The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) joins Communists, socialists, and anti-imperialists of  all countries  in celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, whose work became and remains  the foundation for Communist parties and workers movements from the Soviet Socialist Revolution (1917) to today.

Lenin’s theory of a revolutionary vanguard party of the working class, first advanced in What is to be Done(1904), called for the creation of parties that would organize and educate the working class  and coordinate its struggle or socialism. This represented a sharp break with opportunist tendencies in the socialist movement in Russia, with worldwide implications.

Lenin, during WWI, in State andRevolution (1916) contended that a socialist revolution, to  successfully achieve the transition from capitalism to socialism,must establish a new state, a workers state, with its own institutions representing the working class, one which the working class would identify with and defend.

 Lenin  applied these principles and led hisparty, the Bolshevik party, to advance the first successful socialist revolution in history (1917) and the first successful revolutionary workers state in history (Soviet Russia, later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

Lenin then developed his theory of imperialism, which saw imperialism as capitalism’s final stage, leading to new and much more destructive wars and much higher levels of exploitation and oppression in thecolonial regions of the world

Lenin called upon socialists towork to develop anti-imperialist struggles and establish socialist parties outside of the industrialized capitalist countries (Asia, Africa, and Latin America).

These principles were advanced in the formation of a new International of Socialist Parties,the Communist International or Comintern (1919) which would advance in theory and subsequently implement in practice the United Front in the struggles against fascism and for socialism and national liberation.

Lenin realized that the revolutionary tactics which had triumphed in the Soviet Revolution could not be applied mechanically through the world even in the revolutionary upsurge which followed WWI.  He understood that working within existing trade unions, forming political coalitions,  was necessary if revolutionary forces were not to be isolated and defeated.  He expressed these important  views in Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder

Like Marx before him, Lenin opposed both leftwing sectarianism and rightwing opportunism in the socialist movement.  In the midst of the present global crisis and the specific struggle in the U.S. against the ultra-right Trump administration, the CPUSA re-affirms this stand.

 These contributions came to be called Marxism-Leninism and live today in the world’s Communist parties, socialist countries and anti-imperialist movements.  The CPUSA celebrates the 150 anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin as both a celebration of a glorious past and a guide to a future that our party, our fraternal parties, the workingclass, and oppressed  peoples of the world will help to build.