The workingmen besiege the Winter Palace
Eighty years ago on 7TH
November 1917, workers seized the Winter Palace.
The power of the rich, of aristocracy, industrialists and bankers was over.
Social power was handed over.
The workers of Putilov workshops and of many other factories were in charge now. Together with peasants.
They started a work of social reorganization and tried to introduce a mode of production which was no more founded on exploitation.
Workingmen, like us, began the direct management of production and of distribution of products.
The lower strata of population had immediate and substantial benefits. Benefits which were unthinkable in those years in every capitalist country: free distribution of commodities to their producers, 8-hour working day and 2 days off. Six hours during holidays eve, social insurance for every worker.
The rich panicked, their good life was over, their privileges abolished.
The strongest part of these workers called itself "communist" and was organized into a party.
Masters of all over the world had a serious shock. They have not recovered yet.
Workers revolted and overthrew their power.
This experiment has been attacked from outside and undermined from inside and has failed. However, it was just a first attempt amongst a thousand difficulties.
Only an empty likeness of the old power of workers and peasants had been left behind. It defined itself "socialist republic" and covered the exploitation carried out by the state owners.
Employers, today, had to get rid of this cover, as well.
However, even if for a little while, workers were able to send employers to hard labours, to get rid of the factory despotism, to cut the big and small privileges of bourgeoisie.
Even only for this, 1917 workers' revolution in Russia is still the most important example of how the workers can free themselves.
Its limits are our problem. Only a new attempt by the workers will be able to redeem Russian revolution from the lies and the oblivion where the employers want to let it fall every time.
Not to mention those who froze it and want to pass their "accession" to Palazzo Chigi as the modern version of assaulting the Winter Palace.
Today the workers pinch and scrape and look at the capital which is getting richer and richer and more powerful at their expenses. These workers won't forget that 7th November, when the pyramid was turned upside down.
It was just a first attempt, next time we'll do better, far better.
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net of workers who think in the same way
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