Beacon of the Future: Speech Delivered at Internationalist Event in Athens in Commemoration of the 108th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution

Editor’s Note: The following is a speech delivered by comrade General Secretary Manolis at an internationalist event held at the headquarters of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in Athens to commemorate the 108th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

This meeting comes at a critical moment in the development of the CWPUSA and the international communist movement. As costs of living rise, wages stagnate, and the wealthy capitalists open new warfronts, the working class in the USA and around the world searches for direction. Taking the historic lessons of the Bolsheviks, the communists of today must make the choice to carry forward the class struggle. Rejecting cowardice & individualism in all forms, we embrace the historic task of the revolution. We honor the great legacy of sacrifice and victory October provides to the workers of the world.

We choose the struggle.

Elige luchar!

Comrades, first, we extend our heartfelt and highest gratitude and appreciation to the KKE for the organization of this event, for the invitation to the CWP to contribute. We also thank the contributions, lessons, and experiences of the parties present here today that help develop the new generations of communists in the US.

The great communist of the US, John Reed, said of the October Revolution that the “Russian Revolution is indisputably one of the greatest events in the history of mankind and the rise of the Bolsheviks to power an event of world significance.”

The October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia proved in the 20th century that capitalism is not invincible, that we are capable of constructing a higher organization of society without exploiters and exploited. It showed the workers of the world that we do not need to live unhappy, misery-filled lives while a minority parasitic class ​enjoy labor-free existence in untold luxuries and freedoms. It confirmed that the working class has the power to overthrow capitalist domination and build a new world based on people's needs, not profits.

The hunger, war, poverty, and misery brewing across the world today—products of global indignation with the capitalist system, reflect the very conditions that galvanized the Russian working class and people, guided by Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ decisive contribution and vanguard role, to seize power and claim victory.

Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the working class seized power, overthrew the capitalists, and spent more than 70 years building a society free from the exploitation of man-by-man. This demonstrated the superiority of socialism over capitalism through immense gains for working people. The Great October Revolution was a monumental step forward in human social progress, inspiring advances for the working class and oppressed peoples in every corner of the planet. It embodied the flame of proletarian internationalism and became a symbol of a new path, one that fostered scientific development, met human needs, ensured employment, provided free healthcare and education, guaranteed housing, rest, and cultural growth. For the first time in history, the world witnessed the potential of socialism to achieve social prosperity and the full development of human beings. Today, it is a beacon of the future we fight for.

Problems of Today and the Way Forward

Across the capitalist world, we witness the bourgeoisie preparing for a generalized imperialist war as a way out of the recurring economic crises produced by the overaccumulation of capital. Imperialist alliances form, collapse, and reorganize at the expense of the workers and peoples of all countries.

In our own country, the Trump administration continues the policies of the Biden administration in its conflict with China and in its pursuit of imperialist war, now with an intensified anti-immigrant, reactionary, and protectionist direction. It continues the course set by Obama, Bush Jr., Clinton, and Bush Sr., staffed with billionaires and war hawks, heightening emphasis on the Americas in maintaining its dominant position in the imperialist system.

This administration oversees millions of homeless people, the highest number of prisoners in recent history, masses without healthcare, a militarized border, the terror of ICE kidnappings, and a brutal police force maiming and killing. Housing is increasingly concentrated in the hands of monopolies, and workers are squeezed out of food, education, and the right to a dignified life. Under both Democrat and Republican governments, thousands have lost their lives in natural disasters—lives deemed too costly for the logic of capital and the bourgeois state. These are criminal policies of profit, of social murder; the bourgeoisie is the culprit.

Once again the trumpets of imperialist war are sounding, under pretexts such as the so-called war on drugs, which masks the sharp escalation of imperialist aggression against Venezuela and the peoples of Latin America. Successive US administrations maintain the imperialist blockade against Cuba, suffocating its people while justifying it with lies and slander.

The first Trump government signed the USMCA, an inter-imperialist economic agreement securing the interests of monopolies in Canada, the US, and Mexico. The agreement transforms the Mexican labor movement into an extension of the AFL-CIO, subordinating workers to employer interests. It reflects the competing interests of the US and China, ensnaring the peoples of the Americas in the process.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations took part in the genocide in Palestine, attempting to improve the US position in the Middle East and beyond as it confronts its competitors. The Democrats and Republicans join with the EU, with NATO, who carve up Ukraine, who escalate anti-communist operations alongside repression, anti-people policies, and deeper involvement in imperialist war plans. The criminalization of communist ideology—based on distortions of historical truth—reveals how deeply the bourgeoisie fears that the lessons and memory of the October Revolution endure.

