944, some 400,000 Hungarian Jews – almost the whole Jewish population of Hungary – were transported by rail to Auschwitz, a death camp the Nazis had built in occupied Poland, and murdered, down to the last child. Most were gassed, but history records that many of the children were thrown alive into crematory fires – sometimes more than a thousand children were killed this way in a single day. In all, 6 million Jewish people were murdered in the most efficient genocide campaign the world has had the misfortune to witness. Many millions more were murdered among the Romani, Slavic and other peoples the Nazis considered racial inferiors and among Soviet prisoners of war. Still hundreds of thousands more were murdered among people with disabilities, sexual minorities and other targeted groups.

Second, the capitalist world was for a long time complacent about the rise of Nazism. The governments of France, England and Poland stood idly by while Hitler annexed first Austria and then Czechia. The cost of this was enormous. Almost half the tanks used by the Nazis in the conquest of France were built at the Skoda works in occupied Czechia. And this was not an isolated case. Even with Hitler's racism on full display, the democratic governments of Europe were far more concerned with his value as a bulwark against socialism.

Third, it was the Soviet Union which, from the beginning, was the main enemy of Nazi Germany. What we now know as the Axis originally called itself the Anti-Comintern Pact. Long before what is widely considered the start date of World War II, Soviet soldiers had already fought bloody battles against German and Italian fascists in Spain, and against Japanese militarism in Manchuria. Throughout the period of appeasement by the capitalist powers, the Soviet government urged the strongest possible resistance to Nazi aggression, even going as far as to offer one million Soviet soldiers for the defense of Czechoslovakia – an offer which Czechoslovakia would probably have accepted, but the Polish government refused to allow transit or supply of this army through their country. The period of the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR was an emergency measure, agreed by the Soviets only when it was clear they would otherwise be standing alone against Germany and might have to fight a second front against Japan. Throughout the period of this pact, the Soviet government and people frantically built weapons, constructed defenses, and organized and prepared for the decisive confrontation they knew very well was only a matter of time.

Fourth, the decisive sacrifices and the decisive victories in the war against Nazi Germany occurred on the Eastern Front. Casualty figures compiled by the German military showed that between the start of the war and January 31, 1945, 3.5 million of the 4.4 million German casualties had occurred on the Eastern Front. The single Battle of Stalingrad cost the Germans as many casualties as the entire fighting in France, including both 1940 and 1944. When the German invasion of the USSR began in the summer of 1940, the Soviets faced 3.8 million soldiers and 7000 armored vehicles. When the Western Allies made their greatly delayed landing in Normandy, they faced only 600,000 men and 2000 armored vehicles. Worse for the Germans, the crack Nazi units which had conquered France in six weeks in 1940 had been destroyed in the battles on the Eastern Front and rebuilt with raw recruits. In sacrifice, the USSR lost 27 million of her citizens in the war – by far the most of any country in the European conflict. Many of them were killed in combat, but millions more were murdered in prisoner of war camps and concentration camps or were among the civilians massacred or starved by the invaders.

Fifth, the Soviet victory in World War II was possible only due to socialist construction. In World War I, the Russian empire fielded by far the weakest army of any of the major powers. Though it had an almost unlimited supply of soldiers, its level of training, organization, and equipment was disastrously bad. During World War II, in every single year, the newly industrialized USSR outproduced Germany – at the time, Europe's premier industrial power – in every major category of war material – planes, tanks, cannons, rifles, machine guns. This tremendous advantage in war material was key to the Soviet ability to resist and ultimately defeat an invasion force which had completely conquered Belgium and France – at the time, a major military power in her own right – in just six weeks.

The reality is that the Soviet Union was the most consistent and dangerous enemy of fascism, the worst evil that Europe has ever suffered, and Soviet efforts and the strength of the USSR were key to fascism's defeat. This fact was not lost on many people in 1945, and certainly not on the handful of survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp liberated by the Soviet 322nd Rifle Division on January 31 of 1945.

No objective evaluation of socialism is possible without an objective evaluation of the real world history of socialism. In the long list of accomplishments of real world socialism to date, we must prominently include playing the key role in the defeat of Nazism.

