Lenin,
alive
again, calls:
-¡Proletarians,
Line up
For the final struggle!
Vladimir Mayakovski
A century ago, on January 21, 1924, Vladimir Illich Lenin's heart stopped beating, but his ideas still beat with great validity to this day, with the same vigor as in the time in which he lived and acted, and they guide the revolutionary activity for the worldwide victory of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
His life and work are an inexhaustible source of lessons. From his early youth he embraced Marxism, studying it in depth, systematically, to initiate at the age of 23 a theoretical production that enriched for three decades the contribution of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It is correct then that the revolutionary theory of the working class is called Marxism-Leninism. Its enduring theoretical work arises in a period when the capitalist mode of production developed to its last phase, imperialism, a matter that was not known during the lifetime of Marx and Engels. The monopolies, as well as the fusion of industrial and banking capital, take the system to its historical limits, to parasitism and decomposition, to the antechamber of the Revolution. With great precision Lenin finds the characteristics of imperialism, the capitalism of the monopolies. Lenin also draws attention to a phenomenon that is strengthened during the imperialist phase of capitalism: opportunism, that is, the bourgeois agents in the workers movement, whom he fought against relentlessly until they were unmasked and defeated. The struggle against capitalism in its imperialist phase and against the opportunists continues, and so it will be until the victory, first in each country and then worldwide, of socialism-communism. Opportunist elements in the contemporary communist movement have joined the attack on the Leninist theory of imperialism, seemingly adopting it but distorting it in fact: they mix it with the ideological analysis of the bourgeoisie bringing in globalization, empire, geopolitics, to propose that imperialism is a division between North and South, between West and East, between a metropolis and its periphery, between a dominant country or countries and eternally dominated countries; in a dogmatic and anti-scientific approach, they elevate dependence to an eternal and immovable character, as if the productive process, centralization and concentration did not transform former colonies or dependent countries into powerful capitalist economies, having for example India, China, Mexico. They omit that in every country there is class struggle, and that the ominous pauperization of the working class and the popular strata, the ruin of the petty bourgeoisie do not prevent the monopolies from getting stronger, having superprofits, maximizing exploitation, exporting capital; they take sides with some monopolies to fight against other monopolies, they ally with their bourgeoisie against other bourgeoisies, they support a block of capitalist countries against other capitalist countries, and want the workers to raise a foreign flag.
Following Lenin, raising the banners of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, as communists we fight against imperialism, not as if it were an external entity, or a "new Rome", but against monopoly capitalism, against our own bourgeoisie and against all bourgeoisies, without considering any temporary alliance with the class enemy. This takes on greater importance in conditions where antagonisms between capitalist countries and blocs of capitalist countries are sharpened, when competition for markets, cheap labor, natural resources, trade routes, is fierce, and imperialist war becomes inevitable.
When the First World War broke out and the Second International degenerated by abandoning the red flag, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, together with the German Spartacists, assumed the principled position, contributing decisively to the international regroupment of the revolutionary communists, in Zimmerwald and Kiental, thus laying the foundations of the Third International, the Communist International. In opposition to the majority of social democracy turned social-chauvinist, supporting their own bourgeoisies in a butchery where the lives of the workers of different countries were sacrificed, Lenin and the communists demonstrated that the war was imperialist on both sides, and that the proletariat had the duty to remain independent, to declare war on war, to oppose socialism to imperialist barbarity. They swam against the tide, in minority, subjected to a rain of slander, in the midst of several repressive mechanisms, such as the imprisonment of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht -disappointed as a parliamentarian for voting against the war credits-, the persecution of Lenin -defamed as an agent of the Germans-, but the communists did not cease their activity: militant political opposition in the parliaments, strikes, agitation in the very trenches, riots, uprisings, and the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917. The opportunists of today, in their corrupted theoretical and political positions would also attack Lenin and the Bolsheviks, would condemn the Spartacists, in the same way that now they form ranks in the imperialist war on one of its sides, becoming so preposterous as to think that the Russian counterrevolutionaries who were part of Yeltsin's team for the temporary overthrow of the socialist construction in the USSR, are the continuators of the USSR, and that Putin, who attacked Lenin and Stalin, and who bases the Russian imperialist aggression on the Hitlerian discourse of "vital space", would be at the head of an "anti-fascist" war. With Lenin's example, today we confirm that the workers of the World have no side in the present imperialist war that is on the way to generalize, that we do not choose between unipolarity and multipolarity, that we do not choose between the alliance led by the US or the one led by China and Russia, that our choice is to fight for socialism-communism.
