Leading communist Harpal Brar, central committee member, former chairman and founder of the CPGB-ML speaks at the party’s celebration of the October Revolution in October 2018.
In this powerful speech, Harpal discusses the lasting impact of the October revolution on our world, and the ongoing and growing influence of communism, which is propelling the growth of our party and our movement.
Our ideology gives us insight, vision, strength and hope in these dark times, when so much seems uncertain, and oppression, inequality, environmental degradation, poverty wages, unemployment, hunger, starvation and war seem to be always present.
But in these times of instability and crisis for capitalism, where housing, healthcare and education are being eroded in Britain, and the very right to eat, and to have basic shelter and clothing are absent for billions of our fellow human beings across the planet, the bourgeois ideologues are faltering in their arrogance, and the worlds’ workers are on the cusp of great movements for resistance and change.
There has never been a better time to weaken our enemies, sow confusion and discord in the ranks of the capitalists, and inspire the masses to cast off the fetters of capitalist property relations that doom them, the vast majority, to lives of marginalisation, poverty, and the waste of their talents and abilities.
Social democracy, in the shape of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party, is daily proving itself incapable of offering even words of resistance, never mind being able to lead the real movement for deep social change that would be necessary to effect the ‘redistribution’ that Corbyn so glibly promises.
Socialism cannot be confused with the preservation of capitalist wealth, only with a few more pennies in tax revenue spent on alleviating the miserable lives of the growing mass of the poor and destitute – workers who were ruined by capitalist exploitation in the first place.
A Corbyn administration, which we hope he has the opportunity to demonstrate in practice, will either tow the line of imperialism, or it will be shattered – so long as it does not place the smashing of the state machine of the exploiters at the top of its agenda. This he has most assiduously avoided, for all his pseudo-Marxist verbiage and clothing.
Workers have the power to shape a new world, but only if we can find the organisational strength and become welded into a fighting force to advance our own interests. For that, ideological unity and theoretical clarity are vital, and can only be offered by a party guided by the ideas of Marx and Lenin.
Join us and help shape the new world that humanity so desperately needs and deserves.
