On 22nd April, the 148th birth anniversary of Comrade Lenin, an important meeting of activists of the Communist Ghadar Party of India was held in Delhi, chaired by the General Secretary Comrade Lal Singh. The meeting began with a presentation of the main features of Leninism, which is summarised below.
On 22nd April, the 148th birth anniversary of Comrade Lenin, an important meeting of activists of the Communist Ghadar Party of India was held in Delhi, chaired by the General Secretary Comrade Lal Singh. The meeting began with a presentation of the main features of Leninism, which is summarised below.
Marx and Engels lived and worked in a period when developed imperialism did not yet exist. It was a period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical task. Lenin pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution. He continued to lead the Bolshevik party after the proletarian revolution had smashed bourgeois democracy and ushered in the era of proletarian democracy. That is why Leninism is the further development of Marxism. It is Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.
Lenin enumerated five characteristic features of capitalism at its highest stage of imperialism, namely: (i) concentration of capital and the domination of monopolies; (ii) rise of finance capital; (iii) export of capital; (iv) rivalry between monopoly capitalists over markets and sources of raw materials; and (v) completion of the territorial division of the world among a few imperialist powers, leading to wars to re-divide the world.
Lenin identified the major contradictions of capitalism at its highest stage as those between the exploiters and the exploited within individual countries, between imperialism and oppressed nations, and the inter-monopoly and inter-imperialist contradictions. These major contradictions together bring the fundamental contradiction between capitalism and socialism to the point of resolution.
Lenin discovered the law of uneven economic and social development of countries and predicted that the proletarian revolution would break the chain of imperialism at its weakest link. His prediction came true in 1917 when the chain broke in Russia.
Lenin taught that the seizure of power by the proletariat is only the beginning of the revolution. The challenge is to retain power, to consolidate it, to make it invincible. For this it is necessary to establish and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat as the instrument of the proletarian revolution.
Lenin led the struggle to create and build a Communist Party organized in a revolutionary style. He formulated democratic centralism, the organizational principle of the vanguard party of the proletariat. He led the struggle to expose and defeat the revisionism and opportunism of Bernstein, Kautsky and other influential leaders of the Second International.
Following the presentation on Leninism, the meeting proceeded to discuss the problem of revisionism – that is, of those who revise the science of Marxism-Leninism so as to remove its revolutionary essence and make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie.