Lenin at Work, painting 1970, Igor Alexandrovich Reznik (1918-1978) Ukrainian SSR.
Excerpted from: Lenin's work is timely - Speech by Giorgos Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE to the online event of the European Communist Initiative for the 151 anniversary (April 22) of Lenin’s birth:
The leader of the Bolshevik Party is the founder of the Communist Party, the Party of a New Type; the guide of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 that shook the world and of the first years of the socialist construction. He is the protagonist of the founding of the Communist International that gave impetus to the struggle of the CPs and the unified communist strategy.
We honour Lenin, acknowledging our responsibility for the study and mastery of his work, of our world view in general, of Marxism–Leninism; developing an in-depth understanding that “Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement”.
Equipped with the Leninist principles, we can confront the difficulties of the counter-revolution; we can relentlessly continue the struggle for the overthrow of the deep ideological, political, and organizational crisis of the communist movement, for its revolutionary regroupment.
Capitalism has rotten. The gap between the potential provided by the development of science and technology and the degree of satisfaction of the popular needs is widening.
This is stressed by the intensification of exploitation, capitalist crises, the new crisis of capital over-accumulation, the unemployment and poverty that the working class and the popular strata around the world are faced with, coming under the all-out attack of the capital and the bourgeois liberal or social-democratic governments.
The pandemic and the heavy consequences for the peoples, the collapse of the commercialized public health systems, and the millions of dead demonstrate the impasses of the system.
This is highlighted by the military–political plans of the USA, NATO and the EU; the imperialist wars; the competition with Russia and China, in a race for control over the markets, the wealth-producing resources, and the energy pipes, warning us about new, even generalized wars.
The goal of the struggle of the revolutionary party of the working class, as Lenin stressed, is to “lead the struggle of the working class, not only for better terms for the sale of labour-power, but for the abolition of the social system that compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich”....
There are views that confine the notion of imperialism to the aggressive foreign policy of the USA, that detach policy from the economy.
Lenin, studying the development of capitalism, stressed that imperialism is monopoly capitalism, the last stage of the system, in which the material preconditions are formed, the necessity of revolutionary overthrow and the construction of the communist mode of production are highlighted.
He proved that the sharpening of the basic contradiction between the social character of production and the capitalist appropriation of its results characterizes all capitalist states, regardless of their position in the international imperialist system. He warned that "Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution."
With the tool of Leninist theory, we can analyze the competition expressed at an international level; the character of imperialist unions, such as the EU, BRICS, etc., at the core of which are the monopolies.
Lenin’s polemic against the opportunist current and its branches, pacifism and social-chauvinism, which collaborated with the bourgeois classes of countries at war during the First World War and led to the bankruptcy of the Second International, is very timely.
War is bred in conditions of “imperialist peace”, it is “a continuation of policy with other, violent means”; it is imperialist on both sides, regardless of which state initiated the military conflict. The struggle must be developed against the root cause of the war, it must be directed to and form the preconditions for the overthrow of bourgeois power.