#UnitedStates #International #Asia #Europe #Nazis #WorldWarII #Socialism #Antifascism #Russia #SovietUnion

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following article written by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong on the 60th birthday of Joseph Stalin

Stalin, Friend of the Chinese People

On the Twenty-first of December, Comrade Stalin will be sixty years old. We can be sure that his birthday will evoke warm and affectionate congratulations from the hearts of all revolutionary people throughout the world who know of the occasion.

Congratulating Stalin is not a formality. Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.

Living in a period of the bitterest suffering in our history, we Chinese people most urgently need help from others. The Book of Odes says, “A bird sings out to draw a friend's response.” This aptly describes our present situation.

But who are our friends?

There are so-called friends, self-styled friends of the Chinese people, whom even some Chinese unthinkingly accept as friends. But such friends can only be classed with Li Lin-fu,[1] the prime minister in the Tang Dynasty who was notorious as a man with “honey on his lips and murder in his heart”. They are indeed “friends” with “honey on their lips and murder in their hearts”. Who are these people? They are the imperialists who profess sympathy with China.

However, there are friends of another kind, friends who have real sympathy with us and regard us as brothers. Who are they? They are the Soviet people and Stalin.

No other country has renounced its privileges in China; the Soviet Union alone has done so.

All the imperialists opposed us during our First Great Revolution; the Soviet Union alone helped us.

No government of any imperialist country has given us real help since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan; the Soviet Union alone has helped China with its aviation and supplies.

Is not the point clear enough?

Only the land of socialism, its leaders and people, and socialist thinkers, statesmen and workers can give real help to the cause of liberation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, and without their help our cause cannot win final victory.

Stalin is the true friend of the cause of liberation of the Chinese people. No attempt to sow dissension, no lies and calumnies, can affect the Chinese people's whole-hearted love and respect for Stalin and our genuine friendship for the Soviet Union.

#China #PeoplesStruggles #MaoZedong #Socialism #Stalin #SovietUnion

This paper prepared collectively by the central leadership of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and was presented by leading member of FRSO, Frank Chapman, at the Centennial Commemoration of the October Revolution, held in New York City, July 2017. The event was sponsored by People’s Response for International Solidarity and Mass Mobilization (PRISM) in cooperation with the U.S. member organizations of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS-US).

Introduction

As communists and revolutionaries, we welcome this opportunity to mark the 100th anniversary of Russia’s 1917 October Revolution, and to discuss its ongoing relevancy to the struggle today. The October Revolution was a world-changing event. At one stroke, it settled the question of whether another world was possible. Releasing one-sixth of the world from the chains of wage slavery, it smashed the myth that rule by the few was a sort of permanent condition, and, by successfully establishing proletarian political power, the October Revolution succeeded in opening the road to socialist construction. For the years that followed, the great achievements of the Soviet Union created a new and better way of life and would exercise a powerful effect on working and oppressed people around the globe. Not only did the October Revolution change the lives of the millions who lived in what would become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), it changed the world revolutionary movement in a big way. Mao was later to say, that the October Revolution sent the “salvos of Marxism to China” where it was to become a powerful force in the movement for national liberation and socialism. In the U.S., the October Revolution came to exercise a magnetic pull on the revolutionaries in the socialist, labor and other people’s movements, contributing to the creation of a single, revolutionary Communist Party in the early 1920s, which became an important factor in the country’s political life.

How we can learn for the October Revolution in the U.S.

The Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, Stalin and others, creatively applied Marxism to the concrete conditions of Russia. In doing so they waged a consistent struggle against opportunism in the socialist and labor movements – internationally and in Russia itself. It was this struggle against opportunism that prepared the Bolsheviks to lead the working class in the seizure of power. The October Revolution was a qualitative leap, from one historical epoch to another – a period in which moribund capitalism is heading for extinction and where socialism is on the agenda. This process in turn gave rise to Leninism; Leninism being Marxism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.Marxism-Leninism is a science, the science of revolution. It allows us to understand the laws that govern the processes at work in the world, and by understanding those laws, including those of how history develops, we can grasp the necessity and understand our freedom to change the world. Because Marxism-Leninism is a science, a science that is by necessity and fact, universal in character, we can take the lessons of the October Revolution and learn from the experience in a materialist way that helps us to advance our work in the U.S. Lenin made the point that the soul of Marxism was a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, so we cannot say that it something that is fixed, static, or immutable. Rather, Marxism-Leninism is and will be constantly enriched through cycles of practice, and the summation of that practice.We learn from the past, to guide our work in the present and to serve the future, which includes our revolutionary goals. We have no desire to be a historical reenactment society, and it should be obvious to all serious people that we cannot rely on analogies from Russian history to understand current conditions.

