October 1917: 90 years after.

90 years ago the workers, led by the Bolshevik Party, took power for the first and only time in history. It happened in Russia and was a turning point for humanity. Even when the revolution would be betrayed few years later, it meant the raising of consciousness around the world as a seed for international liberation. Some of the lessons of the October Revolution are: that the workers need a vanguard party and a determined leadership; class independence is crucial; and reformism is nothing more than the continuation of the current system. There is no way to start building a rational and truly democratic society, where production is not to satisfy a few but for the good of all and towards a development never seen before, without a social revolution.

The young Soviet Union advocated the separation between church and state, imposed the universal women’s right to vote before England or USA, eliminated the private ownership of the means of production, women went from just supporting to lead, homosexuals were not persecuted, land was collectivized among farmers depending on their need, among many other great achievements. Even after their degeneration (1924), as a result of a bureaucratic layer usurping the power of the workers, the advances in science and technology have no comparison. The USSR went from being one of the most backward countries to be at the forefront, sending ships into space before anyone, allowing people of various nationalities to their universities, a system of universal health care and free education at all levels. It was no other than the Red Army who, during the imperialist World War II, withstood the onslaught of the best of the German Wehrmacht and achieved its defeat as a lethal strike against Nazism and fascist threat.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, 80% of the population in Russia was peasantry. Its proletariat, people who work in industry, was short in numbers but politically aware. In 1905, there had already been an uprising but ended in defeat. In February 1917, following a general strike called on Women's Day, the armed people rose again and overthrew the Czar and the feudal system. The majority of the left parties at that time: the Social Revolutionaries (based on the peasantry) and Mensheviks, handed over the power to an interim government which headed by the emerging bourgeoisie. While the leadership gave up power, those who rebelled: the workers, were reorganizing in another governing body called Soviets or “workers' councils”. From February to October then it would be a duality of power, on the one hand the Provisional Government, supported by the bourgeois groups, the social revolutionaries and Mensheviks; and on the other side, led by the latter two but with a higher tendency to Bolshevism, the Soviets.

The First World War had started in 1914, since then a large number of people had been sent to fight a war provoked by the bourgeoisie of the industrialized countries of Europe in their quest, once again, to expand their markets, territories and capitalist hegemony. The Bolsheviks were of the few who opposed their bourgeoisie and called for revolutionary defeatism, i.e. use the opportunity to seize power, since a victory in the war would not change anything for the masses of impoverished and oppressed. The struggle is not between nationalities, it is class against class.

In July, the provisional government led by Kerenski begins to systematically repress the Bolshevik Party that already had Leon Trotsky in its ranks and was accumulating popular sympathy. Lenin had to hide and many leaders were arrested until shortly before the insurrection. Inside the party there were also clashes between those who believed that power had to be taken and those who thought it was necessary first a bourgeois democracy. There was not an unanimous vote for the takeover, but the attempt to Kerenski to close the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda ( "Truth") and the possibility of leaving Petrograd, the birthplace of the revolutionary movement, at the mercy of the German Army, obliges the Bolsheviks to make a decision. Thus, the Military Committee and the Revolutionary Petrograd Soviet initiated the takeover without much resistance. Kerenski, another gusano, would end up in the USA. On the night of October 25 in the old russian calendar (today November 7), Lenin began his speech at the podium of the Congress of Soviets saying "We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order".

Today Russia is a different animal. Decades of bureaucracy caused the collapse of the USSR in 1991 under the guidance of Yeltsin and his master Gorbachev. Since its degeneration with Stalin, the great organizer of defeats, the Third International renounced to spread the revolution internationally, and the course was geared towards a "peaceful coexistence". This started beating the Soviet economy. The Russian people, lacking consciousness and tired of a parasitic leadership, did little and just witnessed. Russia now has a high level of unemployment, one of the most rampant growth in AIDS and other terminal illnesses, prostitution and human trafficking on a large scale, prospects for a demographic decline to half of what they had in the 80s and an unbelievable abandon in social and architectural infrastructure, among many other consequences of the capitalist anarchy. Change is substantial.

For marxist revolutionaries, the collapse of the USSR was a great loss. Today the USA, without a counterweight, attacks as many countries and rights as they wish, and the hatred that inspires gets us even closer to an eventual thermonuclear war. Defending China, despite its deformation since its conception in 1949, is a revolutionary task. The fall of China would mean an increased attack on majorities, with China going perhaps worse than India and the world social consciousness falling even more than it has already plummeted. On the other hand, a political revolution in China, in favor of the workers, would open the door to insurgencies in Korea, Japan and even India, with global repercussions.

The future is not very encouraging, even more when the retreat is such that propagates the "death of communism". The class struggle continues, capitalism has two dominant classes: those who own the means of production (factories, media, etc.), the bourgeoisie and their grave diggers, the working class (which actually produces the wealth of our society), the proletariat. As the Bolsheviks at the time, our task is to stimulate the class consciousness, explaining the need to organize and take advantage of the few opportunities that arise. It is more utopian to think of a future without nuclear war, and without destroying one another following this trend, than in a radical change led by an internationalist proletarian vanguard at the head of the exploited. Barbarism or socialism.

For more October revolutions!!!