100 years on: The significance of the Russian Revolution for today
Saturday 25 November
2:15pm
Yates Room, Onehunga Community Centre,
83 Church Street, Onehunga,
Auckland
The Socialist Equality Group (NZ) is holding a public meeting in Auckland to mark the centenary of the 1917 Russian
Revolution. The meeting is part of the world-wide commemorations of the historic events of 100 years ago by the
International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world Trotskyist movement and publisher of the World
Socialist Web Site.
In 1917, in answer to the horrors of World War I and capitalist oppression, the working class in Russia took political
power and established the first workers’ state, as part of a conscious struggle for world socialism. The revolution was
victorious due to the Marxist strategy and tactics provided by the Bolshevik Party, under the leadership of Vladimir
Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
The Russian Revolution was, as David North, the chairman of the WSWS international editorial board, stated in a lecture
earlier this year, “the most important, consequential and progressive political event of the twentieth century.” To this
day, it stands as irrefutable proof that the working class—providing it is guided by a genuine Marxist perspective and
leadership—can overthrow the outmoded social relations of capitalism, ending the private ownership of the means of
production by a tiny minority and abolishing reactionary national-state divisions.
For that reason, the defenders of capitalism are waging a concerted campaign to denigrate the Russian Revolution and
insist it has no relevance in the 21st century. Universally, they resort to the historical lie that the betrayal of the
working class and international socialism by a bureaucratic apparatus headed by Joseph Stalin was the inevitable outcome
of Bolshevism and the revolution itself.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, a professor of Russian history at the University of Sydney, is just one example. She wrote in March:
“Socialism is so much of a mirage that it seems kinder not to mention it. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the
Russian Revolution, it is the depressing one that revolutions usually make things worse, all the more so in Russia,
where it led to Stalinism.”
Even the upper house of the Australian parliament has felt it necessary to condemn the Russian Revolution. In October,
the Senate passed a motion, moved by extreme right-wing senator Cory Bernardi, which declared that it “rejects any
assertion that the teachings of Lenin or Marx should be celebrated in a liberal democracy.”
Such statements have an air of desperation about them, reflecting the fear of the capitalist ruling elite at the immense
interest in the Russian Revolution. Far from socialism being viewed as a “mirage,” masses of workers and youth aspire to
its goals of international unity and social equality.
The reason why they are attracted to socialism is obvious. Capitalism, as a world system, has manifestly failed. The
international working class today confronts all the conditions that motivated revolutionary struggles by millions of
workers in 1917 and the years that followed: imperialist violence and war, staggering inequality and deprivation, state
repression and far-right political reaction. The so-called “liberal democracy” to which the resolution of the Australian
Senate referred is openly degenerating into an authoritarian police-state to defend the wealth of a parasitic financial
oligarchy.
A new era of social revolution has opened. The working class cannot and will not accept the barbaric future it is being
offered by capitalism.
The essential task for all those coming forward to fight for socialism is to study and assimilate the immense lessons
that have been derived by the Marxist movement from the experiences of Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution.
The SEG meeting will be a contribution to that process. We urge you to promote it as widely as possible to your
workmates, and your friends and family. Donate as generously as you can to assist our efforts to advertise the meeting
through social media, posters and other media. Play your part in making this meeting on November 25 not only a
celebration of the Russian Revolution, but the launching pad for an intensified struggle to build the ICFI as the
revolutionary leadership of the international working class.
Admission to this meeting is $5 or $3 (concession price)
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1852414498403410/