In a society where production is determined by private ownership, anarchic production, competition, and profit, the needs of the working class are extinguished. Those who work and produce are never the ones who decide the goals or plans of production. Capitalism’s DNA is built on cyclical crises that, as they intensify, generate unemployment, low wages, smashed social rights, and imperialist wars over markets, territories, and natural resources.

Lessons of October 1917

The escalation of repression against workers and people, the plans for a war economy, and the preparation for generalized imperialist war confirm the timeliness and historic necessity of socialism-communism as the only way out.

To make this reality, the victory of the revolution, confirmed by the experience of the Great October Revolution, must be based on Marxism-Leninism becoming a material force among the masses. It requires a Communist Party at the center of the working class, capable of leading it toward the final showdown: the elimination of capitalist power and the establishment of the workers’ state. This lesson is consistently neglected by modern Mensheviks and the enemies of socialism-communism.

Against the slanderers and distorters of Leninism, against recycled theories such as that of multi-polarity and the so-called anti-imperialist states, the October Revolution proved that Lenin’s conception of imperialism confirms the Marxist-Leninist theory of revolution in practice. The victory of the Russian working class was made possible only through Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ decisive confrontation with the Second International whose modern kin—such as the World Anti-Imperialist Platform—attack the KKE and revolutionary forces and serve as apologists for the bourgeoisies of China and Russia.

In that historic confrontation, the October Revolution confirmed that the era of monopoly capitalism, the imperialist stage of capitalism, can only be overcome through the socialist revolution. It confirmed that there is no middle course, no intermediate stage, no government operating on capitalist terrain that can resolve capitalist crises, war, unemployment, refugee flows, or poverty. Communists cannot participate in or support a capitalist government.

Today, as then, the October Revolution revealed opportunism as the ideological-political expression of bought-off layers of the working class and of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influence within the labor movement and among so-called “communists.” Against these ideological distortions, the October Revolution clarified the role of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It demonstrated that popular indignation alone is insufficient and often coexists with disorientation requiring the Communist Party to elaborate and adhere to a clear political line and intervene decisively so that the movements of the workers and people gain revolutionary momentum.

The victory of October demonstrated the necessity for communists to consistently evaluate their theoretical and political positions. Communists cannot cling to outdated or ahistorical strategies, a common error among many parties in our country. The Bolsheviks’ path to victory in 1917 was neither easy nor linear. It required strategic maturation from 1905 to 1917 and a decisive break with the Mensheviks and other opportunists. This remains a valuable lesson, one reflected in the formation of the Communist Workers’ Platform and its own break with those who could not learn from 1917.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks provided communists with the method to assess revolutionary and non-revolutionary situations and to implement a revolutionary strategy capable of preparing the class for the final victory, the overthrow of capitalism.

Concluding Remarks

Comrades, the Great October Revolution was the revolution of the workers and working people. It represented the liberation of oppressed peoples and the emancipation of working women. It showed that without an organized Communist Party, disciplined and schooled in Marxism-Leninism, the workers and people cannot win.

In the United States, the Communist Workers' Platform holds fast to the lessons of the October Revolution, recognizing the urgent need for the reorganization of the Communist Party in our country. The Communist Workers’ Platform works in this direction, following the path carved by the October Revolution, guided by the contributions of the parties present today, and with particular appreciation for the leadership of the Communist Party of Mexico, whose selfless and internationalist role in educating new generations of US communists has been paramount.

Despite the crisis facing the international communist movement, we assess that it is temporary. The communist and workers’ movements will not remain forever in the morass of bourgeois domination. Despite all the resources deployed against a new upsurge of struggle, the flame of October burns bright, and the red banner continues to fly.

The Russian working class, led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, showed the world what was once thought impossible. As the great composer Mikis Theodorakis said, for the sun to turn, it takes work, it takes thousands, and it takes the living willing to give their lives. Under this example, the Bolsheviks stormed the heavens, and the communists of the United States carry on this legacy.

The bourgeoisie of our country fears the growing class consciousness and the resurgence of a workers’ and communist movement that will rise again and consign this system to the trash bin of history. The 21st century is one of optimism, of new offensives, new victories, and the irreversible overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism-communism. The communists of the United States, the Communist Workers’ Platform, do not stray from this historical objective. Shoulder-to-shoulder with the parties gathered here today, we follow the path of the October Revolution.

Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!

Long Live the October Revolution!