Comrade Lenin Is With Us Forever!

Vladimir Lenin passed away on January 21, 1924 after being shot in 1918, a series of strokes, the stress he faced from leading the RSFSR and then USSR, and other health issues. The opportunist rat that shot him, Fanny Kaplan, did so because she wanted "multi-party" socialism; this would have weakened the proletarian leadership of the state by letting bourgeois elements take power, a threat already real enough with one party in power. It was right to have had her executed. But anyway, we remember on this day the innumerable contributions Comrade Lenin made to the revolutionary communist movement in theory as well as in practice.

With communist theory, Lenin analyzed capitalist-imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, and he explained why imperial warfare in the modern era occurs. Based on this analysis, he and his comrades understood that as part of the anti-imperialist struggle, Marxists must support self-determination for all nations (established communities of people with common languages, territories, etc.) as part of the tasks of the democratic revolution, which precedes the socialist one. Lenin also showed us how the workers' leading organization would develop; a vanguard party made of the most class-conscious workers and revolutionary intellectuals would educate and agitate the broad masses, and it would spearhead the revolution. Last, but not least, Lenin defended Marxism from the revisionists of his time, especially reformists, but also economists, adventurists, and more.

In his practice, everyone know of his leadership of the October Revolution, which put the workers and peasants in power and overthrew the bourgeois Russian Republic. But before that, he dedicated his life to the cause of revolution, being arrested many times and even exiled from Russia for his activities. Despite all the difficulties the absolutist Tsarist state placed on his comrades, they were able to form a disciplined, trained vanguard that led the workers in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. During the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks were able to mobilize the masses against all the enemies—the Tsarist White Army, peasant anti-proletarian "green army", anarchists and other "anti-Bolshevik socialists", and the imperialists that either sided with the White Army or wanted to work with Germany in eating up part of Russia—and win the bloody conflict against 75 different armies. Through all that hell, Lenin led the peoples of the former Russian Empire to socialist construction. And that is when he unfortunately died, for the USSR was just getting things together in 1924. After him, his loyal student and comrade Joseph Stalin—General Secretary of the Communist Party—and the other dedicated Marxists defended Marxism-Leninism and workers' power from opportunists like Trotsky, Bukharin, etc. and then built the world's first socialist state, making it a superpower in ten years.

While Lenin was clearly far from alone in the building of socialism, his specific analysis of the world with Marxism helped create the next stage of Marxism's development, Marxism-Leninism; from there, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism developed using Chairman Mao's and Chairman Gonzalo's theories and applications, and that is the highest stage of Marxism for now. We must uphold Lenin for this crucial reason. Lenin is with us forever thanks to the revolutionary progress he made!