WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! SPECIAL ISSUE
Volume 12, Number 10
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
October 15, 1982
Hail the 65th Anniversary of the
October Socialist Revolution of the Bolsheviks!
Poland shows the bankruptcy of Soviet revisionism:
Condemn the martial law in Poland!
Follow the path of V.I. Lenin!
The October Revolution and the Liberation of Nations
The Ideas of Red October Are Alive in Socialist Albania
The October Revolution and the fight against imperialist war
Sixty-five years ago the Great October Socialist Revolution broke out in Russia and the whole world shook.
The working class seized power and, for the first time in history, held it against the rich lords of capital. With their own hands the working class created a new, socialist society, without the plague of economic crises, without unemployment, without exploitation of man by man. The Russian working class marched onto the stage of history, grasped destiny in their own hands, and showed the workers the world over the path to their own emancipation from the hell of capitalism.
For forty years, until Khrushchov grabbed control, socialism in Russia was a beacon for the workers the world over. Today, capitalism has been restored in Russia and it has been converted into a bloodstained superpower just like U.S. imperialism. But the light of socialism lit by the October Revolution has not been extinguished. It still shines bright red in socialist Albania, showing the happy life that the workers everywhere can build for themselves.
The lessons of the October Socialist Revolution are still young and fresh, showing the workers how to organize themselves, how to prepare the revolution and how to carry it out with success.
This year, when the American workers face record unemployment, devastating economic depression, and the capitalist takeback offensive; when Reaganite reaction is breaking strikes and unleashing segregationism and racist terror against the oppressed nationalities and immigrants; when the imperialist drums of war are beating ever louder; this year, it is important that the workers take a look at the path charted out by the October Socialist Revolution.
On this 65th anniversary, the Marxist-Leninist Party calls: You who are on the picket lines, striking against the capitalists' concessions drive; you who are marching in demonstrations against draft registration, against nuclear warmongering, against U.S. imperialist intervention in El Salvador and U.S.-backed Zionist aggression in Lebanon; you who are resisting racist attacks and protesting the gestapo-style immigration raids; you who are rising in struggle, fighting for a new life -- look to the October Socialist Revolution! Join with the Party to spread everywhere the lessons of the revolution! Join with the Party to promote widely the inspiring reality of socialism found in Albania today! Join with the Party to organize the workers' movement on the path blazed by the Great October Socialist Revolution!
What Was the October Socialist Revolution?
In 1917 the Russian workers, peasants and oppressed nationalities suffered under the brutal tyranny of the tsarist monarchy. Trade unions and political organizations were banned, the masses had no rights whatsoever, and police and KKK-type terror suppressed the toilers with an iron heel. World War I continued to rage, and the Tsar persisted in sending Russian toilers to the front, cannon fodder for imperialist conquest and plunder of other countries. As well, the capitalist-feudal system was gripped with an economic crisis. Unemployment, inflation and food shortages ran rampant.
The working class took to the streets in strikes and demonstrations. Peasants went into action. And the soldiers and sailors mutinied, going over to the side of the revolutionary workers. The powerful February Revolution swept the country and brought down the hated Tsar.
But the toilers who overthrew the Tsar did not enjoy the fruits of their sacrifice and struggle. The capitalists, in a coalition with their opportunist hangers-on, formed a provisional government. Yes, they took power in the name of the Russian people. But the desperate situation of the masses continued. The capitalists dreamed of imperialist plunder, and continued to send millions of Russian toilers to fight the war. The savage exploitation by the capitalists and landlords was preserved and the economic crisis grew worse. Factories were closed, unemployment spread, and hunger ruled the country. Even the democratic liberties that the masses had won were unstable because there were persistent attempts at counterrevolution and the capitalists were working to restore a limited monarchy. Socialist revolution became the order of the day.
Through the careful explanation and organizational work of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, the masses turned again to struggle. Economic strikes grew into political strikes. Peasant seizures of land from the landlords spread across the country. The soldiers lined up with the workers. And demonstrations swept the major cities raising the banner of "All Power to the Soviets," that is, all power to the working class and toiling masses. In October (in the tsarist calendar, November new style) the Russian working masses rose up in a mighty insurrection, overthrew the capitalist government and took power into their own hands.
