The validity and Current Relevance of the October Revolution of 1917 for the 21st century
Brussels, 4-6 May 2007
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
General Resolution
The type of party needed to respond to the challenges of the 21st century
I. A Leninist party
1. Ninety years ago, the Bolshevik Party successfully led the Russian proletariat to victory in the Great Socialist October Revolution. The Pparty was armed with the strategy and tactics of socialist revolution that were developed under the leadership of Lenin. The Bolshevik party was built while continuously fighting Right as well as Left opportunism.
2. October 1917 has confirmed the validity of the principles on which the Bolshevik party was built. In developing its line, the party should analyse the class struggles on a national and international level, from the vantage point of the working class and in the light of Marxism-Leninism. It should have broad links with the toiling masses and wages a protracted struggle for their interests. It should maintain its revolutionary spirit by applying the principles of democratic centralism, criticism and self-criticism and the struggle against opportunism. The entire history of the revolutionary movements in the 20th century, of the victories of socialism in Eastern Europe, of the Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Cuban revolutions have proven that without a Marxist-Leninist party, neither socialism nor national democratic revolutions could be victorious.
3. This party, as it was conceived by Lenin, is characterized by the strategic task it has taken on: that of the socialist revolution, to break with bourgeois democracy.
It distinguishes itself from the party of the social democratic and electoralist type that aims to administer the system. Opposite to this, the social-democratic road, promoting gradual reforms to obtain the liberation of the proletariat, has ultimately led to the strengthening of bourgeois dominance, bringing its forms of exploitation to perfection.
4. At the end of the 20th century, the restoration of the old capitalist order in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and in the countries of Eastern Europe eliminated all achievements of the October Revolution, that had already been undermined by the rise of revisionism since 1956.
For the peoples of the former socialist countries as well as for the working masses in the rest of the world, the restoration of capitalism in these countries constituted a heavy blow. This restoration intensified the aggressiveness of imperialism in the whole world. Many of the workers’ benefits, that were won thanks to the existence of the Soviet Union were sacrificed on the altar of super profits.
5. In the footsteps of this counter-revolution, a huge anti-communist campaign took shape. As it wants to do away once and for all with the threat of communism, the bourgeoisie attacks the parties of the Leninst type, while fomenting overt or hidden fascisation.
Consequently, communist parties were forbidden in Lithuania, Latvia and other former Soviet republics. Moreover, attempts at excluding communist parties from political life are becoming generalized. The Czech Communist Youth (KSM) has been prohibited because it is opposed to the private property of the means of production, while promoting their social, collective property. In other former socialist countries, communists are persecuted, while criminal fascists are rehabilitated. In disregard of all democratic rules, a purging law has been imposed in Poland. In several other countries, including several Arab countries (Tunisia, the Gulf states,…) communist parties are forbidden or not recognized. In December 2005 a draft resolution was submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on the "necessity for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes."
This shows what bourgeois legality means today. There is no long way to go before they may declare illegal the struggle against privatisation, for a universal, public and free health care and educational system, for a universal and public pension system, etc.
6. Certain formerly communist parties in different parts of the world have involved themselves in parliamentarism and class conciliation while isolating themselves from the masses vital interests. The founding of the Party of the European Left has consolidated and institutionalized this process at the European level.
This party collaborates with the bourgeois parties to attack the Leninist party concept. This shows how dangerous it can be to make ideological and political concessions to the class enemy, as the leadership of the Party of the European Left is doing.
7. In 1908, almost a century ago, in the epoch of the struggle against Bernstein’s revision of Marxism, Lenin summarized the essence of revisionism and reformism in a text that retains a burning validity: "The movement is everything, the ultimate aim is nothing" -- this catch-phrase of Bernstein’s expresses the substance of revisionism better than many long disquisitions. To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment -- such is the policy of revisionism." (1)
8. In every country of the world, the building of a Leninist party, loyal to the road mapped out by the October Revolution, remains a primary task. There is but one answer to the centralisation of capital, to the dictatorship of the monopolies, imperialism and their lackeys: the organized force of the working class movement, working hand in hand with the oppressed peoples and the socialist countries. It is impossible to put an end to oppression and war if the communist parties are busy taking the edge off capitalism. Neither an electoral apparatus nor parliamentary factions respond to the need to develop a strategy and tactics capable of overcoming the power of centralized capital, imperialism and its allied reactionary forces. Neither is it with the classical "bourgeois" concept of the party (with its parliamentary cretinism) that the masses can be made to comprehend what capitalism constitutes, with its economic laws, its exploitation and oppression, its warmongering, its past, present and future. Nor is it through disparate groups and networks that it will be possible to win the complex fight against the dictatorship of the transnational corporations, against the imperialist State apparatus, against their lackeys in the countries that are under imperialist occupation, against their lackeys in the countries that are under imperialist domination of a neo-colonial type, and against organisms like NATO. Never will coordinations, networks or factions without a clear conviction be able to replace working class parties based on democratic centralism, with its principles of unity of will and action, of majority and minority, of practical decisions committing all and everyone.
II. A vanguard party, linked to the masses
9. Only the working class can lead the revolutionary process and wage, together with its allies, the struggle for national liberation and socialism to the end.
10. The party of a new type is a vanguard party. The first objective of the Party of the Bolshevik type is to ideologically win over and organise the vanguard of the working class, its most conscious and most determined part. "That is the primary objective", declared Lenin at the 2nd Congress of the Communist International, while summing up the lessons of the process that had led to October 1917.
