2. Validity of the October Revolution despite the disintegration of the Soviet Union and other socialist societies
The October 17 Revolution has come to signify all the great revolutionary achievements of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin in establishing the proletarian dictatorship as a requisite of socialist revolution, overcoming civil war and foreign military intervention, reviving the economy through transition measures, building socialist industry, collectivizing and mechanizing agriculture, developing the educational and cultural system of the working class, supporting the international communist movement, fighting and defeating fascism and further pursuing socialist revolution and construction in the face of the threats of US imperialism after World War II.
These achievements can never be belittled. Socialist revolutions in Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere have been inspired by the October Revolution, the achievements of the Soviet Union and the work of the Third International. The Soviet Union was unquestionably a socialist country for decades from 1917 to 1956. Its great achievements could not be completely undone overnight. It would take decades for the modern revisionists to subvert and dismantle socialism, from the anti-Stalin coup of Khrushchov in 1956 to the undisguised full-scale restoration of capitalism and disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
There are principles and lessons to be learned from the positive experiences of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Union as well as from the negative experiences involving the "Left" and Right opportunists (represented by Trotsky and Bukharin, respectively) and modern revisionists from Khrushchov to Gorbachov. From the outside, the imperialists unleashed a series of attacks on the Soviet Union, including the war of foreign intervention, economic and military blockade, the fascist invasion and the Cold War. These did not defeat the Soviet Union. But modern revisionism proved to be the enemy most lethal to the Soviet Union, the main cause of its ultimate destruction.
Insofar as fighting imperialism, classical revisionism and reaction and undertaking socialist revolution and construction are concerned, the October Revolution and the teachings of Lenin remain valid and relevant to this day. But in fighting modern revisionism, we need to study and learn from the history of the Soviet Union and other former socialist countries the lessons on how the bureaucrats and intellectuals became divorced from the working people and how they abandoned the class struggle and the class stand of the revolutionary proletariat. In this regard, we need to understand the struggle of Mao against modern revisionism since 1956 and his theory and practice of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat since 1966.
Mao's theory and practice of continuing revolution aimed at combatting modern revisionism, preventing the restoration of capitalism and consolidating socialism in China. It won victories in ten years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. Although it was eventually defeated, it succeeded in posing the problem of modern revisionism and in presenting certain principles and methods for solving the problem. It offers a great deal for proletarian revolutionaries to learn and further develop in order to explain the disintegration of the former socialist systems and to avert the restoration of capitalism when in the future they shall build and develop socialist societies in various countries until they can defeat imperialism on a global scale and bring about communism.
In this period of the temporary defeat of socialism on a global scale, proletarian revolutionaries must be able to answer the questions of the proletariat and people about the past, present and future of the revolutionary cause of socialism. They must contend with the mocking claims of the imperialists and reactionaries that socialism is dead. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and other revisionist-ruled systems, the enemies of socialism have spread notions that are calculated to demoralize the proletariat and the people.
Such notions include the following: that there is no such thing as scientific socialism but only utopian and impracticable socialism, that personal greed rather than social concern can cause social equilibrium and progress, that history can go no further than capitalism and liberal democracy, that the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution is gone, that "neoliberal globalization" is the way to global capitalist development and that the people's struggles for national liberation, democracy and socialism are futile.
In fact, the world has not gone beyond the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution precisely because of the large but temporary defeat of socialism caused by modern revisionism. Global conditions have basically retrogressed to those before the October Revolution when there was yet no socialist country as bulwark of the world proletarian revolution and the imperialist powers seemed to be able to do anything they pleased against the toiling masses.
Upon the rise of modern revisionism and ultimately upon the complete restoration of capitalism in the great socialist states, the conditions of oppression and exploitation of the working people by imperialism and reaction have become far worse than ever before. But the resistance of the people is steadily increasing on a global scale.
In so short a time, the concentration and centralization of capital in the imperialist countries and the chronicity and intensity of economic and financial crisis have become worse than ever before under the auspices of "neoliberal globalization". This has led to the stepping up of military production, state terrorism and wars of aggression. We are practically back to conditions of great disorder in which there was yet no socialist country before World War I but which were the prelude to the emergence of the first socialist country.
So long as there is oppression and exploitation by the monopoly bourgeoisie, there is resistance by the proletariat and people of the world. The epochal struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat continues. So do all the concrete forms of national and class struggles in various countries. The people do not wish the greed of the few to victimize them without end. They fight for national and social liberation from imperialism and reaction. And they strive for greater freedom and social justice to prevail and continue under the principles of scientific socialism.
The need for the revolutionary party of the proletariat continues. It is for leading the proletariat and the people to carry out the revolution in stages on the basis of concrete conditions. It upholds the Marxist-Leninist ideological line against modern revisionism and all forms of subjectivism. It makes sure that the general political line can bring about the victory of democracy and socialism and defeat imperialism and all forms of reaction and is not diverted by either "Left" or Right opportunism. It concentrates the collective will and material strength of the proletarian revolutionaries by following the organizational principle of democratic centralism.
The revolutionary party of the proletariat must arouse, organize and mobilize the broad masses of the people through various forms of struggle. The most important form of struggle is ultimately the smashing of the military and bureaucratic machinery of the counterrevolutionary state and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship or the people's democratic dictatorship under working class leadership, depending on the concrete conditions.