The working class ruled the country through committees called Soviets. These were revolutionary political organizations that were forged in the February Revolution. They united the poor peasants and other toilers around the working class through a system of Soviets of Workers' Delegates, Soviets of Peasants' Delegates, etc. These were composed of representatives elected by the masses from the factories and mills, the peasant villages and military regiments.
The Soviet system of government was a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was the rule of the workers against the resistance and sabotage of the filthy rich capitalists. The suppression of the exploiters was essential to ensure the broadest possible democracy for the working masses. The Soviets organized the toiling masses and brought them directly into the administration of state affairs. They were not parliamentary talk shops, but combined legislative and executive power.
The Soviet government immediately took a series of measures against the imperialist war. It withdrew Russia from the imperialist bloodletting. It called on the workers of every country to turn their guns against their "own" imperialist bourgeoisie, to follow the path of the October Revolution.
It liberated the peasants from the yoke of the landlords in one stroke. It banned discrimination against the oppressed nationalities and granted them the right of self-determination. It legislated equal rights for women with men and fought to achieve this equality in practice.
The Soviet government embarked on the road of socialism. Having broken the power of the capitalists it step by step took over the factories, the mines,- the land and all of the means of production from the ownership of the rich. The economy began to be run to benefit the working people instead of for the profit of the capitalists. Over the years agriculture was collectivized, unemployment vanished, and anarchy of production and economic chaos disappeared.
This was something new in the history of mankind. All previous revolutions replaced one set of exploiters with another. The October Socialist Revolution put an end to exploitation of man by man.
Lessons of the Revolution
The October Revolution showed how the working class the world over must prepare itself to achieve the revolution. It proved in practice the correctness of the Leninist strategy and tactics for the socialist revolution of the working class. Look at some of the important lessons from the revolution:
1) Lenin taught that the working class must have its own political party. The Russian working class performed miracles because it was a united class, a class whose power was multiplied a hundredfold by the organization of the class conscious vanguard into a genuine communist party. This party was the Bolshevik Party led by comrades Lenin and Stalin. The history of the revolutionary struggle of the Russian working class is the history of the work to strengthen and temper this party.
The building of just such a party is the crucial task in the U.S. today to bring guidance to the workers' movement, to organize the class, to put it on the path of socialist revolution. All class conscious workers should rally to the Marxist-Leninist Party and help it organize the workers in the factories and mills, in the neighborhoods and schools.
Lenin fought for the working class to vigilantly guard its class independence. In the years leading to the February Revolution the Bolsheviks fought tooth and nail against the influence of the liberal party of the capitalists, the Cadets. The Bolsheviks exposed its pretensions of being a democratic party; they showed it had no role to play in the democratic revolution and combatted its influence not only over the socialist workers, but also over the democratic peasantry.
The opportunists in the Russian workers' movement, the Mensheviks, tried to tie the workers to the tail of the Cadets, and after the February revolution, formed a coalition government with these capitalists. The Mensheviks ended up fighting against the workers and shooting down revolutionaries who dared to defy the capitalist government. But the Bolsheviks led the working class to seize power in the socialist revolution.
Today too we see the opportunists and revisionists advocating that the workers should tail behind the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. The path of class struggle, however, is the path of building the independent movement of the working class, independent of and against the capitalist parties.
It is impossible for the working class to be independent of the capitalists without fighting the opportunists and revisionists. Leninism arose in the struggle against the revisionism of the Mensheviks in Russia and their counterparts internationally, the social-democrats of the Second International. In the First World War these scoundrels sided with their own imperialist governments, betrayed the workers and dispatched them to slaughter their class brothers from other countries. The October Revolution was the victory of Leninism over the opportunism of the Second International.
Any toning down of the struggle, any attempt to conciliate with the revisionists and opportunists, any departure from the path of Leninism leads to disaster for the workers. After the death of Lenin and Stalin, Khrushchovite revisionism arose in Russia, destroyed the socialist system, and put Russia back on the imperialist road of the tsar. The spread of this Soviet revisionism, along with Chinese Maoist revisionism, Yugoslav revisionism, and Browderite revisionism has caused tremendous damage to the cause of the workers.