Conditions in the U.S. today

The U.S. today is empire in decline, beset by contradictions internal and external. Lenin stated imperialism was capitalism in its moribund stage, and it is arguable that the irrational bigot Donald Trump is a fitting political representative of a sick and dying system.Internationally, the U.S. faces a growing challenge for the national liberation movements and the national democratic governments, the socialist countries, and other imperialist rivals. Thus, the U.S. is increasing military spending, taking hostile actions against socialist Korea and Cuba, and is stepping up the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and other places. Within the U.S., the monopoly capitalists are perusing an agenda of austerity and reaction, which means an intensification of racist discrimination and national oppression, directed at African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, Arab and Asian Americans, and indigenous peoples including Pacific Islanders. There is an attack on the standard of living of working people (including wages, health care, pensions, and perhaps most importantly – the right to have trade unions), attacks on the rights of women, and organized bigotry against Muslims. The point here is not do draw up a comprehensive list of the crimes being committed by the monopoly capitalist class, nor is it to chart the restructuring of the economy and political polarization that has unfolded since the great economic crisis of 2007, rather it is to provide a general picture of a wide-ranging war that the bourgeoisie is waging on the people of the U.S. and by extension, the peoples of the world.Fortunately, the war that the rulers of the U.S. are waging on working and oppressed people is not a one-sided one, and we are now in the midst of one of the greatest upsurges of struggle since the 1960s. In cities across the country, massive and militant protests have taken place against police crimes and there is a growing movement for community control of the police. There is a growing tide of anger over the anti-immigrant polices of the Trump administration. Trump’s attempted ‘Muslim ban’ drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets and airports. It is estimated that about 20% of the people of the U.S have taken part in protests and demonstrations since Trump took office.Finally, there another point concerning objective conditions that bears mentioning: the communist movement in the U.S. is small. This does not negate the fact that the existing Marxist-Leninist organizations have not made big contributions to the people’s struggle. We have. Rather it is recognition of the reality that the U.S. is a large country with big working class, and for those of us who are revolutionaries, the task of building a new communist party remains on our agenda. At any given time, communists have three general tasks: to win all that can be one in the struggle while landing the strongest possible blows on the enemy; to raise the general level of consciousness and organization among the people; and to build communist organization win the advanced to Marxism-Leninism. As we carry out these tasks there is an incredible amount that we can learn from the October Revolution and the work by Russian communists to make it a reality.

The October Revolution and the need for a communist party

Given that no ruling class, be it the capitalists and landlords who ruled Russia in 1917, or the monopoly capitalists who rule the U.S. today, have ever left the stage of history voluntarily, working and oppressed people need to be organized to take political power by whatever means necessary. This is basic lesson of the October Revolution that is universally valid. Lenin made the following points about what is needed for revolution:

It is only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and politically active workers) should fully realize that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics… weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it. (LCW Vol 31, p. 85)

To this we can add another precondition – the need for a Communist Party. The outstanding revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong put it like this:

If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs. (MSW Vol 4, p. 284).

Our organization, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), does not claim to be the party of the working class. We are a communist organization that is working to build a new communist party. The reason we do not claim to be the party is that we do not in any real way, to use Stalin’s formulation, encompass the advanced detachment of the working class. The problem is this: most advanced workers – the activists, organizers and leaders – are not revolutionaries or communists. The active of our class are in one place politically and the communists are in another. There is a gap. A separation. So, we need to fuse Marxism and the workers’ movement.

One of the great strengths of the communist movement in Russia is that it dealt with the problem of fusing Marxism and the workers’ movement in a practical and meaningful way. In 1899 Lenin posed the issue like this:

The separation of the working-class movement and socialism gave rise to weakness and underdevelopment in each: the theories of the socialists, unfused with the workers’ struggle, remained nothing more than utopias, good wishes that had no effect on real life; the working-class movement remained petty, fragmented, and did not acquire political significance, was not enlightened by the advanced science of its time. For this reason we see in all European countries a constantly growing urge to fuse socialism with the working-class movement in a single Social-Democratic movement. When this fusion takes place the class struggle of the workers becomes the conscious struggle of the proletariat to emancipate itself from exploitation by the propertied classes, it is evolved into a higher form of the socialist workers’ movement—the independent working-class Social-Democratic party. (LCW, Vol 4, p. 255)

In addition, Lenin and the Bolsheviks also developed measures to consolidate the party – organizationally, politically and ideologically – all of which we can learn from today.