The imperialist war that broke out in Ukraine, imperialist from both sides, both Ukraine and the EU/US/NATO, as well as Russia and its allies, also accentuated the state of crisis of the international communist movement. Even parties that seemed to be in a revolutionary direction, for example in Russia and the USA, have formed ranks in social-chauvinism, with a rapid ideological degradation. These parties, despite their names, do not retain the least trace of communist ideology. Far from being anti-imperialist, these parties gladly side with the class enemy against the international communist. Spitting in the face of proletarian internationalism, they accuse the revolutionary forces of engaging in a 'sectarian political fight', whilst siding with one side of capital against the other. With more emphasis we commit ourselves to the international revolutionary regroupment of the communists, for a unified revolutionary strategy, with optimism, without fear of the difficulties, the obstacles, the slanders. We salute all efforts in that direction, for example, the European Communist Action, the International Communist Review.
We the communists of the USA and Mexico will fulfill our duties, fighting against USMCA-TMEC, one of the strongest interstate alliances of imperialism, and against the joint anti-immigrant policy of Trump-Biden-Obrador, for the workers of the USA and Mexico to clash against the imperialist war and the aggressive policies against the peoples. For a strong unity of the workers of the U.S. and Mexico for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism.
Another great contribution of Lenin is the experience of the seizure of power and the construction of socialism in the USSR, as well as its general and inalienable characteristics: revolutionary workers' power, socialization of the concentrated means of production, central and scientific planning of the economy, workers' control of production, fight to the death against mercantile relations. We are living the historic transition from capitalism to socialism-communism. The communists of the U.S. and Mexico will make the maximum effort for the workers of our countries to carry out that task, for the past must be shattered, the slave legion standing up to conquer, the world will change its basis, and those who are nothing shall be everything.
As for Marx and Engels, Lenin's work was completely associated to the revolutionary action, to the political practice of the workers to overthrow capitalism, and therefore the role of the Communist Party is indispensable. We fully embrace the Leninist theory of the party of the new type, of the classist and internationalist vanguard party. We draw lessons from the painful learning of Browderism and its contemporary manifestations. We are more conscious that the Party is not a simple organizer or one more component of subjective factor. The Communist Party is the very subjective factor of the Proletarian Revolution, and has no substitute.
The Communist Party is the political party of the working class, its duty is to fight in any condition -despite even the unfavorable correlation of forces- for the political program of being the gravediggers of the bourgeoisie and builders of the new world without exploitation. There again the anti-Leninist opportunism clashes with Lenin: they propose an intermediate stage, an unintelligible formation between capitalism and socialism, which finally ends up strengthening capitalism. With Lenin we position ourselves for the Socialist Revolution, for its Program, for its method of struggle, its content and form.
In the U.S. and Mexico the revolutionary vanguard proletariat positioned itself with Lenin at the decisive moments. We followed the example of Sen Katayama, John Reed, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Julio Antonio Mella, José Guadalupe Rodriguez, among so many others.
Lenin is alive for us; in prison, in front of the statistics lying on the floor, writing The Development of Capitalism in Russia; in hiding and exile writing to the militancy in sympathetic ink, outwitting the Ojrana; debating in the Editorial Board of the Iskra, arguing passionately at the Party Congress against Martov, Plekhanov and Trotsky; with his shirt sleeves rolled up, printing Party literature in hectographs, sleepless translating the works of Marx and Engels, arguing with Junius about the character of the War and the question of nationalities, teaching Marxism in clandestine circles in Russia or at the School of Cadres in Paris; sitting on a stump drafting The State and the Revolution while death was stalking him; for us Lenin is alive as the worker Konstantin Ivanov, defying checkpoints to reach the Smolny on foot on the night of November 6-7 of 1917 and making History dawn, to confirm what was written shortly before: "it is more pleasant to live the experience of the Revolution than to write about it".
With the flag of Lenin, armed with Marxism-Leninism, the communists of the U.S. and Mexico pay homage to our Chief, the Chief of the international proletariat, Vladimir Ilich Lenin.
"...And Lenin is young again
October blooms again..."
¡Proletarians of the world, unite!
- Communist Party of México
- Communist Workers Platform of the US