Today all these revisionist trends have come up as out-and-out apologists for the Democratic Party. We call them liquidators because they liquidate the political independence of the working class, denigrate the building of the workers' own vanguard party, and try to tie the workers to the coattail of the "left" wing of the Democratic Party and the sellout trade union bureaucracy. These renegades cast aside the lessons of October, mock at Leninism, and renounce the revolutionary traditions of the 1960's and 70's in the U.S. To build the Party and advance the workers' movement, these liquidators must be fought against just as Lenin fought.
2) The achievements of the October Revolution show the power of revolution. It is the locomotive of history. No minor tinkering with the capitalist system can solve the evils of exploitation. The Bolsheviks resolutely rejected reformism and placed their faith in the revolutionary class struggle of the workers. While they fought for every real improvement in the conditions of the masses, they regarded reforms as a byproduct of revolutionary struggle and utilized the partial demands and limited struggle as one of the means of organizing the workers for revolution.
Today, when the liquidators are rushing around renouncing their former revolutionary vows, it is especially important to uphold the perspective of revolution. The October Revolution shows that the workers must be organized on revolutionary lines. It is necessary- to develop mass actions, political demonstrations and revolutionary methods of struggle. The level of struggle may vary but only he is a Leninist who knows how to pursue the goal of revolution under all conditions.
These are but a few lessons from the treasure house of the October Revolution. These and other teachings of Lenin and Stalin must be studied over and over. The Marxist- Leninist Party is organizing the campaign to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution just for this purpose. The Party calls on all class conscious workers and revolutionary activists to join with the Party to spread the lessons of the October Revolution, to organize study of the works of Lenin and Stalin, and to take up these teachings to advance the organization and mass struggle of the working class.
Let us carry forward the cause of socialism! Follow the path opened up by the Great October Socialist Revolution!
[Graphic:
HAIL THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION!
Fight the Reaganite offensive and the capitalist parties!
Socialism is the goal of the workers' struggle!
Denounce Russian and Chinese revisionism, traitors to the workers' cause!
Celebrate 38 years of the triumphant march of socialism in Albania!
CELEBRATIONS (Details about celebrations in New York, Boston, Buffalo, Seattle and Berkeley)]
[Photo: Lenin speaking at the Second Congress of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. This Congress, convened on November 7, 1917, the evening of the Petrograd uprising, proclaimed that all power had passed into the hands of the Soviets and formed the first Soviet government headed by Lenin.]
Once again the Polish military dictatorship is throwing itself against the workers' demonstrations with clubs, tear gas and concussion grenades. Striking workers are being thrown into jail. The workers are protesting the October 8 decree of the government banning all trade unions. This repression is another proof of the bankruptcy of revisionism. The decree on trade unions which bans all but fragmented and shackled local unions shows that the regime knows that it can count on no support from the working class. The Marxist-Leninist Party condemns the revisionist regime for its towering crimes against the working class.
The problems seen in Poland can be found in all the revisionist countries, such as Russia, China, etc. We see food shortages. Falling production. Naked use of force against the workers. Russian soldiers in a Viet Nam-style war in Afghanistan. In short, all the evils common to capitalist societies can be seen in these countries.
The apologists of capitalism have seized upon this situation to step up their slanders against socialism. They shout: "See, this is what socialism brings. Why waste your time fighting for socialism?"
To this, we, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists reply: No, this is not socialism! The diseases of capitalism are found in the revisionist countries precisely because they are capitalist societies. They have all abandoned the road of the October Revolution. The rulers of these countries speak in the name of socialism, but they are really traitors to the workers' cause. They have betrayed Marxism-Leninism, revising it into something ugly and counter-revolutionary. This is why we call them revisionists.
Let us look further into the case of Poland. The rich say Poland's problems are due to socialism. But is this really so? Take a look at some basic facts.
Poland owes some $27 billion to the bankers of the capitalist West. This debt is so huge that half the country's export earnings go to repay the interest. And who pays this tribute for the bankers? Of course, no one else but the working people of Poland. What this all boils down to is that Poland has been completely integrated into the world capitalist economy. It has to live at the mercy of the Western bankers, just like other bankrupt capitalist countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, etc. The Polish economy is directed not just by Moscow but also by the Western bankers.
