By Saula Wenger
Preface by Hazel Walker: Why We Are Talking About Revisionism
This article, written by Saul Wenger — an American Marxist-Leninist-Maoist and writer for Living Marxism— takes on a subject that remains crucial to revolutionary politics today: revisionism. Accusations of revisionism are often dismissed as “sectarian,” and with some exceptions they are. However, as Wenger lays out clearly, revisionism isn’t a thing of the past. It’s an ongoing tendency that weakens working-class movements today.
I am endorsing this piece not because I am a Maoist, I'm not, but because Wenger's work takes the danger of revisionism seriously — not as a theoretical abstraction, but as a real-world force that has derailed revolutionary struggles time and time again.
This is not about dogma or purity. Our publication rejects rigid orthodoxy and empty posturing. But we also understand the importance of revolutionary theory — and when that when theory gets bent to serve the wrong class interests, it can do real damage.
Understanding revisionism is part of understanding how movements fail — and how we can build ones that don’t.
Workers of the world, unite!
Introduction
Revisionism
is a phenomenon which has existed for nearly as long as Marxism has.
The ramifications and damages of revisionism which have been inflicted
on to revolutionary movements and organization has been incalculable,
and the ideological and political struggle against revisionists and
other opportunists in the working class movement has, for the longest
time, constituted an integral element to the struggle against the
capitalist system as a whole.
And
so, with the immense importance of this topic, there are many new
Marxists who are compelled to raise this question: What is revisionism?
There
are three main responses which result. Firstly, the scientific,
Marxist–Leninist answer is that revisionism is the seeping of
capitalist, bourgeois ideology into proletarian ideology; the distortion
(revision) of revolutionary theory to favor the interests of the
capitalists and abate socialist revolution.
Secondly,
the trivializers' answer, very often produced by revisionists
themselves. They will deny the many forms revisionism has assumed and
assumes presently, they regard revisionism not as a threat to the
socialist movement and form of class struggle on the part of the
bourgeoisie, but as very narrow, “historic” phenomena which did not
manifest anywhere beyond the most clear of traitors in the revolutionary
movement; the followers of Kautsky, Bernstein, etc. and other figures
whose apex was over a century ago.
To
the trivializers, to say revisionism is prevalent today and that many
contemporary revisionists veil themselves as “Leninists” is to be
sectarian, dogmatic, and so forth. They will assert with the most potent
conviction that major questions such as supporting the
inter-imperialist conflict between Russia and the Western countries and
upholding China as a model of “socialism” are not the dividing lines
between revolutionary communists and opportunists, but mere “tactical”
disagreements, and will demand unity between the communists and
opportunists for the sake of unity itself!
In
short, those who propagate the second answer are at the very least in
alignment with the revisionists themselves. They deny the need for
anti-revisionist struggle, rejecting its inherent relation to
anti-capitalist struggle, and in turn harm our movement.
Lastly,
the third answer is one produced most often by many new “Marxists”.
They will deny the damages of revisionism and the distortion of
principles, arguing that revisionism represents a “positive” element in
that any developments of theory to modern conditions (e.g. the
development of Marxism into the age of imperialism; Leninism) is
“revisionism”. Hence, they proudly proclaim themselves revisionists!
Despite
the fallacious nature of the third position, it doubtlessly raises
important questions which must be answered. The scientific development
of Marxism into Marxism–Leninism must be distinguished from the
revisionist deviations of Nikita Khrushchev,and other opportunist figures who veil their distortions to deceive the working class.
We
must first enumerate the character of revisionism in the clearest way
feasible, then address the tendencies of revisionism in order to
concretely demonstrate the need for anti-revisionist struggle.
What is the Basis for Revisionism?
As
stated previously, revisionism has stood as an enemy of Marxism for as
long as Marxism was developed in the 19th century. In the time of Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels, their scientific theory was contested by a
vast number of unscientific, utopian socialist tendencies which sought
idealist, fantastical methods to introduce their envisioned society,
largely without concern for class struggle.
Throughout
the initial conflicts waged by the proletarian and bourgeoisie
throughout the 19th century, the theories of Charles Fourier, Étienne
Cabet, Robert Owen, and others were firmly repudiated by most of the
working class in favor of communism. These anti-materialist tendencies
were exposed as not being in service of the interests of the workers,
but the backwards peasantry and petite-bourgeoisie, strata whose modus operandi
was under threat by nascent industrial capitalism. An element of the
declining utopians persisted in their only anti-Marxist attitudes in the
form of anarchism and other “libertarian” tendencies, but many other
realized that to fulfill their aims, they would have to distort Marxism
from the inside in order to bend it to comply with the desires of the
exploiters:
“Pre-Marxist
socialism has been defeated. It is continuing the struggle, no longer
on its own independent ground, but on the general ground of Marxism, as
revisionism.”