11. But Lenin immediately added that there is a second objective to obtain, namely to win over the working class and its allies. "While the first historical objective (that of winning over the class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat to the side of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the working class) could not have been reached without a complete ideological and political victory over opportunism and social-chauvinism, the second and immediate objective, which consists in being able to lead the masses to a new position ensuring the victory of the vanguard in the revolution, cannot be reached without the liquidation of Left doctrinarism, and without a full elimination of its errors." (2)
12. The Communist Party must combine revolutionary strategy
and tactics, just like the Bolshevik Party did so excellently. While subordinate
to the strategy, appropriate tactics that are adapted to the specific conditions,
to the conjunctural developments and to the current correlation of forces,
are crucial for the communist parties, in order to have a much wider influence
on the masses’ consciousness.
With the current wave of anticommunism and faced with the terrible aggressiveness of monopoly capitalism of the US, the European Union and its allies, the issue of having a mass line to win over the working class and its allies, the issue of permanent communist work among the masses becomes an issue of life and death for today’s Communist Parties. It is about work in the factories and the trade unions, in the popular neighbourhoods, among the progressive youth and among women, among the small and middle peasants in countries where they exist, in the movements for the defence of democracy, for peace and national liberation. It is also about the presence in movements for the protection of the environment and the defence of the natural resources, which are gravely threatened by the anarchistic and destructive development of capitalism.
In this work, more flexibility, more openness and more tactical sense are needed in the current situation. These serve to better react to the opportunities that present themselves, to better arouse, organize and mobilize, briefly, to better accomplish the communist tasks.
13. As Lenin said, "it is not enough to call ourselves the "vanguard", the advanced contingent; we must act in such a way that all the other contingents recognise and are obliged to admit that we are marching in the vanguard". (3) "In order to serve the masses and to express their well-understood interests, the vanguard detachment, the organisation must maintain all its work among the masses, calling on all their best elements, without exception, and verifying at every step, in a meticulous and objective manner, whether this relation with the masses remains alive. This way, and only this way, can the vanguard detachment educate and teach the masses, expressing their interests, teaching them how to organize, guiding the entire activity of the masses on the road of class-conscious politics." (4)
III. An internationalist Party
14. The October Revolution proved that while national in
its form, in its content, the revolution is always international, forming
part of the world movement for the emancipation of the working class. Proletarian
internationalism is a fundamental element that distinguishes the communist
parties from all others. In the national struggles of the workers, the communists
set forth and promote their interests that are independent of nationality
and shared by the proletariat of the whole world. Engels wrote: "The
proletarian emancipation cannot but be an international fact; if you attempt
to make it a purely [national] fact, you are rendering it impossible."
(5)
The reality of the world in this first decade of the 21st century
makes it all the more evident that imperialism extends its tentacles everywhere,
rendering life intolerable for humanity. This confirms Lenin’s theory
about imperialism as the final stage of capitalism and makes the tasks derived
from it, at the national and international level, all the more relevant.
15. The struggle against monopoly capital and for socialism
will be confronted with huge difficulties to achieve lasting victories, if
the communist movement is divided in the ideological and organisational fields.
Without a unified and strong communist movement, with a distinct and clear
identity against reformism, the popular and militant movements that emerge
everywhere – we think particularly about Latin America, the Middle East
and the struggle against the imperialist European Union and against NATO –
will be submitted to confusion, disorientation, manipulation and, ultimately,
assimilation to the capitalist system.
16. The recognition of the revolution’s worldwide character cannot lead to the conclusion that revolution in one country would be impossible. There are always weak links in the capitalist and imperialist system. It is the task of every Communist Party to develop revolutionary consciousness and organisation in its own country, even if it is clear that the objective conditions of the revolution are interconnected at the level of regions, continents and subcontinents.
17. Each party applies the Marxist-Leninist principles to the present reality according to the specific conditions of each country and in the interest of the international working class. In no case can the specific situation become a pretext to abandon the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism, as it has been the case in recent history with eurocommunism. In the imperialist countries, based on a broad front against the monopolies and imperialism and for democracy, social progress and peace, their struggle is aimed at socialist revolution. In the dependent countries, the communist parties build a worker-peasant alliance as the core of an anti-imperialist front. While keeping to the struggle for socialism, they accomplish the democratic and anti-imperialist tasks of the revolution, wherever these have not yet been fulfilled.
18. The reconstruction of the unity of the international communist movement, on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, is the most urgent international task of the communist parties. For this to become reality, it is imperative that the communists be at the helm of the working class and people’s struggles against capitalism and imperialism. It is also imperative that this unity is based on the recognition of the historical achievements of the socialist countries, which were realized thanks to enormous sacrifices.
19. In this perspective, we can and must proceed on various levels of internationalist work: exchange of experiences – particularly in organizing the working class, the youth, the peasants and the women – and analyses, coordination and common action, dialogue and discussion on our ideological identity and on the strategy of anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle. At the same time, against capitalism, imperialism and reaction, we must build immediately the international united front of the workers, the peoples and the nations that suffer intervention and occupation.
20. We, communists, firmly intend to remain loyal to Marxism-Leninism, to organise the popular masses in view of the battles the people will have to face, to show determination, sacrifice and heroism, in order to make the 21st century the century of national and social liberation, the century of the triumph of socialism.
May the idea and the cause of the great October Revolution live through the decades to come!
Long live Marxism-Leninism; long live proletarian internationalism!
Workers of the world, unite!
Communism is the future of humanity!