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By BERNARD BURTON

Lenin's work, writings borne out
in advance of socialist world

eee Father Lenin” the Rus-
sian peasants had called ‘him,
and gaunt, grizzled veterans of
the trenches sobbed and wept
unashamedly as Lenin’s bier was
borne through Red Square on that
bitter winter morning of January
24, 1924. Never in all history had
so many people paid mourning
tribute to the passing of a-man.

For it was not only the Rus-
sians who mourned. Workers
from London to San Francisco,
peasants in the villages of China
and India, repeated the name Len-
in, stunned, unable to believe
that this man whose leadership
had changed the world was no
more. And with each January,
the numbers of those who pay
tribute grow and multiply.

For wherever workers fight for
real freedom, wherever oppress-
ed peoples fight.for their own
liberation and wherever the tri-
umphant peoples create the new
socialist order, they turn to the
teachings of Lenin.

Mao Tse-tung, in
simple fashion, once explained the
reason for the victories. of the
Chinese Liberation movement. It
is,“Mao said, because we follow

and apply the teachings of Lenin

and his foremost disciple, Stalin.

Who was Vladimir Ilyitch Len-
in, this Russian Marxist who fash-
ioned a new party which led one-
sixth of the world to socialism in

1917?

The son of lower middle class
school teachers, Lenin turned to
the study of Marxism at the age
of 17. He was impelled by the
revolutionary ferment which was

‘sweeping Russia in the eighteen-

eighties and he was deeply affect-
ed by the hanging of his beloved

_ older brother Alexander by the

Tsarist. police.

Alexander was a student leader
in the Populist movement, or
People’s Will party, members of
which often engaged in acts of
individual terrorism with the
hopes of arousihg the peasantry

-to overthrow Tsarism.

When Lenin received the news
of “Sasha’s” death, his sister
wrote that he said: “No, we shall
not go along that_road. We need
not go along that road.”

There were others who studied
deeply of Marxism in that period,
but too many in Russia, Germany
and elsewhere treated it as some
sort of magic formula which
could be recited to exorcise the
devils of oppression.

Lenin grasped Marxism not as
a dogma but as an instrument to
be applied to living reality.

“Leninism is the further de-
velopment of Marxism,” .Stalin
wrote. “Leninism is Marxism in
the epoch of imperialism” when
the socialist revolution is on the
order of the day.

Lenin was the first to analyze
and recognize the new epoch
which capitalism had entered
around the turn of the century:
the epoch of imperialism, when
monopoly and finance capital be-
come dominant, when weaker
countries are taken over through
the use of investments or the ex-
port of capital, when giant inter-
national cartels emerge, when
there is a constant drive for ter-
ritorial redivision of the world
in order to gain more loot, bring-
ing with it the constant danger of
newer and more horrible world-

‘wide wars.

This was the epoch of “dying
capitalism” Lenin wrote. And
nowhere was this more true than

typically .

'

in Tsarist Russia, that “prison

house of nations,” which, as Stal-
in put it, was pregnant with revo-
lution.

To win socialism, Lenin, show-
ed there was first of all needed a
working class party, a Commun-
ist party, imbued with a single
Marxist will and purpose. Sec-
ondly, this party must be based
on the working class, the only
class capable of leading humanity
to freedom.

The working class, he taught,
must ally itself with and lead the
struggle of all other exploited
groups, the peasantry and poor
farmers, the oppressed nations
and nationalities. For imperial-
ism saps its sustenance from all
these people. ‘

And above all, to creat social-
ism, he showed, the working class
must win and hold political power.
To speak of building socialism,
of ending depressions and wars,
of abolishing national oppression,

without organizing for working
class political power, is empty
prattle, he proved. It is the
method used by the right-wing
labor officials to help monopoly
maintain its rule.

Regardless of momentary set-
backs, Lenin always. knew that
with Communists working stub-
bornly and purposefully, the
workers and all oppressed would
eventually rally to the banner of
Marxism.

Lenin’s biographer, P. Kerz-
hentsev, wrote:

. “Lenin did not merely see
far into the future. He was

able to lead the party and the
working masses, both in time
of offensives and victories and
in times of working class ad-
versity and difficult retreat.

Never did he show a trace of
discouragement or despondency.
He did not lose his head in the
hours of victory and success;
he taught others not to snivel
in moments of failure and de-
feat.”

His works were legion; from
books on working class tactics,
‘Tike Left Wing Communism, to
philosophy, like Materialism and
Empiro Criticism, to economics,
like Capitalism and Agriculture
in the United States and, of
course, the classical Imperialism.

Lenin died at the age of 54
from the effects of an assassin’s
shot, but not before he had seen
the young Soviet state working
and building and dreaming, the
Socialist giant of the future—our
day—beckoning to the peoples of
the world.

The funeral oration was made
by Joseph Stalin who pledged to
guard Lenin’s heritage “like the
apple of our eye.” How well
Stalin fulfilled his pledge and
added new glory and meaning to
Marxism-Leninism; how well he
developed the peace policy defin-
ed by Lenin in_the years of trav-
ail and achievement between Jan-
uary 24, 1924, until the day of
his death on March 5, 1953, is
written into the imperishable
hjstory of our times.

- REPORT FROM PARLIAMENT HILL

V. I. LENIN:

1870-1924

AMONS the large collection
~ of historic Russian docu-
ments now in the British
Museum is a letter from Len-
in, using the name of Jacob
Richter, written on April 21,
1902, and applying for a ticket
of admission to the British
Museum Reading Room.

