Within Marxist theory, one of the main texts that summarizes historical materialism is the “Preface to the Contribution of the Critique of Political Economy”, in this text Marx mentions that between one mode of production and another there forms a time of transition which he denominates “time of social revolution”. For one mode of production to be replaced by another the contradiction between the level of development of the productive forces and the social relations of production (or forms of ownership) must develop.
This phenomenon is one of the laws of historical development that Marx discovered and is known as the “law of the tendency of accordance between productive forces and relations of production”. On this phenomenon and the time of social revolution Marx notes:
“Upon arriving at a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society contradict the existing relations of production, or, what’s more, the legal expression of this, with the relations of property within which they have developed there. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations become obstacles in it. And thus, there opens up a time of social revolution.” [1]
The productive forces engendered by capitalism in its imperialist phase and bourgeois relations of production have reached the point where they pose an obstacle on the first, that is to say, we are in the era of social revolution that mediates between capitalism and communism. That capitalism has reached its final stage was demonstrated by Lenin in Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism in which imperialism is consider the parasitic and decomposition stage.
Within the epoch of social revolution the socio-political revolutions are necessary catalysts to generate the new social relations of production and to accelerate the transition to the new mode of production, for that Lenin affirms that “Imperialism is the prelude of the social revolution of the proletariat” and add to it “This has been confirmed on a worldwide scale since 1917” [2]. Considering that the relations of production correspond to the development of the productive forces, it is necessary to abolish the bourgeois relations of production.
Thus, just as the imperialist phase of capitalism inaugurates the era of social revolution, which the material framework for the substitution of capitalism by socialism, the Great October Socialist Revolution, as the first within that period, inaugurates the transition from capitalism to socialism in the world. It is the first triumphant proletarian revolution, a continuation of the Paris Commune of 1871, which attempted for the first time the “assault on heaven”, and established some contours for worker’s power, showing forcefully the vital necessity of the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat so that revolution can secure its victory against the counterrevolution.
The Great October Socialist Revolution has aspects in common with previous social revolutions, but it also shows unprecedented aspects, traits general to the wave of proletarian revolutions that will develop until the international triumph of socialism-communism.
The Great October Socialist Revolution is the confirmation of the positions of scientific socialism, the theory developed by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and enriched substantially by Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Moreover, the triumphant proletarian revolution on November 7, 1917, confirms the correctness of the relentless struggle of the theory and politics of Leninism against the dominant opportunism of the II International, which dogmatizing Marxism into a reformist practice.
The Great October Socialist Revolution is not only a decisive historical event for the proletariat and the oppressed, and for the whole human race; It is above all a north for the contemporary action of the working class and the international communist movement, and for the socialist revolutions that will inevitably explode all over the world.
For this reason, on the occasion of its centenary, a reflection on its lessons is now indispensable for the communist and worker’s parties.