--Vladimir Lenin, Marxism and Revisionism
Hence, the basis for
revisionism was born — movements which seek to infiltrate the working
class movement and provide the presentation of Marxism in rhetoric and
symbols, while concurrently being anti-Marxist and bourgeois in
essentials.
From this, it can be
discerned that revisionism serves as a powerful weapon on the part of
the bourgeoisie in class struggle against the proletariat.
Revisionism verses Theoretical Development
A confusion exists regarding the matter of what separates revisionism from a progressive development of theory prevalent among new socialists. This
confusion results in the inability to disambiguate between a
development of theory as seen with Lenin and a deviation from it,
particularly as revisionists in the past and present have attempted to
distract from this critical distinction; asserting their deviations
represent an “evolution” of Marxism in the same vain as Leninism is to
classical Marxism.
In short, to revise Marxism (e.g. as done by Kautsky, Khrushchev, etc.) is to weaken it, falsify it, and remove its revolutionary content in accord with the desires of the exploiters. Revisionism injects idealism, mysticism, and superstition into a science (Marxism). On the contrary, to make a progressive advancement of Marxist theory (e.g. that made by Lenin and Stalin) is to preserve its revolutionary contents if not make them more empowering to the working class movement.
It
is commonly stated, particularly amongst followers of revisionism, that
aspects of Marxism must in fact be revised or otherwise omitted due to
temporal developments; that since the time of Marx and Engels, or even
Lenin and Stalin, are so distant from our own, that their words and
ideas no longer hold meaning to the proletarian movement. This could not be further from reality:
"Consequently,
when we speak of 'subjugating' natural forces or economic forces, of
'dominating' them, etc., this does not mean that man can 'abolish' or
'form' scientific laws. On the contrary, it only means that man can
discover laws, get to know them and master them, learn to apply them
with full understanding, utilize them in the interests of society, and
thus subjugate them, secure mastery over them."
--Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
In this context, even if it were the case that the words of Marx and Engels are so archaic that they lack pertinence in our modern society, it is not the case that their words were incorrect. It is rather the case that the economic laws which governed the age of Marx and Engels have simply become inapplicable to our modern conditions; those laws have not disappeared from reality, they still exist, yet we have moved beyond them.
But if we were to return to the relatively primitive capitalism as seen
by Marx, those laws would be noticed again and would be applicable.
However,
the understanding of capitalism as held by Marx and Engels has not
become inapplicable to even our present condition. The development of our understanding as provided by Lenin and Stalin regarding imperialism and other concepts do not negate or replace the core content of Marxism, they rather augment it; build on to it.
How does Revisionism Take Hold?
The
nature of revisionism as a counter-revolutionary tendency within
revolutionary movements remains consistent between all contexts. Yet,
its practical goals differs mainly in two ways. These are, firstly,
revisionism which arises in movements in pre-revolutionary, capitalist
countries, and, secondly, revisionism which takes hold of a
revolutionary, socialist country.
Revisionism in capitalist countries
In
pre-revolutionary countries of capitalism, by encouraging deviations
which detach the communist party from the workers, by fostering
reformism over revolution, and by propagating class collaboration and
truce over struggle, revolutionary organizations are made impotent and
harmless to the ruling class. If it fully takes hold of a country's
communist movement, revisionism and opportunism have the capacity to
bring a crippling halt to a socialist revolution in its infancy.
In
the first wave of socialist revolutions at the end of the First World
War, their potency and effectiveness was heavily negated by the
prevalence of social-chauvinists and opportunists — the Kautskys,
Bernsteins, Scheidemanns and others belonging to the Second
International. These revisionist figures led the working class of their
countries away from revolution and in support of the vicious imperialist
war under the justification of “defense of the fatherland” and similar
capitulations to bourgeois nationalism.
Less
than two decades later, the working class resistance to the rise of
fascism in countries such as Germany and Italy was rendered impotent in
the face of social democrats and other reformists whose doctrine was
inspired by an awfully revised body of Marxist theory, fully tailored to
bourgeois interests. The efforts of the Communist Party of Germany to
form an anti-fascist united front were willingly countered by the Social
Democrats, in harmony with Adolf Hitler. As a result, socialist
revolution in Germany sputtered out before it even truly began and the
country was plunged into over a decade of Nazi tyranny.
