A HIGHLY successful October Revolution celebration was organised by the Communist Party of Great Britain-Marxist Leninist last Sunday in Southall, West London, with speakers from the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain-Marxist Leninist, the New Communist Party and CPGB-ML was attended by around 50 people.
Michael Chant, on behalf of the RCPB-ML, said that the Great October Socialist Revolution had “opened up a path for progressive humanity and made possible the progressive gains of the 20th century. In recent years that path has been blocked, beginning with the death of Stalin and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“The revolution has objectively passed from flow to ebb, and it is the task of communists, not just to say how glorious the October Socialist Revolution was, but to unblock the path of revolution and progress.”
Giles Shorter of the CPGB-ML said the consequences of the Bolshevik victory would “continue to unfold long after the treacherous liquidation of socialism in the Land of the Soviets itself has been reversed.”
His talk examined the ideological and objective factors which allowed the Bolshevik revolution to succeed, and looked at the huge gulf separating Lenin and Stalin from Trotsky.
Internationally the First World War was the main factor which distracted the bourgeoisie, but internally it was the Bolsheviks’ correct political line 1917 which succeeded – in contrast to the revolutions of 1848 and 1871 – in winning the peasantry from being a reserve of the bourgeoisie to a reserve of the proletariat.
Even in 1922, Trotsky was claiming that the Soviet state would “inevitably come into hostile collision not only with all the bourgeois groupings… but also with the broad masses of the peasantry with whose assistance it came into power.”
Trotskyism, Giles concluded, represents “the most profound defeatism about the ability of the masses to make revolutionary history in the real world.”
Theo Russell thanked the CPGB-ML on behalf of the NCP and for organising the event. He said: “The October Revolution showed for the first time that the workers and peasants are able to take state power and keep it. The success of the Soviet state proved that socialism could exist in one state, refuting Trotsky’s theory on world revolution.”
He stressed Lenin’s constant emphasis on combating the revisionism which eventually brought about the downfall of the Soviet Union.
“The bourgeoisie celebrated what they thought was a historic victory in 1990”, he said, “but that victory has crumbled into dust and the economic and political crisis of the capitalist system is deeper than ever.
“The imperialists thought they could turn back the march of human progress, but now they are realising the limits to their power and learning that the forces for national liberation, peace and socialism can never be extinguished.”
The evening was rounded off with poems and songs from English, Indian and Pakistani comrades, and a performance by comrades from the RCPB-ML on piano and violin of Shostakovich’s Twelfth Symphony celebrating the 1917 revolution, The Dawn of Humanity.
pic: theo russell makes his point
