In this M Basavapunnaiah Centenary Year, we are publishing here the article which the late leader shortly wrote before his demise. VLADIMIR Ilyich Ulyanov, popularly and endearingly called Lenin, was born in the city of Sinbirsk in 1870. He joined a Marxist circle at an early age and became a seasoned and matured Marxist in a short period. He united all the Marxist workers in St Petersburg in 1895 and carried to them the revolutionary message of Marxism. The Tsarist government of the day arrested him in December 1895 and he was subsequently exiled to Siberia. Faced with the persecution of the Tsarist sleuths, Lenin decided to go abroad and continue his revolutionary activity. Accordingly, he went abroad in the autumn of 1900 to make arrangements for the publication of his newspaper Iskra. The first issue of Iskra appeared in December 1900. The title page of the paper bore the epigraph: ‘The spark will kindle a flame’. ORGANISERPAR EXCELLENCE Lenin was the first Marxist who realised the prime necessity of organising a political party; the latter can become an invincible force only when its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism is consolidated by the material unity of an organisation which will wield millions of toilers into an army of the working class. As History of the CPSU (B), compiled in the year 1938 sharply puts it: ‘Its historic significance lies in the fact that in it Lenin, for the first time in the history of Marxism, elaborated the doctrine of the Party, as the leading organisation of the proletariat, without which the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be won.’ It was to the credit of Lenin that he was the first Marxist to realise the necessity of organising the communist party as the vanguard party of the revolutionary working class, which alone can lead a proletarian socialist revolution. It is a fact that when the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party, which was held secretly from June 26 to August 3, 1917, and which took the historic revolutionary decision to overthrow the treacherous provisional government headed by Kerensky, the party comprised only two lakh forty thousand members in all. We highlight this fact only to show that a well knit communist party, even if its total strength is no big and massive, is capable of capturing political power, if it has the backing of the majority of the working people who actively support and participate in the revolution. UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION Besides many facets of Lenin in creatively developing and applying the doctrine of Marxism, the necessity of organising a well knit political party of the revolutionary working class stands as a unique contribution of Lenin to the treasure of Marxism. More than all this, Lenin had the good fortune of leading and winning the successful October 1917 revolution and laying the foundation of a socialist state in a relatively backward country, where only rudiments of capitalist industrial development has taken place. Lenin headed the first ever known socialist state and its government, and worked out concrete internal and external policies. It was these policies of Lenin and his party that could successfully crush the internal counter revolution and armed intervention by the world imperialist forces. The imperialists of Great Britain, France, Japan and America had started their military intervention. The British and French landed troops in the north, occupied Archangel and Murmausk, supported a local white guard revolt. The Japanese landed troops in Vladivostok, seized the maritime province, dispersed the soviets and supported the local white guard rebels who subsequently restored the bourgeois system. It was this extremely critical situation that the October Russian Revolution had to confront, and the Bolshevik Party and Soviet government has to go through the severe trials of war communism, new economic policy, rapid industrialisation, and cooperativisation, and partial collectivisation of agriculture. MARXISM ENRICHED Lenin creatively enriched Marxism, its tactics, theory and organisation, and laid the foundations for the first socialist state in the world. When we say it was Lenin who could do this monumental work for the first successful proletarian revolution, it is not to deify Lenin, but only to highlight the role of the CPSU (B), the part played by the heroic working class – all under the leadership of the party and its most outstanding leader, Lenin. The assassin’s bullets fired at Lenin and the consequent ill health that haunted him prevented him from fulfilling his mission to complete success. On January 7, 1924, Lenin the outstanding leader of the Russian as well as world socialist revolution, passed away at the age of only 54 years. But his premature death did not undermine the Great Russian Revolution though it was weakened by the absence of an able Marxist leader like Lenin. While commemorating the 122nd anniversary of Lenin’s birthday, it is inexcusable on anybody’s part to omit the unique role played by Lenin in enormously enriching Marxist doctrine and its further elaboration. To put in Lenin’s own words: ‘Marxism is the system of Marx’s views and teachings. Marx was the genius who continued and consummated the three main ideological currents of the nineteenth century, as represented by the three most advanced countries of mankind: classical German philosophy, classical English political economy, and French socialism – combined with French revolutionary doctrine in general. Acknowledged even by his opponents the remarkable consistency and integrity of Marx’s views, whose totality constitutes modern materialism and modern scientific socialism, as the theory and programme of the working class movement in all the civilised countries of the world, make it incumbent on us to present a brief outline of his world conception in general, prior to giving an exposition of the principal content of Marxism, namely, Marx’s economic doctrine. ‘It is evident that Marx deduces the inevitability of the transformation of capitalist society into socialist society wholly and exclusively from the economic law of the development of contemporary society. The socialisation of labour, which is advancing ever more rapidly in thousands of forms, and has manifested itself very strikingly, during the half a century since the death of Marx, in the growth of large scale production, capitalist cartels, syndicates and trusts, as well as in the gigantic increase in the dimensions and powers of finance capital, provides the