Taken as a whole, conditions in the U.S. today are favorable for building communist organization. The large number people who self-identify as “socialists” in the wake of the Sanders presidential campaign is an indicator of this, as is the upsurge of struggle against police crimes, the large-scale protests against Trump, and the openness in the labor movement to class-struggle unionism. Also, coming off the economic crisis of 2007, and the restructuring of the economy that has taken place since then, there is a sense among many, especially among young people, that capitalism is a failed system.In all of the people’s struggles, the issue of “Who will lead?” is a basic one. Communist leadership is not preordained. It is earned, though our clarity of political line, organizational capacity and hard work. Communists need to be good at learning at the same time as we teach others. We cannot afford to criticize from the sidelines. We need to step up, and if we do not do so, opportunists of various stripes will be glad to do it for us.For example, objectively speaking, there is a movement against Trump. It began while he was on the campaign trial, and many of us marched against him and his agenda in the streets of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention. There was a huge outpouring of struggle, which was largely spontaneous, following his election, and we are now in a period where large-scale fightbacks can be organized against his more egregious attacks – such as the Muslim ban.In building the movement against Trump, we need to contend with reformists and other class forces, including those tied with the leadership of the Democratic Party, over the issue of who should lead. The fact is the only way we can lead this movement is by being the ranks of those who are the practical organizers of it – which means that we are among those calling the demonstrations, organizing the big protests, and are among the speakers putting out a clear line on the issues of day. To the extent that we can, we want the movement to target not only Trump, but also the monopoly capitalists who stand behind him.In this struggle, like every other popular movement, is critical for communists do more than work to raise the general level of consciousness among the masses of people, and we can’t be content with being the among the best of the activists either. In every battle that we engage in it is critical we are summing things up with the activists and leaders, helping them understand the laws the govern monopoly capitalism, and explaining the need for socialism. By doing this we grow the communist movement in this country, and lay the basis for creating a new communist party. It should also be noted that this work of building communist organization in the crucible of the day-to-day struggle helps to create the material basis for Marxist-Leninist organizations, to engage in joint practice, to engage in summation, and, where possible, to the achievement of principled organizational unity. Strategy for revolution in the U.S. and the national question

All revolutionary strategy is based on answering the question, “Who are our friends and who are our enemies?” This is impossible without understanding the specific features of U.S. society.

Our strategy for socialist revolution is constructing a united front against the monopoly capitalist class, under the leadership of the working class and its political party, with a strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the oppressed nationalities at the core of this united front.It is vital to understand the special needs and demands of entire nationalities within the borders of the U.S – African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, Asian Americans, Native peoples including native Hawaiians, Arab Americans and others, are bound by the chains of national oppression. Racism in the U.S. carries the stench of the slave market. It maintains that Black people are inferior and that racial antagonisms are ahistorical and independent of the development class societies. We totally reject this notion.Lenin referred to pre-1917 Russia as a “prison house of nations,” and that is exactly what the U.S. is today, where racist discrimination and systematic inequality in all spheres of life – economic, political, and cultural – is the order of the day. One of the main reasons that Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) was successful in October 1917 was that it championed the fight against national oppression, and it consistently stood for the national liberation and self-determination. There is a lot we can learn from this experience. Likewise, by waging a struggle against the opportunism and social chauvinism that characterized the Second International, Marxism-Leninism became the revolutionary theory, where the national question takes it rightful place, where is understood where it is in reality – as vital to the revolutionary process internationally and vital to understanding the core dynamics of change in a multi-national state like the U.S. We make the following point in our Statement on National Oppression, National Liberation and Socialist Revolution, which crystalizes our understanding of the importance of the fight against national oppression:

The struggle against imperialism and national oppression is a revolutionary struggle, for just as the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America require revolutionary struggles to overthrow colonialism and liberate their countries, so will it take a revolutionary struggle in the United States to gain full equality for oppressed nationalities. Since it is the system of imperialism that profits from and causes national oppression, only the overthrow of this system can end national oppression.

