Vladimir Lenin, who called for the world-wide destruction of capitalism,
encouraged the US to shift away from the system of capitalism before it was destroyed.
Lenin believed that eventual worldwide transformation to communism was inevitable. He wrote <em>A Letter to American Workers </em>in August, 1918, during the final months of World War I, after Russia had withdrawn from that war. He saw the war as an expression of capitalist imperialism that was bound to doom the West, and called on workers in America to join in the movement to communism. In that open letter to American workers, he wrote:
<em>We know that help from you, comrade American workers, will probably not come soon, for the development of the revolution proceeds with a different tempo and in different forms in different countries (and it cannot be otherwise). We know that the European proletarian revolution also may not blaze forth during the next few weeks, no matter how rapidly it has been ripening lately. ... Despite this, we are firmly convinced that we are invincible, because mankind will not break down under the imperialist slaughter, but will overcome it. ... We are beyond imperialist dependence, we raised before the whole world the banner of struggle for the complete overthrow of imperialism ...
In a word, we are invincible, because the world proletarian revolution is invincible</em>.
