(1857-1933)
German Marxist theorist, leader, activist, and organizer of the first International Women’s Day in 1911
“In the Russian Revolution, we see more than merely the objective and subjective factors that grew up, living and weaving, on Russian soil. We see in the Russian Revolution the impact of economic, social, and revolutionary tendencies and forces of international capitalism, of bourgeois society around the world. That is already evident in the fact that the revolution was unleashed by a world war that was no accident but the unavoidable result of the combination and interpenetration of world economic and political conditions under the rule of finance-capital, of imperialist capitalism. In the Russian Revolution, we see the expression of all the economic, political, and social conditions created by world capitalism both inside and outside Russia. We also see, crystallized within the Russian Revolution, the concentrated historical understanding and revolutionary will of the proletariat of all countries. International revolutionary socialism, together with the intellectual and moral forces that it aroused and schooled, became living and effective in the Russian Revolution.
The Russian Revolution is thus a great demonstration on a world-historical scale of the vigour, power, and irresistible nature of the social factor in historical development, that is, the understanding, will, action, and struggle of the proletarian masses, who aim to bring down capitalism and realise communism.”
From: Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922 (Haymarket Books, 2012). From Session 8-Monday, 13 November 1922 “Five Years of the Russian Revolution and Perspective for the World-Revolution,” page 307.
Edited and translated by: John Riddell www.johnriddell.com
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