ABSTRACT

IN the harsh and terrible epoch of the catastrophic collapse of capitalism, of wars, of revolutions, of proletarian Sturm und Drang, revolutionary Marxism as it appears in its developed and enriched form as Marxism-Leninism, stands out as a system of ideas which emerges from the chaos at once powerful, energetic, destructive and creative. Even the sworn enemies of the proletariat cannot deny this, even those who see in the heroic struggle and cyclopean creative efforts of the new class as it marches to world dominion nothing but the gloomy approach of the commencement of the reign of Lucifer and who look upon the bloody suppression of the contemporary emancipation movement of the proletariat as the elementary premise for the illusory renewal of a rotten bourgeois civilisation. Marxism is, in fact, the great doctrine of our time. The teaching of " the red doctor ", as the London philistines called the genius of the proletarian revolution, has mastered millions. It has mastered the mass and the mass has mastered it. But the revolutionary proletariat is very far from the "vita contemplativa". It is the banner-bearer of the" vitre activre ", of stormy and practical life. It expresses the full tension and the full liberating" torment " of social matter; it expresses in its victory the decisively

tragic character of a vast historical struggle. It is for just this reason that Marxism has grown up as its class system of ideas. Marxism is the world outlook of the proletariat which has grown out of the practice of its struggle and, after smelting all the valuable conquests of the age in the retort of revolutionary criticism till they form a precious alloy, it emerges as the perfect practical weapon for the revolutionary re-shaping of the world. Marxism is " not a dogma, but a guide to action ".