Thus,
the aims of the revisionists and opportunists in the countries which
have not yet underwent a socialist revolution and establishment of a
workers' state are clear — introduce pugnacious separations (national,
ethnic, political, etc.) within the working class which detract from
class struggle, isolate the party from the people, divert sentiments
which would otherwise be revolutionary and class conscious into those
which uphold capitalist wage-slavery and imperialism, and ultimately
liquidate worker-led socialist organizations which are politically
independent from the capitalist state and bring them under the yoke of
bourgeois interests and politics, depriving the working class of the
ability to operate outside of the confines of bourgeois democracy, in
the process abating the prospect of revolution.
Revisionism in socialist countries
In
the countries where the working class has already overthrown the
capitalist state, established a revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat, and initiated the process of socialist construction, the
revisionists' tasks diverge from their counterparts in capitalist
countries. Rather then seeking to preserve capitalism in the ways detailed prior, they must restore
it, regressing socialism back to capitalism. There are two primary
angles through which the forces of revisionism assails the socialist
state; internal and external.
Firstly, we address the internal
methods of revisionism. The nature of socialism in its early phase —
just following the revolution — is one in which the exploiters, being
overthrown and on the verge of extinction, intensify their struggle
against the working class forces a thousand-fold to preserve their
endangered property and status:
“The
dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most
ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the
bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow
(even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in
the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of
their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the
strength of small-scale production.” [Emphasis mine: S.W.]
--Vladimir Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder
This
counter-revolutionary struggle may be explicit in its capitalist aims or
concealed. The moribund exploiters — in unison with the
petite-bourgeoisie and peasantry whose class interests are not yet
definitively proletarian — may seek to encourage and propagate
deviations within the communist party and state apparatus, support
opportunist bureaucrats, and broadly campaign to overturn the Leninist
line with a revisionist line of exploiter “socialism”.
Revisionism
which springs up within the socialist state ultimately has its basis in
small production; the mass of semi-proletarian, agrarian middle
peasants and petite-bourgeois proprietors who possess a tendency to
vacillate in class struggle and whose interest in socialism is submerged
in doubt in even the best of times in the course of the revolution:
“The
social basis of the deviations is the fact that small-scale production
predominates in our country, the fact that small-scale production gives
rise to capitalist elements, the fact that our Party is surrounded by
petty-bourgeois elemental forces, and, lastly, the fact that certain of
our Party organisations have been infected by these elemental forces.
There, in the main, lies the social basis of the deviations. All these deviations are of a petty-bourgeois character”
--Joseph Stalin, Industrialization of the Country and the Right-Deviation in the CPSU(B)
Secondly, we now move to the external
methods of revisionism. It is an indisputable fact that the initial
socialist states will have to bear with an encirclement of
capitalist-imperialist states whose ruling class seeks pugnaciously to
destroy the stronghold of people's power on its borders. The capitalist
states may pursue a route of overt military aggression and war against
the socialist states. However, they may recognize the potential value of
revisionism and opportunism in the socialist state as agents of
capitalist restoration; a Trojan horse by which their goal of defeating
the revolution will be realized without the need for brutal warfare and
aggression (and from it, the potential of their defeat).
Thus,
the bourgeoisie of the capitalist countries will sponsor the
revisionists of the socialist countries by any and all means available
to them, sponsor the petite-bourgeois elements which oppose revolution,
etc. For instance, in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin’s leadership,
various deviationist and factionalist elements such as the Trotskys,
Bukharins, Zinovievs, and others within the Bolshevik party conspired to
destroy the proletarian state from within, or at the least weaken so as
to ensure future aggression by surrounding imperialist powers would be
feasible:
“Trotsky,
supposed originally to have inspired the formation of the ‘bloc’, had
long since been linked with the … the British intelligence service! On
Trotsky’s orders, Krestinsky, former Deputy People’s Commissar of
Foreign Affairs, had been in the German service since 1921. Rozenholz,
former People’s Commissar of Foreign Trade, joined the British service
in 1926 and the German service in 1932. Rakovsky, one of the big figures
of the Revolution, had served the British intelligence service since
1924, and the Japanese since 1934. And so on. All this Bukharin and
Rykov had connived at, since they too were foreign agents.”