principal material foundation for the inevitable advent of socialism’ MARXISM: NOT A PETRIFIED THEORY Lenin further adds: ‘But this is not all. The history of philosophy and the history of social sciences show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling ‘sectarianism’ in Marxism in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the higher road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already presented by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the great representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism. ‘The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy, and French socialism’. Lenin’s presentation of Marxist doctrine further elaborated that dialectics is the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, and the richest in content, viz. Hegelian dialectics, was considered by Marx and Engels as the greatest achievement of classical German philosophy. They thought that any further formulation of the principle of development of evolution was one sided and poor in content, and could only distort and mutilate the actual course of development – in nature and in society. ‘Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from the destruction of idealism, including Hegelianism, and apply it in the materialist conception of Nature’. Lenin, further proceeding on the issue of the materialist conception of history, stated: A realisation of the inconsistency, incompleteness, and one sidedness of the old materialism convinced Marx of the necessity of ‘bringing the science of society... into harmony with materialist foundation, and of restructuring it thereupon’. Since materialism in general explains consciousness as the outcome of being, and not conversely, materialism, as applied to social life of mankind, has to explain social being. These long excerpts from Lenin elucidate his assessment of Marxism as the only correct and scientific evaluation. Lenin not only defended the basic theory of Marx and Engels, but also enormously enriched it. Hence the doctrine of Marx has come to be called Marxism Leninism. APPLYING MARXISM IN A NEW ERA It fell to the lot of Lenin to analyse and assess as to how the nineteenth century capitalism had grown into monopoly capitalism or imperialism. In his classic work Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, he arrived at the conclusion that ‘imperialism is the eve of social revolution’ of the proletariat. This has been confirmed since 197 on a worldwide scale. For all the unique contribution made by Lenin to the doctrine and theory of Marxism, this social science has come to be characterised as Marxism Leninism. The communists the world over are being guided by this doctrine of Marxism Leninism. It has achieved epoch making victories in the 20th century, leaving its lasting imprint. SEVERE SETBACKS But during the last four to five years there have been severe setbacks, reverses and defeats to the world communist movement. The east European communist led regimes which had come into existence following the collapse of fascism in the year 1945 have collapsed. A number of communist parties in the world – particularly in Europe – have abandoned their signboards. The USSR as a federal socialist state has crumbled. The socialist foundations laid during the last seven decades have come under threat. The CPSU built in Russia for over 90 years has been disbanded. The socialist gains of the people are gravely endangered. The remaining communist led countries such as the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba have come under severe stresses and strains. The world imperialist forces and the US imperialists in particular have gained an upper hand, with the world balance of forces changing in their favour, though temporarily. NO ROOM FOR DESPAIR All this has come handy to the congenital anti communists, and arch counter revolutionaries are exulting loudly that Marxism is dead and world communism is buried fathoms deep. This is a time when communists the world over, worth the grain should not lose heart under the foul and virulent attacks of the class enemies, and succumb under the assault. The communist doctrine that had surfaced in the early 1845 has proved its scientific and lasting worth during the last one hundred and fifty years. The world communist movement, during the last one century, has shaken the foundations of the international imperialism, rousing the tens of millions of the toiling people to fight for the ending of the exploitative capitalist order. The world communist movement has roused the people in the former colonies and semi colonies, making them firm allies in the struggle against colonialism and neo colonialism. The world forces of peace, national liberation, social progress and anti imperialism, though now in temporary disarray, suffering reverses and defeats, are a formidable force that the international imperialists have to reckon with. IMPERIALIST CAMP IN DISARRAY The imperialist camp is in utter disarray, and the striving of US imperialists to establish their cherished ‘American era’ is bound to further intensify the inter-imperialist contradictions. The drive of US imperialists to put other rival imperialist powers under their control is bound to recoil on them. The growing trends of recession in all the major capitalist countries, the steeply failing rate of annual production, the threatening recession, growing inflation and mass scale unemployment – all are undermining the world capitalist order, and no easy remedies are available. The military –industrial complexes, built over decades by different developed capitalist countries are threatening the stability of economy and social life in all the capitalist countries. The mounting pressures of the imperialists, US imperialists in particular, on the third world countries for a free inflow of their predatory capital, is inviting increasing resistance from the people of the third world. No Marxist Leninist and no peace and freedom loving person should succumb under the pressure of reaction and counter revolution, and must fight back the imperialist bamboozlement. SOCIALISM: THE ONLY NOBLE CAUSE The occasion to observe the 122nd birthday of immortal Lenin will have to be utilised by all the peace and freedom loving humanity to redouble its struggle for national liberation, for lasting peace on earth, for the ending of exploitation of man by man, country by country and continent by another continent. Marxism is immortal, and Lenin’s cause of Marxism and socialism is the only cause that civilised humanity can espouse.