Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum
A speech for the International Lenin Century Symposium in Istanbul, 13 January 2024
The Russian October Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century had a major impact on the history of world revolution. Lenin’s brilliance is that he creatively applied Marxism to the era of imperialism and led the first socialist revolution to victory. The theory that the contradictions between the imperialist powers, owing to uneven development of capitalism, would lead to interimperialist and colonial wars, and that the weakest link in the imperialist chain would be broken first in the process, has become an important part of Leninism, describing the objective aspects of the revolutionary situation.
Lenin waged a decisive struggle to mature the subjective aspects of the revolutionary situation: the founding of Leninist theory, the strengthening of the Bolshevik organization, and the seizure of power in the Soviets.
The theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat characterizes one of the most important factors in the victory of the October Revolution. The ideological battle against sectarianism and opportunism was crucial in strengthening the Bolsheviks as the revolutionary force of the working class, and the Soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers played a decisive role in the victory of the revolution as a united front linking the party with the masses.
In order to succeed in a revolution, both the objective and subjective conditions must be ripe, but it is the subjective side that plays the decisive role.
Today, the flames of World War 3 are spreading from Eastern Europe, through Western Asia (the Middle East), and into East Asia. At present, there is a high probability of expansion of war in Eastern Europe and a high probability of the outbreak of war in East Asia.
World War 1 was a war between rival imperialists, while World War 2 was a world antifascist war. World War 3 is relatively closer to World War 2 than World War 1 as a world anti-imperialist war. While in World War 2 the socialist Soviet Union joined hands with the imperialists of the USA and Britain in order to destroy fascism, in World War 3, socialist DPRK and China have joined hands with capitalist Russia against the imperialists.
Succeeding from the world antifascist united front in World War 2, the world anti-imperialist united front is being formed in World War 3. One anti-imperialist front and several anti-imperialist battlefields are being formed on a global scale.
The war in Ukraine began with the Maidan coup in 2014, intensified with the war in the Donbass region, and entered full swing with Russia’s special military operation in 2022. World War 3 began with the war in Ukraine and is intensifying with the war in Palestine, the war in the Middle East in 2023. It will enter full swing with the outbreak of war in Taiwan and in South Korea. When we talk about the war entering “full swing”, we are referring to a qualitative change in warfare that is objectively recognized as a state of war.
The ongoing war in Ukraine is an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist war, a war of liberation, and a preventive war from the standpoint of Russia, while the war in Palestine is an anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist war and a war of liberation from the standpoint of Palestine. The impending war in Taiwan is an anti-imperialist war, a national-liberation war, and a unification war of the fatherland from the standpoint of China, while the war in South Korea is an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist war and a national-liberation war from the standpoint of Korea. The DPRK will resolve the national-liberation issue through non-peaceful means, and then peacefully resolve the national reunification issue with the people’s democratic regime established in the South. This will involve a process of unification through a federal system.
At present, the international communist movement is not fulfilling its historical and political responsibilities. One of the main reasons for this is the revisionist, opportunistic and sectarian behavior of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and its satellites. Solidnet, the authoritative solidarity network of the international communist movement, was completely divided at last year’s conference in Havana, Cuba, when its organizer, the KKE, declared the war in Ukraine to be an “interimperialist” war. The basis of the KKE’s erroneous views, which declare Russia and even China to be “imperialist”, is its revisionist theory of the “imperialist pyramid”.
As long as there are markets and trade, this theory contends that a society must be described as capitalist. And as long as monopolies dominate on a global scale, every capitalist society must be described as an imperialist one. According to this absurd view that there is only a quantitative difference in a pyramid of imperialists, every country on earth becomes an imperialist country. Even the DPRK, the most staunch socialist country, has markets and trade, so it is capitalist and therefore imperialist.
The only exception to this theory, according to their argument, is Palestine, which is a logical contradiction in itself, since Palestine has markets and trade, so it is also capitalist and imperialist. This is why Solidnet made a very vague statement on the war in Palestine at this year’s conference in Izmir, Turkey.
