The Russian Revolution and World Socialism (Quote of the Week)

	Workers Vanguard No. 1165	15 November 2019

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Russian Revolution and World Socialism

(Quote of the Week)

November 7 (October 25 by the calendar then used in Russia) marked the 102nd anniversary of the Russian Revolution, which overthrew capitalism in that country. Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin wrote the statement below at the request of the Swedish Left Social Democratic Party shortly after that revolution and as World War I continued to engulf Europe. He stressed that the solution to the crying needs of the world’s exploited and oppressed—an end to mass hunger and imperialist slaughter—required the proletarian seizure of power internationally, crucially in the advanced capitalist countries.

Two questions now take precedence over all other political questions—the question of bread and the question of peace. The imperialist war, the war between the biggest and richest banking firms, Britain and Germany, that is being waged for world domination, the division of the spoils, for the plunder of small and weak nations; this horrible, criminal war has ruined all countries, exhausted all peoples, and confronted mankind with the alternative—either sacrifice all civilisation and perish or throw off the capitalist yoke in the revolutionary way, do away with the rule of the bourgeoisie and win socialism and durable peace.

If socialism is not victorious, peace between the capitalist states will be only a truce, an interlude, a time of preparation for a fresh slaughter of the peoples. Peace and bread are the basic demands of the workers and the exploited. The war has made these demands extremely urgent. The war has brought hunger to the most civilised countries, to those most culturally developed. On the other hand, the war, as a tremendous historical process, has accelerated social development to an unheard-of degree. Capitalism had developed into imperialism, i.e., into monopoly capitalism, and under the influence of the war it has become state monopoly capitalism. We have now reached the stage of world economy that is the immediate stepping stone to socialism.

The socialist revolution that has begun in Russia is, therefore, only the beginning of the world socialist revolution. Peace and bread, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, revolutionary means for the healing of war wounds, the complete victory of socialism—such are the aims of the struggle.

—V.I. Lenin, “For Bread and Peace” (December 1917)