What's revisionism?

[Le Rouge]

All is in the title.

I quote wiki "Anti-revisionism is based on the view that the Soviet Union successfully implemented socialism during approximately the first thirty years of its existence"
Am I a revisionist if i don't agree with what the soviet union was in it's first years? Like no freedom of speech, forced labour, bloody collectivisation, etc.

Oh btw, I need a really GOOD book about the soviet union, any suggestion?

[mrmikhail]

All is in the title.

I quote wiki "Anti-revisionism is based on the view that the Soviet Union successfully implemented socialism during approximately the first thirty years of its existence"
Am I a revisionist if i don't agree with what the soviet union was in it's first years? Like no freedom of speech, forced labour, bloody collectivisation, etc.

Oh btw, I need a really GOOD book about the soviet union, any suggestion?

That is the Stalinist definition of revisionism, yes.

In truth revisionism would be any revision of the ideals of Marx and Lenin, most groups are a certain degree revisionist since they have evolved with time, but many of the far left sects (such as CWI and IMT Trotskyists) stick to "Orthodox Marxism" or "Bolshevik-Marxism" and thus try to maintain as little revision as is possible.

As for books on the CCCP, perhaps "The Revolution Betrayed" would be a good book on the CCCP up to 1937, and a big critique on Stalinism.

[Aurora]

Initially revisionism referred to Bernstein's revision of Marx, Bernstein abandoned the idea that revolution was necessary and thought that socialism would be brought about by reforming capitalism.
Nowadays it's mostly thrown around by stalinists to refer to any leader of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union itself after Stalin. They imagine that somehow everything changed when Khrushchev became premier, somehow overnight 'socialism' didn't exist anymore. In that instance it has no political meaning.

[Rooster]

Revisionism, as far as I can see, originally referred to the deadening of the revolutionary ideas of Marx. Now it just means the changing of the Marxist-Leninist line during Stalin's reign.


Initially revisionism referred to Bernstein's revision of Marx, Bernstein abandoned the idea that revolution was necessary and thought that socialism would be brought about by reforming capitalism.

Isn't that exactly like Stalinists with their state-capitalism?


Oh btw, I need a really GOOD book about the soviet union, any suggestion?

I'm currently reading Alec Nove's An Economic History of the USSR which is pretty good. It's not as boring as it sounds, trust me. But you might have to read some general history of the USSR to get some further details and a deeper look because he almost entirely ignores the political side of things and focuses on the economic (as the title suggests). So maybe in conjunction with Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Russian Revolution and possibly Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed and maybe some other biographies or such for later leaders, but the first two should set you in good steed.

[mrmikhail]

Revisionism, as far as I can see, originally referred to the deadening of the revolutionary ideas of Marx. Now it just means the changing of the Marxist-Leninist line during Stalin's reign.



Isn't that exactly like Stalinists with their state-capitalism?

Bernstein was a Social Democrat, so yes his "evolutionary socialism" was nothing more than the state capitalist ideas of a welfare state. But his policy is considered revisionist, because it altered the path laid out by Marx.

[Parvati]

Lenin considers that : Revisionism is the revision of Marxist Principles with the justification that circumstances have changed. In fact, it's a breakthrough of the bourgeoisie into the ranks of the proletariat that seeks to divide the labor movement and politics of the proletariat and that results in the splitting of socialism.

I think we can that revisionism
- infiltrate and divide the proletarian movement;
- is a complete negation of Marxism, subsitute it with a bourgeois philosophy;
- denies the increasing impoverishment of humanity and the inevitability of the collapse of imperialism;
- try to falsify scientific socialism
- boasts for parliamentary cretinism and pacifism
- contributes to the restoration of capitalism and the bourgeois electoral politics;
- maintain fake communist partys who are communist only by the name

Specifically on the question of USSR, having some divergences with what happened and be able to identify the mistakes is not revisionism at all (the wikiquote seems wrong and dogmatic...) . Soviets have made a lot of them but it was the first proletarian revolution of the human history. But even if I'm not a Stalinist - I don't think that Stalin develop any kind of theory that goes further Marx and Lenin, and some of what he wrote and did was wrong, I don't think that Stalinism is a concrete point of view- I think that we should at least support him. Khruschev's thesis of the "cult of personnality" that the bourgeoisie used and still used today to fight Stalin is an excuse to liquidate the Marxist point of view. On this question, I think that the right communist position is

For some book suggestions, according to me there's not one "Big Cool Pro-Communist Book of USSR". My best suggestion is probably to read original different texts by yourself, trying to find what's cool and what's not. Maybe the book of Linhart "Lénine, Taylor, Les paysans" is interesting about the beginning of USSR and the possibility of failure that were already there

[Geiseric]

Revisionism is something Stalinists claim people do when people don't agree with the usual Menshevik lines.