If we compare the Paris Declaration made by the World Anti-imperialist Platform in October 2022 and the statement on the war in Palestine made in Athens in November 2023 with the statements of Solidnet, the limitations of the latter, which is led by the KKE, become even more glaring. In this context, the recent sectarian recklessness with which the KKE unilaterally dissolved the Communist Initiative in Europe, is not surprising at all.
The victory of the revolution depends on both subjective and objective factors, and the subjective factor plays a decisive role. The analysis of a revolutionary situation consists of a subjective aspect and an objective aspect, and here too, the subjective aspect plays a decisive role. The subjective factors for the victory of the revolution are the guiding idea, the leading nucleus and the mass foundation, while the objective factors are the military and economic material means. The subjective aspect of the revolutionary situation is the military, political and economic capabilities of the revolutionary forces. The objective aspect consists of the military, political and economic capabilities of the domestic counter-revolutionary forces and international variables.
The revolutionary forces work to strengthen their subjective capacities and deepen the military, political and economic crisis of the domestic counter-revolutionary forces. The international variable is divided into the forces of the dominant powers and the forces of international solidarity: the dominant forces are imperialist and great-power chauvinist forces, while the international solidarity forces are the forces for internationalist unity and the forces for international solidarity.
The problem of great-power chauvinism refers to the error of the big socialist countries in the past in failing to guarantee the independence of smaller socialist countries. The force for internationalist unity refers to the unity of forces that believe in the internationalism of Marxism-Leninism. The fact that China today, along with the most staunch socialist country, the DPRK, is walking a socialist line with Chinese characteristics, and has even gone so far as to wage an anti-imperialist armed struggle along with capitalist Russia on a single anti-imperialist front, is the greatest anti-imperialist and revolutionary change since the destruction of the Soviet Union.
Today, the imperialist camp is plotting World War 3 under cover of its “New Cold War” strategy in order to expropriate its excesses and conceal its own political and economic crisis. Imperialism is the root cause of all wars on a global scale and is solely responsible for provoking them. The imperialist camp is using the tactic of the “New Cold War”, World War 3, in which hot and cold wars coexist, by fabricating the fiction and spreading this lie by means of overwhelming propaganda: World War 3 would be caused by invasions from Russia in Eastern Europe, Palestine in Western Asia, China and the DPRK in East Asia.
However, this is a strategic error that had not only united Russia and China in a single anti-imperialist camp but also is driving two billion Muslims into the anti-imperialist camp, all while contradicting its own pretext for war owing to the obvious inconsistency between the West’s anti-Russian propaganda and its pro-Israeli propaganda.
We note that Russia, China and the DPRK are all nuclear and missile powers armed with hydrogen bombs and hypersonic missiles, and that South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol government is in a very vulnerable state. Like the Zelensky and Netanyahu governments, the Yoon government is notoriously fascistic and a steadfast vassal of imperialism. Unlike the fascist forces in World War 2, the fascist forces in World War 3 are all puppets of imperialism, serving merely as storm troops in imperialist proxy wars.
Yoon’s approval rating has plummeted owing to his corruption, incompetence, and pro-US unpatriotic character, and he is now frantically trying to complete the fascistization of South Korea and conduct war maneuvers against North Korea, as he is highly likely to be defeated in the next parliamentary election in April. In South Korea, the People’s Democracy Party (PDP) is the only staunch revolutionary force that calls for the withdrawal of US troops and the overthrow of Yoon Suk-yeol. The PDP has won legitimacy through 30 years of keen antifascist and anti-imperialist struggles and is focusing on strengthening its core competencies and mass base, as well as on strengthening internationalist unity and international solidarity in preparation for the outbreak of war in South Korea.
Founded in Paris in October 2022 by revolutionary parties from around the world, including the People’s Democratic Party, the World Anti-imperialist Platform has set itself three major goals: organizing the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle, waging an ideological struggle against revisionism, and strengthening the international communist forces. In pursuit of these aims, it has held international conferences and massive demonstrations in Belgrade in December 2022, in Caracas in March 2023, in Seoul in May 2023, and in Athens in November 2023.
We will continue to move forward and struggle for the victory of the Great October Revolution of our era with the scientific convictions of “Proletarians of the world, unite!” and “The people, united, will never be defeated!”
The final victory of the most just anti-imperialist camp is certain.
