What is Revisionist Marxism ? Was Mikhail Gorbachev a Revisionist Marxist ? Are Socia

[tradeunionsupporter]

What is Revisionist Marxism ? Was and Is Mikhail Gorbachev a Revisionist Marxist ? Are Social Democrats Revisionist Marxists ? Was Eduard Bernstein a Revisionist Marxist ? Does Revisionist Marxism seek to Reform Marxism ? What is the difference between Revisionist Marxism and Orthodox Marxism ?

[tradeunionsupporter]

Please anyone reply to this thank you.

[¿Que?]

Revisionism was originally the philosophy of Bernstein. The idea was that socialism could be achieved by reforms made against the capitalist system. So at this time, reformism and revisionism were pretty much the same thing. Historically, however, revisionism has been used as a slander against people who disagree with you. It represents the opposite extreme of ultral leftism.

[Zanthorus]

"Revisionism" is just a general term for someone who revises something. Revisionist historians for example will attempt to provide evidence that the widely accepted view of a particular event or period in history is false and that their new interpretation is more accurate.

Bernstein was called a "revisionist" because he claimed that the era of class struggle and violent revolutions was over, that socialism could no longer be argued for on the basis of material necessity but had to be based upon Kantian ethical principles, and as a logical corrolary that socialists should engage in open class collaboration with liberals in order to win vaguely left-wing reforms to allow us to gradually move towards socialism.

Funnily enough, Bernstein was not the first to come up with these ideas. There was already a growing layer of beuracrats and proffesionals in the SPD that wanted to collaborate with the liberals in getting policies through instead of going down Kautskys "dogmatic" route of refusing to collaborate with the class enemy and attempting to build a socialist majority in parliament. Bernstein just gave them the theoretical thumbs up that they needed.

The term "revisionist" was later revived by Maoists and Hoxhaists to refer to the leadership of the post-Stalin USSR and the various brands of eurocommunism. I think it was 1978 that Hoxha eventually declared that the only non-revisionist socialist state left on earth was Albania. But anyway, the basic idea behind revisionism was that Kruschev et al had abandoned the class struggle in their fight against "dogmatic" Marxist-Leninism in the same way that Bernstein had done years earlier.

Really though, "revisionist" is a meaningless insult which presupposes that your particular dogma is the eternal truth to which everyone must subscribe or else become an evil anti-communist traitor.