THE rally this Sunday will not just celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It will be a clarion call for workers to emulate the Russian working class and go forward to overthrow British capitalism and advance to socialism and the victory of the world socialist revolution.
This rally takes place under conditions of an acute world-wide capitalist crisis, a crisis that can only be resolved through world socialist revolution. The world banking crisis that erupted in 2007 has not disappeared; in fact it has dramatically deepened as the capitalist class have in desperation turned to debt as the only way of keeping afloat.
This astronomical debt mountain, now calculated to be 235% of the total world’s GDP, is on the point of collapse and the capitalist class and the bankers are determined that the full weight of this debt will fall on the backs of workers.
In Britain, the debt burden run up by bailing out the banks has resulted in ten years of the most vicious austerity cuts. Wages frozen for years or capped at below the inflation rate mean that even those in full-time employment don’t earn enough to pay the rent or feed their families. Benefits have been cut to the extent that real poverty is at levels not seen since the 19th century. Now the masses of the poor are forced to live off the charity of food banks. Schools and hospitals are being sold off to the privateers while the NHS is being steadily bankrupted and is now on the edge of being destroyed completely in a vicious counter-revolution.
All these attacks on working people have produced a revolutionised working class and revolutionary young people for whom capitalism offers no future except poverty and debt. It is this crisis and the movement of a working class determined not to be driven back to the 19th century that have created the political crisis that is engulfing the minority Tory government of Theresa May.
The government is so weak that a junior minister, Priti Patel, feels emboldened enough to go behind May’s back and enter into secret negotiations with the Israeli state while her leading ministers are up to their necks in allegations of sleaze, forcing the resignation of her closest ally.
Such is the crisis of this Tory government that EU leaders are now openly speculating about how long May can survive after Christmas. The question is why hasn’t she gone already? The answer to this is the refusal of the Labour leadership to actually do anything about removing May and the Tories.
Corbyn is keeping a deathly silence over the question of getting them out, hoping that the Labour Party doesn’t find itself in power and having to deal with Brexit and the issue of saving the capitalist system from the determination of the working class to put an end to it.
Meanwhile, the TUC leaders are waging their own campaign to keep the Tory ship afloat with offers by their general secretary, Frances O’Grady, for a deal with May – to break with the Tory Brexit MPs and enter a coalition with the Labour right-wing to overturn the referendum result and keep British capitalism tied to the EU bankers and bosses.
All these conspiracies and scandals are a symptom of the complete collapse of the old political order and the desperate attempt by the ruling class to seek out a new form of rule through a reactionary coalition to impose ever greater austerity on workers to save capitalism.
The great lesson from the Russian Revolution is that in a revolutionary situation like this the working class needs a revolutionary leadership – a leadership that will not compromise with capitalism but lead the struggle to overthrow it. In Britain, this means building the leadership of the WRP to replace the reactionary leadership of the TUC and organising a general strike to kick out the Tories and advance to a workers government that will, like the Bolsheviks in 1917, expropriate the bankers and bosses.
A workers government will break with the EU and fight alongside the working class of Europe for the victory of the European socialist revolution and the creation of a United Socialist States of Europe. This, in unity with the US workers, will encourage the workers of Russia and China to carry out political revolutions to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy to bring in rule through workers’ soviets, and prepare the way for the workers of the world to advance to a worldwide socialist republic, where the most advanced productive forces can be planned and organised for worldwide socialism.
So come to our rally to celebrate the Russian Revolution and to join the struggle for the victory of the world socialist revolution so that humankind can make a huge leap forward in its development.
