CP of the Workers of Spain

CONTRIBUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE WORKERS OF SPAIN (PCTE) TO THE EUROPEAN COMMUNIST INITIATIVE (ECI) ON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE USSR

Dear comrades,

This year marks 105 years since the Great October Socialist Revolution and 100 years since the foundation of the USSR. Like every year, the duty of the Communist and Workers' Parties is to take advantage of this date for discussing politically with our class the historical meaning and importance of such events and the current meanings. In these dates, communists repeatedly face the difficult but necessary task of running through the achievements and learnings of the seizure of power by the Russian working class while we get away from memorialist celebrations and maintain a practical mind for the current struggles.

The 1917 Great Socialist October Revolution placed the working class in command of a country —in control of the political power— for the first time. The creation of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) in 1922 would initiate almost seventy years of socialist construction, with its advances and setback, stimulating the revolutionary struggle of the working class in every corner of the world and leaving to our present a living example of what socialism-communism can achieve.

The Soviet Union faced difficult conditions since its inception, due to a Civil War caused by the invasion of the country by various capitalist nations, followed by the relentless inner subversion, and the Nazi-Fascist invasion in 1941. the seven decades of socialism in the Soviet Union met a constant and multi-faceted aggression by the capitalists from other countries allied to the domestic counter-revolutionary forces. Despite that, it managed to stand for a considerable time.

It managed to stand largely thanks to the economic and social achievements of socialism and the more or less general support of the Soviet working class to the process of socialist construction.

The Great October Socialist Revolution was the starting shot for the adoption of large economic and social measures unrivaled in History in that moment: the land was distributed, immediately worked by co-operative groups and later socialized; the industry and the strategic sectors, the bank, the energy, and the transportation were nationalized; a wide system of social security guaranteeing the care of the sick and the elders was implemented; the emancipation of working-class women from their housework advanced decisively thanks to the socialization of reproductive labor while the phenomenon of prostitution was decisively fought; illiteracy and unemployment were wiped out; public and free-of-charge health and education systems were established; and many more.

The achievements of the Soviet Union, under very difficult living conditions, comprise the practical evidence of the possibility to ensure worthy living standards for the working class and the ensemble of the people through the adaptation of productive relations to the then large development of productive forces and, even more so, nowadays, because of the implementation of a socialist-communist economy within a country controlled by the working class.

The socialist-communist mode of production proved its superiority against the capitalist one. If we step back to 1917 and the relative backwardness of Russia compared to the United States or Western Europe, it is evidenced that it did not only achieve an unparalleled economic development, but it also turned it into an effective life quality for the producers of social wealth.

This historic lesson should be conveyed to the working class at workplaces and wherever it lives. But this is not the only one.

The workers' power faced difficult dilemmas in its seventy years of existence in the Soviet Union and the task of the Communist and Workers' Parties is actually the critical analysis —from Marxism-Leninism— of the mistakes that led to the downfall, but also its successes.

The Great October Socialist Revolution took place in a background of general imperialist war, which was then taking millions of lives in the battlefronts. This background also meant false dilemmas, in which a large part of the international workers' movement had placed itself under the banners and the guises of the bourgeoisie from their respective countries. The Bolshevik Party knew to say enough and place on the table the slogan of opposing the imperialist war, all the contending camps, and also the need of revolutionaries to take advantage of the context of social disruption in order to turn the workers' rifles against their national bourgeoisies.

Nowadays, Europe is plunged into a war, different to that World War I —for the moment— for its size, but exactly the same in their class nature and its outcomes. Nowadays, it is more necessary than ever to remember the brave stance of Russian Bolsheviks and many other revolutionaries that supported them in different countries. Against those who attempt to erase history, aiming to equate the modern capitalist Russia and the socialist Soviet Union, it is necessary to remember the elementary learnings on the class nature of the State and the nature of the actions carried out by capitalist States in the era of imperialism, as Lenin masterfully synthesized in his works “The State and Revolution” and “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”.

The Great October Socialist Revolution also teaches us the accuracy of the theses that, in the era of imperialism, when all the capitalist countries in the world are included in the imperialist world system regardless of their level of development, the pending task for the working class is the Socialist Revolution and the seizure of the political power. Support forces from other social strata affected by the development of monopolism can be used in such a task provided that they are placed under the banners and political parameters of the revolutionary working class.

The 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution started the era of proletarian revolutions, of the transition from capitalism to socialism, because the Russian working class knew how to prove practically how right were the revolutionary stances. It taught to the ensemble of workers in the world, them and now, once and forever, that seizing the political power is not a utopia and the establishment of the socialist-communist mode of production is not only possible, not only beneficial for our interests, but indispensable for the survival of Humankind and for the entire planet.