By Steve Sweeney
Communists across the world vowed to continue the work of revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin against the “aggressive nature of capitalism” as they marked the 150th anniversary of his birth on Wednesday.
More than 80 Communist Parties of the world including the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) signed a joint statement in honour of the “great revolutionary and theorist of scientific socialism” who was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Tsarist Russia on April 22 1870.
The global Covid-19 pandemic, which muted celebrations, has exposed “great shortages of health systems in capitalist countries as well as the anti-social and parasitic nature of the capitalist system,” the statement said.
The aggressive nature of capitalism and the escalation of imperialist competition poses a grave new danger to peace and to peoples, the statement continued, with a greater need to draw on the “historical physiognomy” of Lenin, who dedicated his life to the cause of the working class and the construction of the socialist society.
Lenin developed the contemporary working-class party, the Bolshevik Party.
Under his leadership it swept to power in Russia by overthrowing the exploiting classes and establishing the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the 1917 October revolution.
The workers’ and peasants’ government served in the interests of the many, the exploited and the oppressed.
But it was Lenin who stressed the necessity of the Communist Party not only in establishing workers’ power, but also the construction of socialism.
As a scientific socialist, Lenin built on and developed Marxist theory, firmly opposing opportunistic and revisionist distortions of revolutionary theory and practice and, while warning against parliamentary illusions, did not rule out intervention through parliament.
The victorious Russian revolution illuminated the power of the class struggle when the exploited and oppressed turned the wheel of history forward, with the “October flame” leading to the establishment of communist and workers’ parties across the world.
Lenin’s leadership of the world’s first socialist state with its new revolutionary institutions — the soviets — bringing to the fore new economic, social, political and cultural achievements for the working class and had a “profound effect on historical progressive developments around the world.”
His internationalism and positions on colonialism led communists to lead the anti-colonial struggle in a number of exploited countries and supported those across the world in the fight for peace and socialism.
The communist and workers’ parties denounced the “reactionary anti-communist distortion” unleashed around the world against Lenin by political forces that serve the interest of capitalism.
“We struggle for the continuation of his work, we are committed to continue defending and propagating his legacy and we call on the workers and the people to learn from it,” the statement concluded. (IPA Service)
Courtesy: Morning Star
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