This year, we mark the anniversary of the October Revolution with the first signs that “the great humanity” will rise once again, even amid a darkness that seems as though it will never end.
From east to west, peoples across the world have already begun to take action against the poverty and uncertainty, exploitation and political repression imposed upon them. In Europe, Asia and the Americas, millions of young people and workers from different social backgrounds are joining hands, taking to the streets for their rights and resisting the darkness of capitalism. The mounting anger finds expression sometimes at the ballot box, sometimes in protests against politicians mired in corruption.
There is no doubt that this anger and resistance of the peoples will encounter the traps laid by the ruling classes, face many hardships and undergo serious tests. Above all, in each country, they will need to find their own political leadership and programmes and organise around them. No, we have not yet reached the moment when capitalism can be consigned to the dustbin of history. But we know that history advances in leaps. This knowledge tells us that humanity may find itself on the threshold of great developments at any moment.
The dark years of the First World War were no easier for humanity. Yet within that darkness, a new revolutionary period was taking shape. Even then, amid exploitation, misery and the smell of gunpowder, capitalism was digging its own grave, preparing the conditions for the moment when people would refuse to accept their fate and stand up for themselves.
Today, everyone can feel that we are going through a similar process.
As we have recently seen in Turkey, politicians up to their necks in corruption, shamelessly attempting to seize the modest savings of ordinary people, and bosses who subjected the people they exploited to every kind of insult and cruelty, for whom not a single tear was shed after their deaths, are no exceptions to this system. Capitalism has reached the final stage of rotting and spreading its rot. A period lies ahead in which millions of people will come to recognise this truth.
Amid war, hunger and incurable wounds, the days are approaching when we will once again celebrate the festival of the oppressed. Drawing on the unparalleled experience of the October Revolution, we are ready to take on the tasks that the accelerating class struggles of the new period place before us, with great enthusiasm and a cool head.
Salute to the makers of the October Revolution, to the revolutionaries who set a new threshold for humanity, one below which it would never again fall!
