On Saturday, November 22, and Sunday, November 23, 2025, an internationalist event on the theme “Timely messages of the October Revolution in our contemporary struggle for socialism under conditions of imperialist war” was held in Athens, organized by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) to commemorate the 108th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Below is the contribution delivered by the Communist Front (Italy) during the event.
Dear comrades,
On behalf of the militants of the Communist Front of Italy, I would like to warmly greet all the Parties attending this internationalist event and to sincerely thank the Communist Party of Greece for organizing it.
One hundred eight years ago, the Great October Socialist Revolution opened a new era for humanity-the era of proletarian revolutions and the transition to socialism. It is the era in which we are living today, despite the temporary victory of counterrevolution and the restoration of capitalism in the former USSR. This has been, of course, a serious strike that hit the entire International Communist Movement, depriving it of a solid point of reference and support for the struggles for the liberation of humanity from capitalist exploitation and wars, but it was not the final defeat, the “end of history”, as the worldwide bourgeoisie was hoping. We lost a battle, but not the class war. The future of alleged well-being and prosperity capitalism had promised turned to be a succession of cycles of crisis, growing impoverishment of the proletariat and the popular strata, an increase in number and intensity of armed conflicts, a dangerous climatic and environmental devastation. Capitalism has terminated its historical function and became a factor of destruction of the productive forces and the planet, revealing its parasitic and rotten nature. That is why today more than ever, in order to save humanity from the risk to be deeper dragged into barbarianism, there is a need for developing the class struggle and strengthening communist militancy by studying the experience of the October Revolution and drawing crucial teachings from it.
Of course, we must not consider the October Revolution-and more generally Marxism-Leninism-as if it were an instruction handbook from which we try to derive recipes valid for every occasion. On the contrary, our approach should be creative, scientific, and non-dogmatic, as Lenin was towards Marxism. At the same time, we have to reject and fight against all the revisionist and opportunist theories, such as the so called “socialism of the 21st century”, the “national ways to socialism”, and the “socialism with national characteristics”. Under the pretext of “historicizing,” “modernizing”, or considering ethnic-cultural particularism, in fact they deny the general laws of revolution and the construction of socialism, based on the proletarian dictatorship, the socialization of the means of production, and the scientific centralized planning. Moreover, the October Revolution taught that proletarian revolution must have a socialist orientation and not pursue “national-democratic” intermediate stages. Lenin identified the overthrow of the autocracy as the primary goal in a given historical phase, but not to favor the establishment of a bourgeois republic, but rather to prepare the conditions for the uprising and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, as the short duration of the temporary Kerensky government demonstrated.
Today’s reformists and apologists of capitalism claim that the concept of socialist revolution would be out-of-date, due to the working class being a minority or on the way out. First of all, this assertion is false because does not consider that new proletarian professional profiles, generated by the new functions of the production of commodities and services, are adding to the traditional manufacture working class, not to speak of the fake self-employed who actually are proletarians with no union protections. This means the working class is not extinguishing, but transforming itself in step with technological progress. Secondly, socialist revolution does not depend on the number of proletarians, but on the capability of the working class to perform a hegemonic function over the other strata of society, gain their consensus and involve them into a revolutionary project. Of course, this is possible only thanks to the leading role of the Communist Party as the organized vanguard of the class. Lenin and the Bolsheviks understood capitalism in Russia reached its imperialist final stage, the closest one to socialism, and the qualitative conditions, objective and subjective, existed for the proletariat to become the ruling and dominant class, although the industrial working class was a minority out of the total population of Russia. Thirdly, capitalism is not reformable and its decline at the end of its historical cycle is an objective process that can only be stopped by its revolutionary overthrow in order to avoid what Marx called “the new barbarianism“, that is “the joint ruin of the contending classes“.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to understand the true will and needs of the Russian popular masses and link their basic demands for “peace and bread” to the revolutionary transformation of society without giving way neither to minimalism, nor to maximalism. Today more than ever we must learn this ability to connect immediate minimum goals to improve the conditions of the working class to the aim of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and bourgeois power, combining and balancing legal and illegal activity, as well as we must learn the Bolsheviks’ capability to catch the right historical moment for the right political action, when one instant before may be too early, and one instant later may be too late.
Lenin’s and the Bolsheviks’ tactics toward bourgeois elective institutions and the parliamentary struggle are very enlightening. Rejecting both the extremist stances of those who refused any participation in bourgeois elections and parliaments, and the social democratic and opportunist positions that advocated integration into bourgeois institutions, including government ones, the Bolsheviks, when the conditions existed, used parliamentary assemblies as a speaking platform and an instrument for investigating bourgeois policies. Their participation was aiming at paralyzing them from inside in favor of an alternative elective proletarian institution-the Soviet. By gaining majority in the Soviets, the Bolsheviks were able to create a situation of dual power when the upper classes were unable” to live in the old way and the lower classes did not want to live in the old way-the main general condition for revolution.
