CHICAGO, November 15 – Long live the October Revolution! Over 30 members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) gathered in a local fieldhouse for our annual celebration of the working class seizing state power under communist leadership in 1917. Participants were treated to an afternoon filled with inspiring history, motivating speeches, collectivity and revolutionary joy.

This year’s celebration emphasized the pro-worker things that we stand for, including internationalism, social equality, and the working class cooperating to build and run society in radically better ways. The working class running society with these egalitarian politics is the only way to defeat capitalism and its rampant racism, sexism, and nationalism.

In the current climate, in the thick of capitalist decay and misery all around us, the fact that the communist Bolsheviks succeeded in leading millions of workers, youth, soldiers, and sailors to overthrow the capitalist bosses fills us with revolutionary optimism. It’s their revolutionary legacy – their incredible gains as well their many errors – that our Party strives to study, celebrate, and build upon as we grow our mass PLP to one day take power from the bosses again.

The working class transforms society

A comrade emcee kicked off the program with a brief background of the monumental October Revolution. For the first time in history, the working class overthrew the ruling class and set about building a society without exploitation of the many by the few. The newly formed Soviet Union covered approximately one-sixth of the Earth’s surface and helped inspire more revolutionary movements all over the world, including in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

The program then shifted to a more interactive segment, where we split up into smaller groups to visit three different stations, each with a posterboard presentation that covered what the working class was able to accomplish after gaining state power.

The three themes at each of the stations were confidence in the working class, collectivity, and material gains in workers’ lives by focusing on revolutionary gains in education, industry, and women’s health. PLP members at each station gave brief explanations of how these different fields were organized to serve the working class. Participants showed enthusiasm for these ideas and commented on what they would want in a communist society, including quality healthcare for all and better food in schools.

In the education section, it was highlighted that schooling was completely free to all students and encouraged them to think critically and to act collectively in figuring out solutions to problems, as opposed to the individualist and elitist approaches preferred in capitalist society.
The women’s health section emphasized how the Soviet Union was the first state to legalize abortion back in 1920, which ended up saving hundreds of thousands of women’s lives. Also shared was how childcare was collectivized, so women workers could more freely participate in social, political, and economic functions of the new workers’ state.

The presentation on industry showed how the Soviet Union was able to transform itself from a mainly agrarian society into a highly industrialized power in a short period through collective planning and action. Workers in industrial settings wielded more authority than ever in deciding how production would be organized. Beyond just raising the material wellbeing of workers across the board, communist methods were key in building the discipline and military output necessary to defeat the fascist Nazis in World War II.

Revolutionary speeches

After the presentations, it was time for the keynote speech. A comrade detailed her path of being won to join the Party through relationships she built with comrades over years. She encouraged everyone present to join the Party too, because like the Bolsheviks, we don’t stand a chance to defeat capitalism without having that mass organized force:

“We know that workers are the only ones who can save the working class and there needs to be much more organization. The Bolsheviks had to organize before the revolution – the revolution didn’t just happen out of nowhere. We need to do the same and we need people to join the Party to build a mass movement so that workers can again take state power.”

Following this comrade’s speech, we had two PLP members fresh off their experience describe their fightback with dozens of other health workers against the liberal fascists at the American Public Health Association conference and their defense of the Zionist genocide in Gaza (see CHALLENGE, 11/26). Another comrade spoke of her efforts organizing across the city with other workers to resist the fascist kidnapping of immigrant workers by the ICE Gestapo, a struggle that she referred to as the Civil Rights Movement of the present day, encouraging everyone to get involved.

We then capped the celebration off by singing the Internationale, the communist anthem that helps bind all our struggles together across the planet. Capitalism is an international parasite, so our struggles to defeat it must be international too!

Standing on the shoulders of giants

As communists, we know that history and culture are weapons in service of the working masses to understand and shape society in the interests of the working class. We stand on the shoulders of giants to glimpse the bright communist future that is ours to win! Let’s fight like the Bolsheviks and make revolution come all the sooner.