Today marks the 105th anniversary of the most historically significant day for Communists across the world: the Great October Socialist Revolution. This revolution is just as important for the workers of the world today as it was on November 7, 1917, for it marked the first time in human history when the workers and peasants threw off the shackles of capitalist slavery and constituted themselves as the ruling class within a country. This event is forever entrenched in the outlook of the working masses of the world because it gave them a glimpse into a society free of exploitation and economic crises. No amount of imperialist propaganda will ever be enough to erase this memory of the world proletariat.
The achievement of this successful revolution was no chance matter. It was the result of painstaking, relentless, and untiring struggle, organization, study, and debate on the part of the advanced section (vanguard) of the Russian working class: the Bolshevik Party. The Bolshevik trend first emerged at the 1903 Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), where the key lines of demarcation were drawn around organizational questions of party building. Lenin and the Bolsheviks fought for a revolutionary, disciplined, vanguard party whereas the opposition (Mensheviks) sought to establish a loose, amorphous group organized around the social-democratic model of the West. History has exonerated Lenin’s fight at the 1903 Congress, for only those parties that have adhered to Leninist organizing principles and tactics have successfully achieved socialist revolution.
In a country such as America, with countless niche groups of endless “left-wing” ideological trends, this 105th anniversary begs the question for American workers: what is to be done? 17 years before the October Revolution, Lenin stated that “[o]ur principal and fundamental task is to facilitate the political development and the political organization of the working class.”[i] The task for American Communists today is no different. Given the thoroughly entrenched history of opportunism and revisionism within the American Communist movement, an essential component of our work is breaking with these deviationist trends. Lenin’s words in his Letter to the Secretary of the Socialist Propaganda League (of America) prove timely:
“We do not preach unity in the present socialist parties. On the contrary we preach secession with the opportunists… Such unity is unity with the national middle class and capitalists, and a division with the international revolutionary working class… [w]e are for secession with nationalistic opportunists and unity with international revolutionary Marxists & working-class parties (emphasis — V.L.).”[ii]
The American Council of Bolsheviks has taken this Leninist lesson to heart and is committed to facilitating the political development and organization of the American working class, while always waging a determined fight against the anti-proletarian trends of opportunism and revisionism whenever and wherever they emerge. We maintain unshaken confidence in the inevitable victory of the socialist revolution, just as Lenin did in January 1917 when he stated to a meeting of young workers at the Zurich People’s House in Switzerland that:
“We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can, I believe, express the confident hope that the youth which is working so splendidly in the socialist movement of Switzerland, and of the whole world, will be fortunate enough not only to fight, but also to win, in the coming proletarian revolution.”[iii]
Onward to the building of a Bolshevik party in America!
Long live the October Revolution!
Long live the science of Marxism-Leninism!
[i] Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. “The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement.” marxists.org, 1900. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1900/nov/tasks.htm.
[ii] Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. “Letter to the Secretary of the Socialist Propaganda League.” marxists.org, 1915. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/nov/09.htm.
[iii] Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. “Lecture on the 1905 Revolution.” marxists.org, 1917. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jan/09.htm.