WSWS Arts Review

"Even though the working class vanguard knew in theory that Might was the mother of Right, their thinking was permeated by the spirit of opportunism, adaptation to bourgeois legalism. They are learning from the teaching of facts to despise this legalism and tear it down" -Trotsky

Proclamation on the Assumption of Soviet Power, November 7, 1917: "Backed by the will of the vast majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants, and backed by the...uprising of the workers and the garrison...in Petrograd, the [Soviet] Congress takes power into its own hands."

Despite the ultimately tragic fate of the Soviet Union—which was destroyed by the betrayals and crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy—no other event in the past century had such a far-reaching impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people on every part of the planet.

The Russian Revolution marked a new stage in world history. The overthrow of the capitalist Provisional Government proved an alternative to capitalism was no utopian dream, but a real possibility that could be achieved through the conscious political effort of the working class.

The October Revolution substantiated the materialist conception of history as formulated by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. Its objective development also substantiated the perspective elaborated by Trotsky between 1906 and 1907, the theory of permanent revolution.

The seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party in October 1917 and the establishment of the first workers’ state inspired an immense development in the class consciousness and political awareness of the working class and oppressed masses throughout the world.

In its struggle against imperialist war, the Bolsheviks proved socialist internationalism was the essential foundation of revolutionary strategy and the struggle for power. As Trotsky explained: "The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable."

The historical achievement of 1917 both demonstrated and actualized the essential relationship between scientific materialist philosophy and revolutionary practice. It vindicated Lenin in What Is To Be Done?: “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."

The development of Bolshevism as a political tendency and the exceptional role that it played in the tumultuous events of 1917 vindicated the essential significance of the struggle waged by Marxists against opportunism and its political sibling, centrism.

The Bolsheviks provided workers with an example of what a genuine revolutionary party is, and the irreplaceable role of such a party in the socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks, with Lenin and Trotsky in the lead, were decisive in securing the victory of the socialist revolution.