Living in hock like this to the capitalist bankers is a sign of capitalism, not socialism. Compare this to Russia after 1917.
The revolution removed Russia from the world capitalist system. Thus, during the Great Depression of the 1930's, the USSR was the only country which flourished. Likewise, today it is only socialist Albania which is free from the world capitalist crisis.
Poland has become integrated into world capitalism because internally capitalism prevails there. The Polish economy is run to make profits. State ownership by itself does not mean socialism; whether it is socialist depends on which class controls the state.
Besides the tribute to the Western bankers and the Russian social-imperialists, the fruits of the workers' labor goes to enrich the Polish bourgeoisie. This is made up of the bureaucrats who control the state-owned sector of the economy and the rich farmers and businessmen who control a sizeable private sector in agriculture, trade, etc.
In Poland, it is not the working class but the rich class of bureaucrats and private capitalists who control the government. In fact, today they rule through naked martial law and even the formal civil institutions have been shunted aside.
This has nothing in common with the system of working class rule set up by the October Revolution. There a whole system of mass organizations -- the workers' party, soviets, trade unions, etc. -- ensured the broadest democracy for the working people.
What has brought about this situation in Poland? After the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, important social reforms were indeed carried out there under the leadership of the communists. The power of the big capitalists and landed gentry of those times was broken. The economy was rebuilt from the wartime devastation. In a few years, Poland became a modern industrial country. Such were the fruits of the path towards socialism which Poland had embarked on.
But in the mid-1950's, after the death of Stalin in Russia, there was a turn. In Poland, as in Russia, revisionist traitors came to the head of the workers' party. It is no secret that, under the guise of "reforms" away from "Stalinism," they reversed the course of the country. Prominent among these "reforms" was to make profit the basic motor of the economy. As history has amply shown since, the "reforms" of the revisionists simply meant capitalist restoration.
What then is the way out of Poland's crisis? The workers can only advance through struggle. Indeed, through their revolts and strikes, the Polish workers have built up a heroic record of struggle against the revisionist regime. They showed the great power in their hands when in 1980 they smashed the official trade unions which had become a noose around their necks.
But the Polish workers face a difficult situation in their fight. At the head of their movement has emerged a traitorous leadership -- the leaders of the Solidarity union. These people hide from the workers that it is capitalism which is the enemy. They are self- proclaimed lovers of Reagan. They want to sell the country to the Western imperialists. The Polish workers will get nowhere with this leadership. Instead, they must reconstruct a new Marxist-Leninist party which can organize the class struggle towards the Socialist revolution to overthrow the revisionist bourgeoisie and end imperialist domination.
The situation in Poland is not unique. The same basic characteristics can be seen in Russia, China, etc. The workers of the U.S. must look beneath the false socialist labels of these countries. The struggle for socialism in the U.S. requires differentiating between false and true socialism -- it requires a stem struggle against the revisionist distortions of socialism.
The October Revolution was not only a political and social revolution, but it was a revolution in the ideology of the working class movement. It was the victory of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. It showed that the Bolsheviks had restored the revolutionary vitality to the Marxist teachings, which had been distorted and dragged in the mud by the opportunists. And more, it showed that Leninism had advanced Marxism with new teachings. Leninism analyzed the new, imperialist stage of capitalism, which arose after the death of Marx and Engels. It provided new teachings on the building of proletarian parties of a new type, on the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviet system, on the strategy and tactics of the revolution, and so on. With the October Revolution, it was clear that Marxism had reached the stage of Marxism-Leninism.
Leninism developed through a fierce struggle against the opportunists and reformists. Prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Second International had been the world organization of the working class. It had certain accomplishments to its credit, such as building up political parties and trade unions and the dissemination of socialist ideas. But it had fallen under the sway of opportunism and departed from the revolutionary ideas of Marx and Engels. Most of its leaders gave up the idea of the revolution and preached class collaboration with the capitalists. They corrupted the parties of the Second International and turned them into loose, flabby organizations, suitable only as parliamentary election machines rather than as parties of revolutionary struggle. The Russian Mensheviks were part of the opportunist wing of the Second International, and they fought the Bolsheviks tooth and nail.
In World War I, the reformist leaders of the Second International sided with their own capitalists. They became social-chauvinists -- socialists in words, but chauvinists and militarists in deed. They spurred on the workers to slaughter the workers of other countries.
The victory of the October Revolution showed the world proletariat the way to fight these reformist traitors. Leninism spread like wildfire among the world's working class activists. The genuine left wing of the Second International split away, took up the great name "communist," rallied around the Bolsheviks, and formed the Third, Communist International. The term "social-democrat" was discarded and left to the opportunists and reformists who had ruined the Second International.
The Revisionists Follow in the Footsteps of the Social-Democrats
The Russian and Chinese revisionists have betrayed the path of the October Revolution. They have trampled on socialism, built capitalist economies and become capitalist politicians reviving the worst traditions of the Second International.
Take the present-day Soviet leaders, for example. Under the banner of "de-Stalinization" they have thrown out the Marxist- Leninist principles as allegedly outdated. They have replaced the socialist society pioneered by the October Revolution with a profit-seeking system modeled after the latest fad of the Western bourgeois economists. They have replaced the idea of revolution with the policy of class collaboration with the leaders of Western imperialism. They even admire the social-democrats themselves. Since the present Soviet leaders seized power in the mid-1950's, they have urged the workers of the world to unite with the social-democrats, although today's social-democrats are diehard imperialists who are or have been the ruling parties of such large capitalist states as West Germany, France and Britain, who have stained their hands with the blood of the workers and the oppressed nations.
The Chinese leaders have also followed in the footsteps of the social-democratic enemies of Leninism. Their notorious "three worlds" theory resurrects the social-chauvinism of the Second International. It urges the workers to line up behind U.S.-led Western imperialism and supports its war preparations.
In the U.S., the pro-Soviet revisionists (such as Gus Hall's "C"PUSA) have been capitalist politicians and betrayers of the workers for some time. Just like the social-democrats, they are against the class independence of the workers; they are for class collaboration between worker and capitalist, not class struggle. This is nothing but liquidationism: obliterating (liquidating) the Leninist heritage and the independent class organization of the workers in favor of going to bed with the capitalists. Today all the other opportunist groups in the U.S. also adhere to this liquidationist policy of following in the footsteps of social-democracy.
The Liquidators Against the October Revolution
The liquidators have abandoned the revolution. Instead they are all united on a common social-democratic platform of working as apologists of the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. The social-democrats paint the Democratic Party as almost "socialist," while the liquidators paint joint work with the Democratic Party liberals as "Marxist" or even "Marxist-Leninist." So it is no wonder that all these liquidators curse the October Revolution and the teachings of Leninism which expose their treachery.
The Soviet revisionists indeed have denounced the Leninist principles as outdated and obsolete ever since Khrushchov overthrew socialism in the Soviet Union. They only pay lip service to the October Revolution just as the warmonger Reagan pays lip service to seeking "peace."
But characteristic of the present situation is that certain groups who sought popularity in the past by claiming to be anti-revisionist and for the revolution have openly taken the road of liquidationism. This includes in particular the Maoist groups. These groups are competing with each other to denounce the Leninist theses. One wing of Maoism supports the present-day Chinese leaders. They denounce the idea of the Leninist vanguard party as the source of their difficulties, sneer that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is but "four vague words," and write that the very idea of revolution in America is just "ultra-leftism" and an "apocalyptic vision." There is hardly any difference between them and the run-of-the-mill liberal apologists of capitalism. The other section of Maoists wants to keep the true Maoist faith. And what does that consist of? It consists of denouncing Leninism. They call for building an international trend based on a "critical summing up" of the "errors and deviations" of the October Revolution.
The October Revolution Against the Liquidators
Just as Lenin fought the Menshevik liquidators of his day, so too we must fight the whining liquidators of our day. Lenin's struggle must be our model. Each lesson from the October Revolution proves the baseness and treachery of our present-day revisionist liquidators, who are nothing but a bunch of soldout hangers-on of the capitalist powers that be.
Leninism calls for the building of a proletarian party of a new type. But the liquidators are more entranced with visions of getting numbers through merging into the liberal circles. Indeed, this is the first and foremost reason they are called liquidators: they are against building the militant fighting organization of the proletariat.