--Grigori Tokaty, Trotskyist Conspiracy and the Deaths in the 1937-1938 period
On this topic, it must
be stated that the internal and external methods of revisionism are not
mutually exclusive. For instance, a revisionist movement which arose
from the domestic petite-bourgeoisie and large peasantry may receive a
considerable portion of its funding from foreign imperialists. It is
more so the case of how these two sources of revisionism amalgamate to
devastate a revolution. Socialist countries under RevisionismOnce
a socialist country has fallen under the rule of revisionist elements
in the manner detailed previously, its ruling clique has one omnipresent
goal to which it, consciously or subconsciously, pursues with the
utmost determination — the reversal of all gains made by the
revolutionary proletariat and the full restoration of capitalism.Yet
to attain this objective, the aims of the revisionists must be
concealed under a mountain of deceit and fabrications so as to throw
sand into the eyes of the people who, despite experiencing a reversal
from the dictatorship of the proletariat, still maintain the potential
to overthrow the distorters and revitalize the revolution. The
process by which the revisionists begin the restoration of capitalism
is not inherently spontaneous. In the Soviet Union, the revisionist
clique of Nikita Khrushchev refrained for a whole three years after
their seizure of power in 1953 to, at the infamous 20th congress of the
CPSU in 1956, openly disband the proletarian state and deviate from the
socialist construction led by Joseph Stalin. In place of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet revisionists installed a so-called “state of the whole people”,2 wherein the proletariat was to share power with the bourgeoisie and large peasants. In truth, this “whole people state” was a dictatorship of the revived bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union, and its creation marked the process by which the newly-capitalist state assaulted the socialist economy.The nature of revisionist governance is two-fold; its domestic and foreign pursuits. Domestically, the revisionists pursue a policy of social-fascism. They sow and aggravate national and ethnic divisions within the working class, replace the state of the armed workers
with a state of detached functionaries servile to bourgeois interests,
and restore old economic relations and from it power and privilege of
the capitalist exploiters. The revisionists will still maintain the
symbols and to a certain degree rhetoric of the previous revolutionary
state as part of their efforts to deceive the masses, comparable to the
pseudo-socialist demagogy employed by Hitler and Mussolini.Internationally,
the revisionists pursue the policy of social-imperialism. They will
force smaller, previously socialist nations into subjugated peripheries.
They will exploit their neighbors, often under the veil of
“internationalist” aid and solidarity, all the while devolving them into
economic dependencies and military outposts for future aggression. These
two pursuits — social-fascism and social-imperialism — are maintained
by the revisionists in power until their goal of capitalist restoration
is fully realized and the class consciousness and vigor of the people
has been eroded. At this stage, the veil of “socialist” symbols and
rhetoric is no longer needed for the revived bourgeoisie in the
revisionist countries. Their counter-revolution is concluded with the
final destruction of even the fainest remains of the old socialist
project, and their rule is now that of an open dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie.Returning to the
example of the Soviet Union, the Khrushchevite-Brezhevite group ruled
the country for a period of roughly forty years, introducing regression
after regression, attack after attack, upon the socialist mode of
production. The revisionists destroyed the people’s democracies of
Eastern Europe and forced them into the social-imperialist Warsaw Pact
and Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, turning countries such as
Cuba into little more than sugar colonies operating in the sole interest of Soviet bourgeois profits. The
gradual process of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere finally reached its sudden end with the dissolution of the
Union itself in 1991 against
the wishes of the Soviet people. At present, revisionists continue to
rule other states which most notably includes the People’s Republic of
China, which has grown to represent one of the largest imperialist powers in the world.Tendencies of RevisionismTo
truly understand the features of revisionism requires an understanding
of its various tendencies, both present and historical. To detail
exhaustively all the many forms of revisionism would be too herculean a
task for this work. However, meaning can still be gained from studying
first of all the major tendencies of revisionism, the ones whose
influence persists directly or indirectly into the socialist movement to
the modern day. Soviet revisionismThe
Soviet Union — previously a bulwark of socialism — constituted one of
the first revisionist states alongside Mao’s China and Tito’s
Yugoslavia. After the defeat of the initial wave of Soviet revisionism
as represented in the tendencies of Trotskyism and Bukharinism, the
deviationists and opportunists took on a more concealed approach,
seeking to slowly detach the Communist Party from the people and provide
power to a bureaucratic clique without the knowledge of the
administration of Stalin who fought pugnaciously for further democratization.