Two things are needed to develop the strategic alliance. First, we need to build the African American, Chicano, and other oppressed nationality movements, and to promote working class leadership with in those movements. Workers from oppressed nations in the trade union movement bring with them the special demands of their national liberation movements. We fight for the trade union movement to stand in unconditional solidarity with the oppressed.

Second, as we build the multinational working class movement, we need to ensure that the fight against racist discrimination, and for consistent democracy, and full equality for the oppressed is at the core of our agenda. For example, in recent years the struggle against police crimes has exploded in Black community. In a number of places this struggle has expanded to encompass the fight for community control of police. In addition to building these fights, everything possible should be done to get the labor movement to support them. Or to take another example, we have worked hard to build the immigrant rights movement, to resist deportations and to build the fight for legalization for all. In the cities where we do this, we have worked hard to draw in the labor movement. The work to build this strategic alliance also requires carrying out a set of interrelated and at times difficult tasks. White workers, especially those who are active and forward-looking, have the responsibility to fight white chauvinism or racism among whites and play an active role in building the fight against all manifestations of national oppression. Racial prejudice is not the primary cause of national oppression. It is the consequence, the rationalization and justification of national oppression.

Revolutionary-minded oppressed nationality workers have the responsibly to oppose narrow nationalism among workers of their own nationality.

Building a united front against monopoly capitalism, building communist organization with the aim of constructing a Leninist party of a new type, or building a strategic alliance are all tasks that can be carried out now. All the basic contradictions of imperialism are sharpening and there is a real urgency to do what must be done.

Proletarian Internationalism

The monopoly capitalists who rule the U.S. also rule an empire that extends around the world. They are parasites and exploiters who rob vast swaths of the globe – hundreds of millions of people – of their labor, land and natural resources. They have built a military machine of an unprecedented scale in world history and the U.S. is waging continuous wars, from the Philippines to Iraq. They have placed Puerto Rico under colonial rule and block its path to independence. And they make the Zionist occupation of Palestine possible. The people of the U.S. and peoples of world have something in common, a common enemy. Every blow that the people of the U.S. land on our rulers is good for people everywhere, and vice versa, and this is the material basis for proletarian internationalism, for the unity of the working class and for oppressed nations on a world scale.Living in the center of an imperialist empire, revolutionaries have a special responsibility to oppose the wars of our ‘own’ rulers and extend support to the oppressed. As we do so there is a great deal that we can learn from the determined fight that the Russian communists waged against the social chauvinists, i.e. those who were socialist in words, but “great nation chauvinists” in deed. As we build the anti-war movement we constantly encounter those who what to join the in demonization of the national liberation movements. We cannot let these forces set the terms of the movement.Along a similar vein, we can never accept the imperialists’ attempts to criminalize the national liberation movements with their slanders of terrorism or narco-terrorism, and we oppose their laws that seek to outlaw international solidary.The future is brightThe October Revolution opened the road to a new stage in human history that shows what our class can do – that we can “lose our chains.” Revolutionaries in the U.S. have a big job and we are well served by using the science of Marxism-Leninism and learning from advanced experience. Monopoly capitalism is a failed, criminal system that had a beginning and that will surely have an end. Its gravediggers are already on the scene. And while we do not know the year or month – we are certain the U.S. will have its October.

#SovietUnion #Socialism #Editorials #OctoberRevolution

To mark the victory of the Soviet Union at Stalingrad, Fight Back News Service is reprinting the following article by Mao Zedong, that was first published October 12, 1942, in Liberation Daily . The Turning point in World War 2 By Mao Zedong

