COMMEMORATES OCTOBER REVOLUTION
Paris
The Parti Communiste Internationaliste (French section of the Fourth International) commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the October revolution at a meeting November 10 in the Mutualité. Some 500 turned out, the large majority of them youth.
The hall was decorated with large portraits of Lenin and Trotsky and inscriptions hailing October and the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers.
The meeting was chaired by Michel Lequenne, who opened the proceedings with some brief remarks contrasting the spirit of this celebration, faithful to the tradition of October, with the gatherings of the partisans of "peaceful coexistence." Three speakers followed.
Pierre Frank began by recalling in broad lines the first imperialist war and the betrayal of the Social Democracy which preceded the October revolution. He then stressed how, after 1923, following several years of revolution, the ebb set in, marked by heavy defeats in China, in Germany, in Spain and so on. What had been a workers state, Communist parties and a Communist international began to degenerate. He dwelt in particular with the tragic fate of the Third International, which was dissolved by Stalin and which survives today, thanks to the efforts of the Trotskyists, in the form of the Fourth International.
He then dealt with the upsurge that began in 1943 and which in an uneven way, with both victories and defeats, has been heading, through the war in Vietnan, toward a proxysm. He emphasized the role of the youth in the capitalist countries who are at present refuting in the sharpest way the ideology of neocapitalism and preparing a fusion with the colonial revolution and the awakening of the workers states. This makes it possible to reaffirm with certainty the final words of Trotsky: "I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International. Go forward!"
Livio Maitan dealt with the colonial revolution. He began by recalling the fundamental role played by October in arousing the colonial peoples, and the enormously progressive example provided by the successes of the Soviet Union to the peoples which imperialism had plunged into the worst misery.
But in this field, too, as the speaker demonstrated, the bureaucracy played a dual role. He stressed how, by opposing the concept of the permanent revolution, the Moscow bureaucracy, long be-
fore Khrushchev and the present officials,
blocked revolutionary movements from achiev-
ing victory. He called attention in partic-
ular to the second Chinese revolution of
1925-27 and the uprising in India in 1942.
Most of his speech was devoted to
the current scene in Latin America, par-
ticularly Bolivia and Peru. With regard to
Bolivia, he examined the objective condi-
tions leading necessarily to guerrilla war
in this country and he denounced the Sta-
linists who made so bold as to utilize
the heavy blow represented by the death of
Che Guevara to advocate the "peaceful"
road to power.
He hailed OLAS (Organization of
Latin-American Solidarity] as a united
front of Latin-American revolutionists
established under the sponsorship of the
Cubans, who were contributing to the re-
construction of a mass, revolutionary
Marxist international.
In dealing with Peru, he referred
to the leadership of the Trotskyist Hugo
Blanco.
Ernest Mandel dealt mainly with
the Soviet Union and its problems as well
as those of the other workers states. He
referred first of all to the progress
achieved, the demonstration of the power
inherent in the relations of production,
a power that had proved even greater than
had been forecast by the leaders of the
October revolution, who held to the per-
spective of early victories of the so-
cialist revolution in other countries or
the crushing of the revolution in Russia.
He noted next that if the essen-
tial foundation remained, nevertheless,
owing to Stalinism, many of the conquests
of October had to be reconquered.
As an example he cited the con-
trast between the bad job conditions in
the plants and the labor legislation en-
acted following the October revolution.
As an another example, he mentioned the
flagrant inequalities still existing in
face of the rising equalitarian tenden-
cies which were so brutally repressed by
Stalin. Finally, he pointed to the gag
of the censorship and all the means en-
ployed to deny any expression to noncon-
formist thought.
He called attention to the demon-
strations to be observed in the Soviet
Union and the other workers states, es-
pecially those seeking to debate the past
and cleanse Soviet society of the "burn-
ing shame" which the Stalinist lies and
crimes constitute.
Mandel ended by declaring that the
youth in the advanced capitalist countries and the revolutionists in the underdeveloped countries will join in a single stream in which all of them together will complete the work begun in October 1917.
The meeting which had thus asso-
ciated the October battle with the bat-
tles of today ended by enthusiastically
singing the Internationale.