Under
the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet
revisionists introduced various deviation and distortions, declaring the
proletarian dictatorship obsolete in favor of the “state of the whole
people”, rejecting class struggle and revolution in favor of a “peaceful
transition” to socialism, collaborating with the imperialist powers
under the guise of “peaceful coexistence”, and so forth.
These
revisionist fabrications were propagated at the same time as capitalism
was being restored and the socialist past discarded with campaigns of
“de-Stalinization”. The Khrushchevite-Brezhevite line was enforced on
the parties of the Soviet social-imperialist bloc in Eastern Europe and
elsewhere, most of which would met a similar fate to the Soviet
Communist Party in the late 1980s and early 1990s, totally abandoning
any remaining vestiges of revolutionary communism in favor of openly
capitalist ideology.American revisionismIn
the United States, various movements have fallen into revisionist
deviations, the most notable of which includes Browderism and other
distortions which emerged from the Communist Party of the United States.In the 1940s, the American Communist Party fell under the influence of the distortions of Earl Browder, who advocated
class collaboration, bourgeois nationalism, and otherwise reduced
socialism to a distant prospect while replacing revolutionary ideals
with American chauvinism and exceptionalism. Even following the
liquidation of the American Communist Party, its reformation, and
removal of Browder, the Party never restored its revolutionary outlook
and would merely fall under the influence of Soviet revisionism during the leadership of Gus Hall throughout the later 20th century. After
the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Hall’s death in 2000, the
American Communist Party under Sam Webb’s and later Joe Sims’ tenure
would regress into various reformist deviations, endorsing bourgeois parties and rejecting Marxist principles. American
revisionism continues on in various forms outside of the American
Communist Party, particularly among the “Patriotic Socialists”4 and other social-chauvinists who reiterate the rhetoric of Earl Browder and others.Anti-Revisionist Struggle is Essential!That
revisionism and opportunism represent major threats to the working
class movement cannot be denied. This is a tendency which has seeped and
removed the revolutionary desire and practice from socialist
organizations, depriving them of the capacity to function independently
of bourgeois politics. Revisionism fosters chauvinism, divisions among
the exploited and oppressed, and in countless instances halted
revolution altogether. In countries where socialism has already been
attained, the rise to power of revisionists has culminated in the full
restoration of capitalism and regression of class struggle by a matter
of decades at the least.
Yet
to look at revisionism without understanding its basis and causes would
be futile. Only by understanding the basis of revisionism in aspects
such as the party’s detachment from the working class, petite-bourgeois
inclinations, bureaucracy, and so forth can this tendency be truly
combated. This does not
change the situation in the workers’ movement — revisionism has taken
hold of countless organizations and its propagandists deceive
increasingly larger members of the proletariat who are seeking a truly
revolutionary organization in this period of capitalist crisis. Thus, it
is among the foremost tasks of communists to engage in anti-revisionist
struggle; expose the distorters of revolutionary principles and reveal
their nature as agents of the bourgeoisie and enemies of people.
Workers of the world, unite!
Notes1.
As this may result in confusion to those unfamiliar with these
concepts, it must be noted that the socialist state is that of the sole
rule of the proletariat in alliance with certain progressive elements
such as the small and middle peasantry. A state cannot be “above-class”
or “non-class”, for as Lenin stated in his work “Democracy” and Dictatorship:“The
Scheidemanns and Kautsky's speak about "pure democracy" and "democracy"
in general for the purpose of deceiving the people and concealing from
them the bourgeois character of present-day democracy. Let the
bourgeoisie continue to keep the entire apparatus of state power in
their hands, let a handful of exploiters continue to use the former,
bourgeois, state machine! Elections held in such circumstances are
lauded by the bourgeoisie, for very good reasons, as being "free",
"equal", "democratic" and "universal". These words are designed to
conceal the truth, to conceal the fact that the means of production and
political power remain in the hands of the exploiters, and that
therefore real freedom and real equality for the exploited, that is, for
the vast majority of the population, are out of the question.”Thus
the Soviet revisionist theory of a “state of the whole people” could
only ever be cover for what was truly a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. 2. Commonly known in English as the “Shining Path”. Self-declared as the “Communist Party of Peru”.
3.
A reactionary, social-fascist tendency which emerged in the United
States in the 21st century that seeks to combine American chauvinism and
nationalism with certain socialist symbols and rhetoric. A restoration
of Browderism in many respects.