Leninism calls for building the working class movement independent of and against the capitalist parties. But the liquidators sing the virtues of the fashionable bourgeois liberal heroes of the day. They are nothing but an impotent fringe of the Democratic Party and the labor bureaucrats.
Leninism calls for an irreconcilable struggle against social-democracy and revisionism. But the liquidators preach unity with the enemy. They call the fight for principles "sectarianism," "dogmatism," "correct line-ism" and a diversion. Those liquidators who used to promote themselves as "anti-revisionist" are now getting down on their knees and begging the pro-Soviet revisionists for forgiveness. Indeed, since the liquidators prettify the capitalist politicians here, why shouldn't they also prettify the new capitalists in the Soviet Union as well?
Leninism teaches the spirit of revolution, the spirit of struggle. But the liquidators regard revolution and struggle as an "ultra-left" deviation of the 1960's. Thank god, they say, we know better today. They find it so much more reasonable to seek funding from the bourgeoisie than to lead the workers against the bourgeoisie.
Uphold the Red Banner of Revolutionary Leninism!
The red banner of revolutionary Leninism is the workers' flag. Leninism teaches that we must be revolutionaries in practice, and not just in words. It shows how to expose the Russian and Chinese revisionists as new-style capitalists and enemies of the workers' cause. It shows how to fight the social-democrats and their new liquidationist admirers. It inspires the workers to take the grand path of building the working class movement independent of the capitalist parties including the "left" wing of the Democratic Party, which is the dirty tool the capitalists use to influence the mass movements. Let all class conscious workers and revolutionary activists stay faithful to the path of the revolution and rally round the Marxist-Leninist Party, the party of revolutionary struggle and socialism.
Uphold the revolutionary spirit!
Build the proletarian revolutionary party of the new, Leninist type!
Build the independent working class movement without and against the capitalist parties and politicians!
Uphold the red banner of revolutionary Leninism in struggle against social-democracy and liquidationism!
One of the foremost achievements of the October Socialist Revolution was the liberation of the oppressed nationalities of the Russian Empire.
Tsarist Russia was known to the whole world as a prison of nations. About half of this empire was made up of the Russian nationality. Over a hundred other nationalities were subject to the most brutal national oppression. The minority nationalities were plundered, massacred and humiliated in a thousand and one ways. Pogroms were common against the Jews, Armenians, etc., and nations were incited against one another.
It was the Socialist Revolution which put an end to this barbarous situation. The nations were freed and granted their right to self-determination. A voluntary union of the nationalities was set up. The revolution eliminated all privileges of one nation over others. It not only granted the peoples formal equality but it helped the formerly downtrodden peoples flourish. The undeveloped areas were brought into the stream of modern economic development. The peoples received education in their native languages. In every sphere the culture of all the peoples developed. The walls of national distrust and enmity were torn down through the alliance of the toilers of all nationalities and races in the common struggle against capitalism and reaction.
How was such a magnificent feat possible? Only because the October Revolution was a socialist revolution which eliminated exploitation of man by man. The groundwork for the liberation of the nationalities was laid by the persevering internationalist work of the Bolshevik Party of the working class.
The workers' party united all the toilers irrespective of nationality into class organizations. It itself was a model of the unity of revolutionary workers of all national backgrounds in the common class struggle. The party was the strongest fighter against every kind of national oppression while it educated the workers in the spirit of internationalism. It not only pledged the peoples their right to self-determination before it came to power but firmly adhered to this principle after the revolution as well. Through this titanic struggle before and after October, the Bolsheviks won the confidence of the toilers of all nationalities.
The achievements of the October Revolution refute the bourgeois lies that national hatred, racism and oppression are inevitable, part of "human nature," and so forth. The brilliant example of the Soviet Union in solving the national question made it into an inspiration for all the oppressed peoples worldwide. It gave rise to a powerful joint front against imperialism of the workers of the capitalist West and the masses of the colonies.
With the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union by the revisionists, national oppression reared it's ugly head once again. This shows that capitalist exploitation and national oppression go hand in hand. The tragedy of revisionist betrayal, however, cannot extinguish the brilliant example of socialism in correctly solving the national problem during the four decades when it held sway.