Contrary to the opportunist theory of “peaceful ways to socialism”, history does not show examples of “peaceful” revolutions. Either the emerging class seizes power by violent actions, not necessarily armed, or the old decaying class try to oppose changes by violent means. The observation of this historically repeating fact led Engels to say that “violence is the midwife of the new society“. Therefore, the emerging class must be ready and able to fight back and defeat the resistance of the old class by destroying all and any leftover of its power. The October Revolution demonstrated in practice that to formally seize power is not enough. In order to keep it and start the construction of socialism, the proletariat and its Party cannot “conquer” the bourgeois state, no matter by elections or other methods, but must radically destroy it and replace it by the workers’ state, that is by the proletarian dictatorship. The issue of seizing power and establishing the proletarian dictatorship should be the central and qualifying point of the political program of any Communist Party being worth its name. The practical experience of the October Revolution and the State resulting from it shows that the proletarian dictatorship is the highest form of democracy, since it is the political and legal dominion of a majority of exploited over a minority of exploiters. In its main body, the Soviet, the legislative and executive powers were merged so that who makes decisions is also responsible for their carrying out. Moreover, the elected workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ delegates did not become a caste of privileged professional politicians separated from their class of origin, but continued to perform their usual job duties, except for the plenary sessions of the Soviet. Soviet council democracy which arose from the October Revolution is an unrivaled example of proletarian state organization that remains relevant today as well.
The apologists of capitalism and bourgeois democracy, among whom the social-democrats and the revisionists are included, criticize Soviet democracy because of its one-party system. Let’s shortly analyze this aspect. Today in most capitalist countries considered “democratic”, parties are electoral committees or lobbying groups of sectors of the bourgeois class itself. The right of active and passive representation for the proletariat and its parties is effectively prevented through high electoral thresholds and the obligation to collect an impossible number of signatures. This is the main cause of the increase in abstention from voting. In other capitalist countries where party pluralism also exists, Communist and Workers’ Parties are simply outlawed and banned. Bourgeois democracy is just formal, and if we look at it from a class standpoint, it reveals to be actually the harsh dictatorship of capital. We can therefore rightly state that a multi-party system is not an indicator of democracy. What matters in Soviet democracy is not the number of parties, but the decision-making system based on the proletariat’s active participation through the mechanism of delegation by mandate and its revocability by electors, as well as the growing number of public functions previously belonging to the bourgeois State that are entrusted to social organizations as forms of self-government of the producers even before the extinction of the State. The successful development of the centrally planned socialist economy also depends on this correct two-way relationship between political society and civil society.
Speaking of the socialist economy development after the October Revolution, we must say the NEP has nothing to do with the theories of “market socialism”. Firstly, the NEP allowed private property only in small and medium industrial business and agriculture, while strategic big business, banks, and foreign trade were firmly in the hand of the Soviet state. This is not the case today in China, where all big strategic corporations are joint stock companies, with some of them entirely private-owned, banks are also joint stock companies and foreign trade is not a state monopoly. Secondly, Lenin considered the NEP as a forced temporary step back aiming at fostering the process of accumulation and the recovery of an economy destroyed by four years of imperialist war and five years of civil war, while “market socialism” considers private property on the means of production a basic component of “socialist” economy. It is a matter of fact that at the end of the NEP, the full socialization of the means of production, the collectivization of agriculture and the centralized planning allowed the USSR to quickly become a major world power capable of standing up to imperialism. It is clear that the theories of “market socialism” and “socialism with national characteristics” are just fig leaves to cover up the shame of capitalist restoration.
Finally, some considerations on imperialist war and revolution. War has a contradictory nature. On the one hand, it is the slaughter of proletarians. On the other hand, in most cases it becomes the detonator that triggers proletarian revolution, particularly if it is lost. From this consideration the correctness emerges of the Bolsheviks’ position toward imperialist war, referred to as “revolutionary defeatism”. Starting from the assumption that proletarians are class brothers because they are equally exploited everywhere by those who send them to massacre each other on the battlefields, Lenin and the Bolsheviks identified the main enemy not in the opposing army, but in the national bourgeoisie. Therefore, the efforts of communists were directed to promoting by any means the military and political defeat of the bourgeoisie of their own country as a necessary-though not sufficient-condition for the victory of socialist revolution. The exploited must point the guns they were given not at their class brothers, but at their exploiters, transforming imperialist war into revolutionary civil war. This means using interimperialist contradictions in favor of revolution. This lesson of the October Revolution is extremely valid today, although some Communist Parties seem to have forgotten it and, in the face of the war in Ukraine, actively support either the murderers of NATO or the capitalists of Russia. Faced with the escalation of imperialist war, we apply this lesson of the Red October to today’s reality, and reject both the positions of generic pacifism that hides the class causes of war, and the social-chauvinist and sovereignist ones, which lead proletarians to line up under the flag of their class enemy. Once more, we reaffirm that the struggle against imperialist war, for a stable peace is inseparable from the struggle against opportunism, for socialism-communism!
Comrades, for reasons of conciseness it is impossible to list here all the contributions the October Revolution can make to our struggle in current times. In conclusion, we just want to say that the October Revolution is and will remain a source of study and inspiration to the communists of all ages, the beacon that lights up the path of humanity’s liberation from exploitation of man by man.
LONG LIVE THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!
LONG LIVE SOCIALISM-COMMUNISM!