The Battle of Stalingrad has been compared by the British and American press to the Battle of Verdun, and the “Red Verdun” is now famous all over the world. This comparison is not altogether appropriate. The Battle of Stalingrad is different in nature from the Battle of Verdun in World War I. But they have this in common— now, as then, many people are misled by the German offensive into thinking that Germany can still win the war. In 1916 the German forces launched several attacks on the French fortress of Verdun, two years before World War I ended in the winter of 1918. The commander-in-chief at Verdun was the German Crown Prince and the forces thrown into the battle were the cream of the German army. The battle was of decisive significance. After the ferocious German assaults failed, the entire German-Austrian-Turkish-Bulgarian bloc had no future, and from then on its difficulties mounted, it was deserted by its followers, it disintegrated, and finally collapsed. But at the time, the Anglo-American-French bloc did not grasp this situation, believing that the German army was still very powerful, and they were unaware of their own approaching victory. Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle against the revolutionary forces, and some revolutionaries are apt to be deluded for a time by this phenomenon of outward strength but inner weakness, failing to grasp the essential fact that the enemy is nearing extinction while they themselves are approaching victory. The rise of the forces of fascism and the war of aggression they have been conducting for some years are precisely the expression of such a last desperate struggle; and in this present war the attack on Stalingrad is the expression of the last desperate struggle of fascism itself. At this turning point in history, too, many people in the world anti-fascist front have been deluded by the ferocious appearance of fascism and have failed to discern its essence. For forty-eight days there raged an unprecedentedly bitter battle, unparalleled in the history of mankind—from August 23, when the entire German force crossed the bend of the River Don and began the all-out attack on Stalingrad, through September 15, when some German units broke into the industrial district in the northwestern section of the city, and right up to October 9, when the Soviet Information Bureau announced that the Red Army had breached the German line of encirclement in that district. Ultimately this battle was won by the Soviet forces. During those forty-eight days, the news of each setback or triumph from that city gripped the hearts of countless millions of people, now bringing them anxiety, now stirring them to elation. This battle is not only the turning point of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war, it is the turning point in the history of all mankind. Throughout these forty-eight days, the people of the world watched Stalingrad with even greater concern than they watched Moscow last October.

Until his victory on the western front, Hitler seems to have been cautious. When he attacked Poland, when he attacked Norway, when he attacked Holland, Belgium, and France, and when he attacked the Balkans, he concentrated all his strength on one objective at a time, not daring to disperse his attention. After his victory on the western front, he became dizzy with success and attempted to defeat the Soviet Union in three months. He launched an offensive against this huge and powerful socialist country along the whole front stretching from Murmansk in the north to the Crimea in the south, and in so doing dispersed his forces. The failure of his Moscow campaign last October marked the end of the first stage of the Soviet-German war, and Hitler's first strategic plan failed. The Red Army halted the German offensive last year and launched a counteroffensive on all fronts in the winter, which constituted the second stage of the Soviet-German war, with Hitler turning to retreat and the defensive. In this period, after dismissing Brauchitsch, his commander-in-chief, and taking over the command himself, he decided to abandon the plan for an all-out offensive, combed Europe for all available forces and prepared a final offensive which, though limited to the southern front, would, he imagined, strike at the vitals of the Soviet Union. Because it was in the nature of a final offensive on which the fate of fascism hung, Hitler concentrated the greatest possible forces and even moved in part of his aircraft and tanks from the North African battle front. With the German attack on Kerch and Sevastopol in May this year, the war entered its third stage. Massing an army of over 1,500,000, which was supported by the bulk of his air and tank forces, Hitler launched an offensive of unprecedented fury on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. He endeavoured to capture these two objectives at great speed for the twofold purpose of cutting the Volga and seizing Baku, intending subsequently to drive against Moscow to the north and break through to the Persian Gulf in the south; at the same time he directed the Japanese fascists to mass their troops in Manchuria in preparation for an attack on Siberia after the fall of Stalingrad. Hitler vainly hoped to weaken the Soviet Union to such an extent that he would be able to release the main forces of the German army from the Soviet theatre of war for dealing with an Anglo-American attack on the western front, and for seizing the resources of the Near East and effecting a junction with the Japanese; at the same time this would allow the main forces of the Japanese to be released from the north and, with their rear secure, to move west against China and south against Britain and the United States. That was how Hitler reckoned on winning victory for the fascist camp. But how did things turn out in this stage? Hitler came up against the Soviet tactics which sealed his fate. The Soviet Union adopted the policy of first luring the enemy in deep and then putting up a stubborn resistance. In five months of fighting the German army has failed either to penetrate to the Caucasian oil-fields or to seize Stalingrad, so that Hitler has been forced to halt his troops before high mountains and outside an impregnable city, unable to advance and unable to retreat, suffering immense losses and getting into an impasse. October is already here and winter is approaching; soon the third stage of the war will end and the fourth stage will begin. Not one of Hitler's strategic plans of attack against the Soviet Union has succeeded. In this period, bearing in mind his failure in the summer of last year when his forces were divided, Hitler concentrated his strength on the southern front. But as he still wanted to achieve the twofold purpose of cutting the Volga in the east and seizing the Caucasus in the south at a single stroke, he again divided his forces. He did not recognize that his strength did not match his ambitions, and he is now doomed—“when the carrying pole is not secured at both ends, the loads slip off”. As for the Soviet Union, the more she fights the stronger she grows. Stalin's brilliant strategic direction has completely gained the initiative and is everywhere drawing Hitler towards destruction. The fourth stage of the war, beginning this winter, will mark the approach of Hitler's doom.

