Source: The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 45, 8 November 1948, p. 2.
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When the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian workers to victory in the November 7, 1917 revolution, they expected that their overthrow of capitalism would be followed shortly by similar revolutions in Western Europe. They saw themselves on the threshold of world socialism.
Socialist Governments would swiftly arise in Europe, they thought. The economy of the continent, freed from the national cliques of capitalists would be integrated, conscious planning in economic and social, relations introduced, the new era of peace, abundance and freedom would open for mankind.
These were their hopes. But they understood that the realization of these hopes might be deferred. In that case they expected that the Soviet Government they had created in Russia would be crushed. They predicted that unless their victory was followed by a succession of victories, particularly a working class victory in an industrially advanced country, the beginnings of socialism in Russia would succumb to counter-revolution. Contrary to expectations, the Workers State survived in Russia, but has undergone a process of profound degeneration, in the course of which it has destroyed the Communist Parties throughout the world as revolutionary instruments of the proletariat.
How do things stand today, 31 years after the November 1917 revolution? What are the prospects for the victory of socialism?
The most colossal fact that stares us in the face is the bankruptcy of capitalism as a world system. Capitalism was granted a reprieve of almost a third of a century. That period witnessed a decline in the standard of living of the masses unparalleled in history. It witnessed bloodshed and destruction on a scale to shake the foundations of civilization.
Capitalism is far weaker today than it was in 1917; it has far less to offer the masses; the illusions in its future are incomparably more difficult to revive; the capitalist class is eaten with pessimism and fear; unrest and rpadiness for action on the part of the workers and their allies is far more widespread. Viewed objectively, world capitalism appears so exhausted and decrepit that a single forceful blow in any of the major countries could bring it down.
What is delaying that blow? The present leadership of the working class!
In periods of relative peace, men of narrow and conservative outlook tend to rise. With an ability to achieve minor concessions, they combine hidebound, “safe” views on the major social and political questions facing lhe working class. At best such figures view the goal of socialism as a laudable perspective but one having no relation with the immediate practical probiems of the day. At worst they are outright reactionary in their political views. At all times they are highly susceptible to capitalist ideology if not its avowed defenders arid purveyors. If they continue in leadership in times of dynamic and abrupt change, defeat and disaster face the working class.
Such leaders were the Social Democrats. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Social Democrats had the opportunity of leading the working class to Victory throughout Western Europe. They chose to maintain and strengthen capitalism. On their shoulders lies full guilt for the prolongation of capitalism with all its evils in the years following World War I.
Today the Social Democrats have ceded first place in this perfidious role to the Stalinists. Stalinism, the spearhead of counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, rose in deadly opposition to Bolshevism and everything it stood, for during the years of lull and recession following the revolutionary tide.
In Europe and the Far East the Stalinists have deliberately and cold-bloodedly led the working class into defeat after defeat. Riding the crest of the great revolutionary wave that swept such countries as Italy and France at the close of the Second World War, they took key posts in capitalist governments in order to strengthen and save them.
Thus capitalism has again gained a breathing spell and reaction still rides triumphant.
Disappointed by the delay of lhe Socialist revolution and the present organizational weakness of the revolutionary movement ^throughout the world, the radical intellectuals reinforced by numerous renegades from Marxism, have turned their backs on the Socialist movement and openly placed themselves in the service of imperialism. They spread pessimism and disillusionment in the working class movement and seek to convince the youth that the struggle for the socialist future is not only Utopian but reactionary as well.
The power moving these intellectuals is American imperialism. The American capitalist class is reaching the apogee of power precisely as the worldwide system of capitalism enters its death agony. American capitalism Cannot escape the overall paralysis; but the brilliance of its economic and military might dazzles the eyes of the intellectuals and blinds them so that they no longer see reality clearly and as a whole.
To justify their stand, the renegades feel compelled to find unexpected virtues in capitalism, to shut their eyes to its major evils or at least, minimize them and to discover in the Marxist movement some kind of reasonable cause for their otherwise unaccountable revulsion to its methods and goal.
Thus they convert Trotsky, Lenin and Marx into amoral devils and the science of Marxism into a “religion" that has no connection with reality.
Everything is reversed. These “realists” who reject the science of Marxism and place their faith in “human values” end up with loss of faith in humanity and''its capacity to progress. Priding themselves on their theoretical capacities they prove incapable of differentiating between Stalinism arid Marxism, between the Kremlin oligarchy and the economic base of the Soviet Union, unable to distinguish even between reaction and progress. Mounting moral platitudes, they end up in the same camp as the war-mongers and their allies, Franco, the Vatican, Chiang Kai-shek, the former Nazis, and every foul puppet Wall Street maintains abroad.
Scarcely anyone who pretends to intellectual attainments can today dispute the fact that society must be reorganized on new rational, planned lines and that public-ownership and planned economy can guarantee every individual full employment, a good standard of living, economic security. How then can people who pretend to intellectual gifts oppose Socialism and support the monstrosity of imperialism with its economic crises, its bestialities, its catastrophic wars?
But, we are told, Socialism leads to a police regime. Look at Russia, look at Stalin!
One might just as well have embraced feudalism and rejected progressive capitalism in the 18th century, because the French Revolution temporarily brought on the Napoleonic police regime!
Aside from that, cry the disillusioned intellectuals, you’re not going to have another revolution like 1917. Haven’t 31 years gone by, with nothing but successive defeats?
We can readily agree that 31 years of waiting for another victory is a long time. In the life of an individual three decades seems enormous. However, in considering historic events we must use the proper time scale. On the grand scale of history, 31 years compares with about one-half hour in the life of an individual.
Consider the difficult travail of capitalism. In Germany peasant revolts began as early as 1461, leading to a mighty uprising that was crushed in 1525. Feudalism appeared unassailable in Europe. To recount the successive defeats suffered by the rising capitalist order would make a most impressive list. The first major victory was not scored until the time of Cromwell in England when Charles I was beheaded in 1649.
Then another 140 years had to pass before the French revolution broke out in 1789 and the capitalist system won its decisive victory on the continent of Europe.
If we compare the tempo of events today, we are fully entitled to the most optimistic conclusions. When, in all history, has the world witnessed such restlessness and turmoil as now?
Consider only the events of the past three years. Civil war, colonial uprisings, vast movements for national independence involving the majority of mankind have shaken the entire region stretching from Algeria, across the Middle East to India, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, Indo-China, China and Korea. Nationwide strikes have swept Italy and France again and again, shaking the capitalist governments to their foundations.
And have England and America escaped the political ferment? In Britain we see a Labor Party in power and in America the labor movement has staged repeated strikes of a scope never before witnessed.
These dynamic developments, arising from the profoundest depth of humanity, can never be turned back and wiped out by dying capitalism, no matter how ferocious and savage its death struggle turns out to be. The betrayals of inadequate leaders can no longer hurl the masses back into long decades of apathy. Capitalism itself no longer permits such drawn out periods. It forces the peoples of the earth to repeated action and thereby accelerates the process by which the workers and their allies discard the betrayers and find revolutionary leaders capable of guiding the struggle to victory.
Inevitably leaders will come to the fore capable of adhering to a correct Marxist program, resolute enough to face all odds and energetic enough to carry the struggle through to a successful conclusion.
On the 31st anniversary of the great Russian Revolution, what has become clear is that the essential program of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks of 1917 is the program that humanity must follow today if it is to save itself from barbarism or outright destruction.
Last updated on: 29 March 2023