Let us learn from this example to push forward the struggle against the brutal national oppression and racial discrimination by the American bourgeoisie! Let the workers of all nationalities unite in the common struggle against the class enemy!
[Photo.]
On November 29, the Albanian working class and people will be celebrating 38 years of the triumphant march of socialism in their country. Workers and progressive people on all six continents will be celebrating with them. The successes of the Albanian comrades are near and dear to the class conscious workers everywhere because in Albania alone the new socialist world blazed by Lenin and Stalin in the October Revolution lives and is marching forward.
On the other hand, the American millionaires and their class brothers around the world, including the Russian, Chinese and the other revisionist traitors, will not be celebrating this Albanian anniversary. One and all they despise Albania and what it stands for. The capitalists and revisionists want to destroy the immortal ideas of the October Revolution. They curse at it. They write it off as an event of the bygone and distant past that is no longer relevant. They proclaim that it can't work, that it will only end up in economic catastrophe like we see in revisionist-capitalist Poland.
But the reality of socialism in Albania gives the lie to all this capitalist propaganda. In Albania the working people are building a just, cultured and prosperous life that is head and shoulders above any capitalist or revisionist society.
Just look at the economic side of things. Today, throughout the capitalist-revisionist world, unemployment, hunger and despair are stalking the working people. The strongest and richest imperialist countries, the U.S., the Soviet Union, West Germany, etc., are in the depths of economic crisis. Their industries have stagnated and are going backwards. In many of the weaker countries the crisis has become catastrophic; the burden of the debts to the imperialist bankers has thrown Poland, Mexico, Argentina and many others into a financial and economic tailspin.
Only socialist Albania has not fallen into the clutches of the world capitalist crisis. Albania faces no debt crisis because it builds socialism relying on the efforts of the working masses; it doesn't owe a single dollar to the imperialist loan sharks. While others go in hock to import desperately needed food, Albanian collective farms are flourishing and have made Albania fully self-sufficient in grain. While others stagnate in economic backwardness, the Albanian working class has constructed a machine-building industry as a pillar of Albania's rapid socialist industrialization. While others are shaken by the energy crisis, Albania builds up its multi-sided energy industry and exports hydro-power to its neighbors.
In stark contrast to the rest of the world, in Albania there is no unemployment and no taxes. This June the Albanian government again announced price reductions from 7 to 35% for a series of goods and services.
Despite a savage blockade by the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet and Chinese revisionists, despite starting from the most backward economy in Europe, Albania has provided proof positive that it is only socialism which can satisfy the cultural and material needs of the people. Capitalism, on the other hand, is giving more proof every day that it cannot even provide a job, much less a decent life, for tens of millions of its wage slaves.
The Albanian working class and people have accomplished miracles because they have stuck to the socialist revolution. After overthrowing the bourgeois-landlord power and expropriating the exploiters, the Albanian people did not stop there. They have carried forward the revolutionization of the ideas of the people. A fierce class struggle has been waged against capitalist influences which pose the danger of the revisionist degeneration of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The ratio of wages between a worker and a director of a ministry is no more than one to two, something unheard of in any capitalist or revisionist country. This is one of steps taken to block the emergence of a bureaucratized stratum living off of the people.
The socialist victories in Albania have been made possible because the working class and people have been led by a steadfast Marxist-Leninist party, the Party of Labor of Albania with Comrade Enver Hoxha at its head. Every step forward is bound up with the strengthening of the Party, its leading role, and the Party-people unity.
To its great merit the Party of Labor of Albania has waged legendary battles to defend the Marxist-Leninist principles and the lessons of the October Revolution against the Yugoslav, Russian and Chinese revisionist traitors. This has been a major contribution to the revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist movement on a world scale. It has also ensured that the light of Red October burns bright in the land of heroic Albania.
[Photo: In Albania May 1st is a big holiday. The Albanian working people hold aloft the path of socialist revolution according to the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.]
The October Socialist Revolution in Russia took place in the midst of the horrors and destruction of the First World War. Millions of workers were perishing in trenches dug across Europe. They were dying in order to divide up colonies in Africa and Asia and the weak nations in Europe between the British, French, Russian, German and other colonial looters. The bankers and arms manufacturers were drawing fat profits from the war. But the toiling people everywhere wanted to put a stop to this senseless slaughter. And this was one of the foremost demands of the Russian working class when it rose in revolution and overthrew the capitalist government on that earthshaking day in October, 1917.
