After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the bourgeois critics of Marxism were jubilant for a short time. But all their euphoria has quickly turned to ashes. The crisis of capitalism reflects itself, at this stage, in the pessimism of the strategists of capital. But as the crisis unfolds, it will also be reflected in the crisis of the mass organisations of labour which over the last decades have experienced a process of reformist and bureaucratic degeneration far worse than that suffered by the Second International in the period prior to 1914. For a long time, the labour leaders treated Marxism as a dead dog. They whole-heartedly embraced the market and all the latest economic nostrums of the bourgeoisie. The apparent vitality of right-wing reformism in the post-war period, at least in the advanced countries of capitalism, was merely an expression of the fact that capitalism went through a prolonged period of expansion, similar to the twenty years or so before the First World War. But this period is now at an end. As I finish the closing chapter, the news is everywhere of a developing crisis in world capitalism.

Never since 1945 has the world been in such a state of ferment. Long ago Marx and Engels predicted that capitalism would develop as a world system. Now this prediction has been fulfilled in almost laboratory conditions. The crushing domination of the world market constitutes the most striking fact of our epoch. The triumph of globalisation has been heralded as the final victory of the market economy. But this victory carried within itself the seeds of a catastrophe. Far from overcoming the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, globalisation merely creates a new and vastly greater stage upon which the contradictions are manifesting themselves. The deep slump in Asia manifests itself as an unprecedented accumulation of unsold goods (overproduction, or ‘overcapacity’) is accompanied by a paralysis of what used to be the main motor force for world economic growth, Japan. On the other side of the world, the uncontrolled upward movement of the stock exchange is provoking fears of a financial collapse in the USA. The nervousness of the bourgeois finds its expression in constant alarms on the world’s stock markets.

The old argument about the alleged superiority of the ‘free market economy’ now sounds like a sick joke to millions of people. Under the banner of ‘privatisation’, the big banks and monopolies are engaged in looting the state; under the banner of ‘liberalisation’, they force the weak bourgeoisie of the ex-colonial countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to open their markets to the exports from the West with which they cannot compete. This is the real reason for the chronic indebtedness of the Third World and the permanent crisis that afflicts two-thirds of the world’s population. Everywhere we see wars and conflicts over markets and meaningless frontiers for which the peoples must pay a dreadful price for the world crisis of capitalism. This situation bears a far greater resemblance to the world as it was one hundred years ago than the period of relative stability that followed the Second World War. The convulsions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are not as far away as they seem in Europe and North America. The catastrophe that resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia shows that the same processes can affect the supposedly civilised peoples of the West unless the jungle logic of capitalism is eliminated and replaced with a rational and harmonious system on a world scale.

Ironically, the main detonator of the present crisis was the spectacular collapse of ‘free market’ policies in Russia. This represents an important turning point not just for Russia but for the whole world. The temporary mood of exultation, which predominated among the strategists of capital after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has evaporated like a drop of water on a hot stove. In place of the old song about the alleged death of Marxism, socialism and communism, they are now singing a very different refrain. The writings of the bourgeois economists and politicians are filled with forebodings and dark warnings about the clock being put back. In Russia, a social explosion is being prepared which will place on the order of the day a return to the traditions of 1917. On a world scale, the crisis of capitalism is entering a new and convulsive stage. The revolution in Indonesia is only the first act in a drama which will unfold over the coming months and years and will find an expression, not only in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but in Europe and North America too.

In this revolutionary reawakening, Russia will not occupy the last place. Lenin was fond of a Russian proverb: ‘Life teaches’. The lesson of the attempt to move towards capitalism in Russia has been a brutal one. But now the pendulum is beginning to swing in the opposite direction. The alarm of the capitalists and their Western backers is well founded. If the leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) were genuine Leninists, the Russian workers would now be on the eve of taking power. The working class is a thousand times stronger than in 1917. Once they started to move, nothing could stop them. The problem, as in February 1917, is the lack of leadership. The role being played by Zyuganov is even worse than that played by the Mensheviks in 1917. In all the speeches and articles of the leaders of the CPRF there is not one atom of the ideas of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. It is as if they had never existed. That is an indication of how far the Stalinist reaction against October has thrown the movement back. The regeneration of the Russian workers’ movement can only be brought about by a return to the genuine traditions of Bolshevism. The history of Bolshevism remains the classic model of the theory and practice of Marxism in its struggle to win the masses. It is necessary to go back to Lenin, and also to the ideas of the man who, together with Lenin, stood at the head of the October Revolution and guaranteed its success, Leon Trotsky.

The conduct of the leaders cannot hold back the movement forever. The workers are striving to find a way out of the crisis through their own class action. In so doing, they are rediscovering the revolutionary traditions of the past – the traditions of 1905 and 1917. The re-emergence of soviets, although they are variously styled: committees of action, strike committees, committees of salvation, is a clear proof that the Russian proletariat has not forgotten its revolutionary heritage. The movement will continue and grow, despite Zyuganov and co. – with the inevitable ebbs and flows. Was this not always the case? That is precisely the main lesson of the present work. And there is another lesson which we must never forget. Nothing can break the unconscious will of the working class to change society. Bolshevism is merely the conscious expression of the unconscious or semi-conscious strivings of the proletariat to change the fundamental conditions of their existence. No force on earth can prevent the inevitable movement of the Russian workers. Over a period, through experience, the new generation will rediscover the road back to Bolshevism. The traditions are still there, and the revolution will find a way.