Comparing Hitler's position in the first and third stages of the war, we can see that he is on the threshold of final defeat. Both at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus the Red Army has now in fact stopped the German offensive; Hitler is now nearing exhaustion, having failed in his attacks on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. The forces which he managed to assemble throughout the winter, from last December to May of this year, have already been used up. In less than a month winter will set in on the Soviet-German front, and Hitler will have to turn hastily to the defensive. The whole belt west and south of the Don is his most vulnerable area, and the Red Army will go over to the counter-offensive there. This winter, goaded on by the fear of his impending doom, Hitler will once again reorganize his forces. To meet the dangers on both the eastern and western fronts, he may perhaps be able to scrape together the remnants of his forces, equip them and form them into a few new divisions and, in addition, he will turn for help to his three fascist partners, Italy, Rumania and Hungary, and extort some more cannon-fodder from them. However, he will have to face the enormous losses of a winter campaign in the east and be ready to deal with the second front in the west, while Italy, Rumania and Hungary, becoming pessimistic as they see that it is all up with Hitler, will increasingly fall away from him. In short, after October 9 there is only one road open to Hitler, the road to extinction.

The Red Army's defence of Stalingrad in these forty-eight days has a certain similarity to the defence of Moscow last year. That is to say, Hitler's plan for this year has been foiled just as was his plan for last year. The difference, however, is that, although the Soviet people followed up their defence of Moscow with a winter counter-offensive, they had yet to face the summer offensive of the German army this year, partly because Germany and her European accomplices still had some fight left in them and partly because Britain and the United States delayed the opening of the second front. But now, following the battle for the defence of Stalingrad, the situation will be totally different from that of last year. On the one hand, the Soviet Union will launch a second winter counteroffensive on a vast scale, Britain and the United States will no longer be able to delay the opening of the second front (though the exact date cannot yet be foretold), and the people of Europe will be ready to rise up in response. On the other hand, Germany and her European accomplices no longer have the strength to mount large-scale offensives, and Hitler will have no alternative but to change his whole line of policy to the strategic defensive. Once Hitler is compelled to go over to the strategic defensive, the fate of fascism is as good as sealed. From its birth, a fascist state like Hitler's builds its political and military life on taking the offensive, and once its offensive stops its very life stops too. The Battle of Stalingrad will stop the offensive of fascism and is therefore a decisive battle. It is decisive for the whole world war.

There are three powerful foes confronting Hitler, the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States, and the people in the German-occupied territories. On the eastern front stands the Red Army, firm as a rock, whose counter-offensives will continue through the whole of the second winter and beyond; it is this force which will decide the outcome of the whole war and the destiny of mankind. On the western front, even if Britain and the United States continue their policy of looking on and stalling, the second front will eventually be opened, when the time comes to belabour the slain tiger. Then there is the internal front against Hitler, the great uprising of the people which is brewing in Germany, in France and in other parts of Europe; they will respond with a third front the moment the Soviet Union launches an all-out counter-offensive and the guns roar on the second front. Thus, an attack from three fronts will converge on Hitler—such is the great historical process that will follow the Battle of Stalingrad.

Napoleon's political life ended at Waterloo, but the decisive turning point was his defeat at Moscow. Hitler today is treading Napoleon's road, and it is the Battle of Stalingrad that has sealed his doom.

These developments will have a direct impact on the Far East. The coming year will not be propitious for Japanese fascism either. As time goes on its headaches will grow, until it descends into its grave.

All those who take a pessimistic view of the world situation should change their point of view.

#SovietUnion #MaoZedong #Socialism #Stalingrad #Russia #Asia