On exhibition also is a copy
of the first issue of Iskra (the
Spark), Lenin’s paper produced
in London at the Clerkenwell
Green house now occupied by
the Marx Memorial Library.

There is a considerable as-

Letter from Lenin

sembly of documents illustrat-
ing the history of the Russian
revolutionary movement. One
of Stalin‘’s works published in
1921 is included. ;

Manuscripts include a letter
from Ivan the Terrible to
Queen Elizabeth | and one
from Peter the Great to Queen
Anne. Of early records of
traffic between Britain and
Russia an interesting item is
a map by Anthony Jenkinson,
the Elizabethan who travelled
across Russia to Central Asia.

MPs voice concern over dangers of Bill 7

AS members of parliament re-

turned last week to resume
the session interrupted by the
Christmas recess, there was evi-
dence of increasing concern
among them over certain sections
of Bill 7 (the revised Criminal
Code), which is to come before
the Committee of the whole
House.

Members with whom this cor-

respondent talked appeared to be

most perturbed over section 46.
They told me that their thinking
had been influenced by the grow-
ing menace of McCarthyism in
the United States, and the now
generally accepted fact, first
made known by the Ottawa cor-
respondent of the Montreal Ga-
zette, that Section 46 was intro-
duced at the request of the U.S.
government. ‘

A Western Liberal put it this
way:

“No sensible Canadian will
deny that we must have laws to
protect our security, but those
of us who fashion such laws
must see to it that there is no
impairment of our traditional
liberties. - : :

“For my part I will oppose
any law which would deny the
citizen the right to discuss the
actions of Canada’s government
in relation to any war, any time,
anywhere. To deny that right
might in some circumstances
lead to a situation where the
patriot would be on the scaffold
and the traitor on the throne.
Governments are not always wise
custodians of the national inter-

i

est. Truth must never become
a captive in Canada.” ~

A Maritime Conservative mem-
ber called my attention to this
statement made by John G. Dief-
enbaker when section 46 was be-
fore the House at a previous ses-
sion:

“IT know of no case in four or
five hundred years’ interpreta-
tion of the law of treason that
goes as far as this amendment.”

It was evident that members
of all parties have been study-
ing the many _ representations
made to them and to last year’s
special committee by organiza-
tions and individuals urging op-
position to the “thought control”
sections of Bill 7.
eo

Going through some of the
hundreds of briefs, I found that
among the bodies which laid par-
ticular stress on Section 46 were
the Association for Civil Liberties
and the League for Democratic
Rights. In its submission the As-
sociation declared:

_. “We are of the opinion that
with an offence as serious as
treason which carries with it
Possible sentence of death and
is so closely linked to our civil
liberties, any proposed exten-
sions of the existing treason
laws should be scrutinized with
the greatest caution and care.”

The Association went on to say
that the present long established
law “should only be extended
provided that the clearest case
has been made out that the pro-
posed changes were necessary to
deal with a clear and. present
danger and to fill a serious gap

in the law.”

The League for Democratic
Rights in its submission said:

“There is'no doubt in our
minds that this Section (46) as
proposed is a giant step towards
a police state with complete
thought and speech control in
both wartime and peace. If this
section is allowed to pass it will
deal a death blow to traditional
freedom of speech and thought
in Canada. ;

“We declare in all serious-
ness, that this proposed section
is so loosely worded as to en- ©
compass and imperil every critic.

of authority, and eliminate all -

opposition. There must be no
penalty in the Criminal Code for
exercising essential features of
democracy. We call on parlia-
ment to return sanity, reason
and justice to the Code as re-
gards the crime of treason.”

In its most recent publication
It’s Still a Crime, the LDR
points out that there are over
forty different offences in Sec-
tion 46 which are punishable by
death.

a . ,
“Most of them broad, general,
vague, uncertain and undefined,
This section is dangerous for
every Canadian who dares to
criticize or opppose the govern-
ment. If this proposed section
becomes the law of treason —
then every Canadian must con-
form — or risk death! This is

‘McCarthyism by ‘due \process of

haw
©

In the face of rising opposition
to Section 46 and other anti-
democratic sections of Bill 7, the

. ment.

sovernment has taken the us-
usual step of releasing its fol-
lowers from the Party Whip —
leaving themi free to vote “ae
cording to their conscience.”

But as a CCF member put it:

“I have great respect for my
fellow members but the liberty
of the Canadian people is far
too important a matter to be
left to the consciences of the
government members. The only
thing that will prevent this
legislation from becoming law
is the pressure of public opin-
ion: If the people of Canada
are opposed to thought control
laws — and I think they are —
they must make their views
known here. without delay,

“Public opinion alone has kept
this Bill off our statute ‘books
up to now. I hope there will be
no relaxation of effort to, regis-
ter the national conscience here

as the hour of decision ap-
proaches,”

Perhaps the most significant
aspect of this, correspondent’s
round-up of opinion on Parlia-
ment Hill was the studied reluct-
ance of members of all Parties to

be quoted by name. Préssed for -

a reason a B.C. member explain-
ed it this way:

“You may recall that last year
Garson attempted to club us into
Passing the bill on the grounds
that the ‘Communists’ would crow
if we didn’t. Of course, the ruse
didn’t work, but it has made some
of us diffident about being quot-
ed in the left wing press.”

In short, McCarthyism has al-
ready invaded Canada’s Parlia-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 22, 1954 — PAGE 4

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