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By Joe Sims
Lenin walks around the world. . .
The sun sets like a scar,
Between the darkness and the dawn,
There rises a red star.
—Langston Hughes
The world is a better place because of V. I. Lenin. An outstanding 20th-century working-class leader and revolutionary, he helped change history. The revolution in St. Petersburg, which Lenin helped lead in 1917, opened the door to a new era.
The impulse first set in motion by the October Revolution lives on. The world revolutionary process continues to unfold: at times by fits and starts, at others almost standing still, then explosively, rapidly, with all the force of a social hurricane.
This remains the epoch of the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism—setbacks, contractions, and reversals notwithstanding. As Lenin himself once observed, the socialist revolution is not a single act but a series of acts over an entire historical period.
Without October, the very concept of working-class rule, the idea that ordinary workers are “enough”—that they possess everything needed to create a new just world—would remain a distant dream. Without October, Asia might never have awakened, the chains of colonial rule binding Africa might never...
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