Greetings from the German communists
Greeting message to the CPGB-ML 100th anniversary celebration of the Great October Socialist Revolution on Saturday 4 November 2017 from the KPD (Communist Party of Germany)
Dear comrades!
Today, on the same day as we, you are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution with a worthy celebration.
The October Revolution was the first successful socialist revolution in world history.
The October Revolution opened the door for mankind to a completely new epoch of its history, an era without private ownership of the means of production, without exploitation of man by man, without the subjugation of the whole of society to the law of value, which means without the subjugation of the whole of society to the law of profit maximisation – that is, without imperialist competition, without fascism, without war.
In the Soviet Union arose a community and a state in which power was vested in the working class. The economic basis of Soviet society was the planned economy, based on the collective property of the means of production.
This revolution, and with it the Soviet Union, was hated by all the capitalist and imperialist powers of the world. Everything was done to strangle it. But this revolution asserted itself against all attempts to eradicate it, even against the barbaric invasion of German imperialism in the form of the fascist hordes. The Soviet Union forced German fascism to its knees.
In this way, the Soviet Union brought the most severe defeat to imperialism.
As a result of this victory the socialist community of states emerged. For us German communists, the founding of the GDR and its role as a counterpart against the imperialist FRG has a special significance.
The GDR is the best that the revolutionary German workers’ movement has achieved.
All these are deeds and facts that cannot be celebrated enough.
But unfortunately, we can not only rejoice, because this revolution changed its character since the middle of the 1950s, beginning with the 20th party congress of the CPSU, and particularly in the 1980s with Gorbachev’s appointment. Revisionism was rising in politics and economics, the planned economy was step by step being destroyed, resulting in stagnation and decay – and finally, this revolution, that had formerly solved very successfully all problems, could be defeated by the counter-revolution.
It is necessary for us communists to recall the victorious revolution and the successful decades of socialist construction in the Soviet Union, and this must be always connected with an understanding of the cause of this success: the consistent application of Marxism Leninism.
It is also necessary for us communists to analyse the catastrophic defeat of 1989-90, and this analysis must be always connected with the unmasking of revisionism and its destructive effects and with the conclusions that we must draw from these insights for our policy today and tomorrow.
In these aspects you have the highest honor and recognition with your two publishing organs, Lalkar and Proletarian, which we follow closely, and with Harpal Brar’s book Perestroika, whose findings have been incorporated into the training work of the KPD and into the course of Marxist-Leninist study organised by the magazine Offen-siv.
You are doing imperturbably and with great thoroughness exactly what is necessary today!
We wish you for your meeting today a good progress with good results, and for your further work a lot of energy, confidence and success.
Torsten Schöwitz
Chairman, Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
