Dear comrades,

1. Lenin concretized proletarian internationalism, outlined by Marx and Engels, for the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.

He defined as its essence “first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale,

and second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital.”1

In 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, when the social-democratic parties of the belligerent countries had almost without exception gone over to the position of social-chauvinism, Lenin resolutely defended proletarian internationalism against all influences of bourgeois nationalism and opportunism in the working-class movement.

The construction of socialism in the Soviet Union, the International Brigades against Spanish fascism under Franco, the defeat of Hitlerite fascism – these were all magnificent victories of proletarian internationalism.

The ICOR marks a new quality of proletarian internationalism in the imperialist world system at the stage of the reorganization of international production.

In its party program, the MLPD has committed itself to taking responsibility for the struggling workers and masses of the people all over the world and realizing every task as part of the preparation of the international socialist revolution.

2. Proletarian internationalism is also today the counterpole to a worldwide fascist danger in interaction with the preparation of world war and the beginning of a global environmental catastrophe.

All this plunges humanity into a latent existential crisis.

The insoluble contradiction between the internationalized productive forces and the capitalist relations of production organized on the basis of the nation state is intensifying.

No Trump, no Meloni, no AfD can eradicate this contradiction.

The wheel of history cannot be turned back.

Only the international socialist revolution can and will help the internationalized revolutionary productive forces to achieve a breakthrough.

3. With the successful Socialist October Revolution, Lenin further developed Marx’s and Engels’ strategy of the international socialist revolution.

He wrote what the October Revolution signified for it: “... the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown.”2

When Lenin had to realize that the chain of the international revolution was broken temporarily, he evaluated in 1921:

“Before the revolution, and even after it, we thought: either revolution breaks out in the other countries, in the capitalistically more developed countries, immediately, or at least very quickly, or we must perish.

In spite of this conviction, we did all we possibly could to preserve the Soviet system under all circumstances, come what may, because we knew that we were not only working for ourselves, but also for the international revolution.”3

Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics has nothing in common with the Trotskyist talk of “international revolution”, with which they cover up their capitulation when confronted with the task of preparing and implementing the socialist revolution in their own country, and postpone it indefinitely.

The strategy and tactics of the international socialist revolution is an orchestra of the different revolutionary processes in the individual countries.

“From this fact one must not, of course, draw the conclusion that the possible realization of a proletarian revolution in any country should be abandoned.

The only appropriate conclusion is that the proletariat in each country must do everything before, during and after the seizure of political power to promote the proletarian revolution also in other countries.

Conversely, in all countries it means advancing the proletarian revolution within the country with all one’s strength.

Then the international proletarian revolution can progress and embrace the whole potential of the revolutionary productive forces in a socialist way.”4

4. There is no revolution without or against the working class and the masses.

Therefore, the goal of the first, non-revolutionary stage in the class struggle must be to win over the decisive majority of the international industrial proletariat for socialism and to involve the broad masses in the struggle against the government and the monopolies.

For this, socialism needs a new esteem.

Those who impatiently, with hasty revolutionism, want to skip this step are not seriously working to prepare the revolution.

Currently, those in power have built a dam against scientific socialism with an international system of the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking whose core is the petty-bourgeois anticommunist mode of thinking.

At the same time, however, the workers and masses have legitimate questions how mistakes in socialist construction could happen, why there is no longer a socialist country today, how to prevent another revisionist betrayal.

The root cause of the betrayal of socialism was the penetration of the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking among leading people in the state, economy and party, which gave rise to a new bureaucracy that restored capitalism.

The MLPD has drawn the decisive conclusion from this experience that socialism today must be built on the basis of the proletarian mode of thinking.

This means that the masses really build their socialism themselves.

For this, a proletarian and democratic culture of debate must be realized and criticism and self-criticism must be promoted as law of development.

The masses must exercise control over their leadership.

To do this, they also need rights to criticize or even dismiss people in whom a petty-bourgeois egoistic and petty-bourgeois careerist mode of thinking has penetrated and who no longer work in the interest of socialism.

Not the other way around, that these functionaries dominate everything and suppress people who have criticism.

A system of self-control is needed – control from above, control from below, and self-control.

Essential structures for this control function are trade unions, mass organizations with extensive rights.

Socialism only works when the people themselves support it, when the working class is really in power!

Of course, enemies of socialism must be fought resolutely, but this must be done carefully.

We reject a policy of “heads off” when someone has made mistakes.

It is very harmful because it is not based on the changeability of the mode of thinking and of people.

Anyone who doubts the changeability of the mode of thinking cannot build socialism.

Genuine socialism also means that ideological issues – such as religious beliefs – cannot be resolved by decree.

An active ideological struggle, a mass struggle over the mode of thinking must be waged; the workers and broad masses must be educated, trained, and their democratic initiative promoted so that they can see through bureaucratism, careerism and revisionist betrayal.

Under socialism this is a major task of the Marxist-Leninist party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, which must protect and guarantee all this.

5. With the intensified crisis-proneness of the imperialist world system, the latent crisis of bourgeois ideology is also becoming increasingly apparent.

As an expression of social confusion, parts of the masses and also of the youth are no longer able to distinguish between left and right in their justified criticism of social conditions.

In their minds, criticism of capitalism is mixed with opportunist concepts or even the influence of social-chauvinist up to fascist agitation.

In order to resolve this ideological confusion and win the masses for a new upswing in the struggle for socialism, we need popular socialism propaganda with the core of a conscious strategy and tactics in the struggle over the mode of thinking.

Only by concentrating forces and directly attacking the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking or social-fascist demagogy can we help the masses to cope successfully with the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking, can we organize the superiority of the proletarian world outlook and mode of thinking.

It is important to remember that the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, as Marx said, and it is not entirely in our power to change that.

We decided to concentrate our forces on participating in the state election in Thuringia, where AfD chief ideologue Höcke was running – an election watched all over Europe.

With our main slogan “A vote for AfD is a vote for fascism!” we went right into the middle of the polarized struggle over the mode of thinking among the masses, took apart the demagogy of the AfD in thousands of conversations, clarified what fascism is, and organized rally highlights with which we inflicted defeats on the fascists and temporarily conquered opinion leadership.

The culture of proletarian internationalism played a decisive role in this.

We said “If you want to fight the fascism of the AfD, you have to support the MLPD!” and we fought to expand the antifascist United Front with new allies.

At the same time, we promoted genuine socialism and resolutely built up the MLPD and our youth league Rebell.

Lenin already recognized the decisive role of the mode of thinking and explained:

“Each of these transitions [of the mass working-class movement – G.F.] was prepared, on the one hand, by socialist thought working mainly in one direction, and on the other, by the profound changes that had taken place in the conditions of life and in the whole mentality of the working class….”5

6. Dear comrades,

The goal of the international socialist revolution today must be the building of the united socialist states of the world.

Today, with the reorganization of international production, the united socialist states of the world are materially prepared.

However, this is being called into question by the global environmental catastrophe.

A race against time has begun to struggle for and achieve in good time the united socialist states of the world.

The mass struggle over the mode of thinking for winning over the decisive majority of the working class and the broad masses to make a new attempt in the struggle for socialism gains world-historical significance.