The new socialist government of Lenin's Bolsheviks withdrew from the inter-imperialist war, appealing to the workers of all countries to follow their example, turn their guns around and overthrow the warring governments. It published the secret treaties that imperialist Russia had signed with its allies for dividing up colonies and territory, and the workers' state renounced the enslaving aims of the old regime. By emancipating the workers and downtrodden and liberating the oppressed nations, the Bolshevik revolution blazed the trail out of the nightmare of the imperialist war.
Today, 65 years later, the questions of war and peace still press on people's minds. As the drums of war beat louder and louder, the American working people, along with their class brothers and sisters the world over, are taking to the streets to protest against the warmakers. In their thousands and millions they are marching against the monstrous arms race led by the imperialist rulers of the United States and the new imperialist rulers of the Soviet Union. They are demonstrating against the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon, against the U.S. intervention in Central America, against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the other crimes of imperialist bloodletting and militarism.
In our present-day struggle against the Reaganite warmongers there is much to be learned from the October Revolution and the ideas of V.I. Lenin. In Lenin's writings class conscious workers and activists can find the answers to burning questions facing the movement today -- Leninism shows what the enemy is and how to fight it.
In his famous book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin showed how the evolution of capitalism itself has given rise to the domination of the monopolies; capitalism had reached its last and final stage -- monopoly capitalism or imperialism. And Lenin shows how this system thrives on domination, feverish militarism and enslaving wars.
This analysis is confirmed today. The U.S. intervention in Central America to assist the death squad massacres of the workers and peasants is not just some shortsighted policy of Reagan and his generals. Likewise, the production of one fiendish weapon system after the other, from neutron bombs to MX missiles, is not just some Strangelovite plot of these "thinkable" and "winnable" nuclear psychopaths. No. The Reaganite course of adventurism and war is the outgrowth of the imperialist system under which we live.
This system is like a two-headed monster. At home, the monopoly capitalists strive to exploit the workers to the bone and crush the people under an iron rule. Abroad, these same Wall Street banks and multinational corporations strive for super-profits by trampling on other peoples.
Behind the repeated U.S. crimes of aggression -- from the genocidal war against Viet Nam yesterday, to the intervention in El Salvador and the U.S.-Israeli aggression in the oil-rich Middle East today -- lies the defense of U.S. imperialism's worldwide neo-colonial empire of rape and plunder. Behind the nuclear stockpiling and the biggest military buildup mankind has ever seen lies the defense of the fat profits of Exxon, Chase Manhattan and General Dynamics.
From his analysis of imperialism, Lenin drew the conclusion in his many articles on the anti-war struggle that the only way out of imperialist bloodletting and repeated wars of conquest is the socialist revolution and the overthrow of capitalism. This principle helped guide the Russian working class in building up its revolutionary movement, from strikes and street demonstrations to the storming of the Winter Palace and the overthrow of the capitalist government which was pushing the Russian toilers to perish for the profits of the bankers.
For our struggle, this experience is invaluable. It shows that we cannot fight the war danger with pacifist appeals to the good will of the imperialist warmakers; to think that Reagan and Brezhnev will negotiate peace on earth and that the generals will beat their missiles, into plowshares is to believe in fairy tales. We cannot fight the Reaganite hawks by voting for the two-faced Democratic Party doves; both the Republicans and the Democrats are parties of the big capitalists and the Reaganite war drive.
The workers and revolutionary activists must push forward the growing mass struggles against the U.S. crimes in Central America and the Middle East, against draft registration and the nuclear buildup. The working class must take up the fight against all the outrages of the Reaganite militarists. The struggle against imperialist aggression and war is a powerful force for the development of the socialist revolution. Only the socialist revolution can destroy the U.S. imperialist monster, lift the U.S. nuclear blackmail hanging over mankind, and put a stop to U.S. aggression against other peoples. And only the success of the socialist revolution on a world scale can ensure a just and lasting peace.
[Photo: "All power to the Soviets!," "Down with war!" -- these were the slogans of the workers at the demonstration which took place on June 18,1917 in Petrograd.]