revisionism?

[safeduck]

Why are so many communists anti-revisionist? Is it because it can lead to tyranny or something? I dont get how they can be anti-revisionist yet they support stalin and mao? Were they not revisionists themselves?

[Tim Cornelis]

Revisionism is used to denounce those who are said to have revised the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. Of course, the fact that anyone who isn't a classical Marxist but a Marxist of some other kind is by its definition a revisionist is ignorable.

I don't understand what they're trying to say either, but they imply that those revisionists are wrong because they are revisionists--which is a fallacy.

Additionally, revising theories is usually a good thing as this is what science does: it adjusts its views based on the given facts. Since knowledge and facts expand, it is logical, and indeed scientific, to adjust your theories. Problem is many Marxist-Leninists see Marxism-Leninism as objective truth and science, which contradicts with scientific principles itself.

[28350]

'Anti-revisionists' hold the position that the allegedly socialist countries of the past 100 years were good until the evil revisionists managed to worm themselves into positions of power. This certainly revises Marx's materialist conception of history, replacing it with Great Man theory. So in regards to Marxism, they are only nominally anti-revisionist (as well as only nominally Marxist). Stalin (who said commodity production continues with socialism) and Mao (who advocated class collaboration) certainly revised Marx's positions, even as they claimed to uphold them.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The most absurd thing about the allegation of "anti-revisionism" is that any sane Communist party in 2011 would be taking on different ideological positions from Stalin's Russia. In particular, gay rights, the abolition of mass imprisonment and the death penalty, artistic freedom, freedom from collective punishment (be it ethnic, religious or regional), a media not micromanaged by the politburo, and a true ability for workers and the masses to organize a recall of any political official they deem incompetent.

Revisionism is the way honest intellectualism works. Instead of continuing with a bad idea simply because it is accepted previously, you analyze the idea in itself and abandon it in accordance with its own nature. Anti-revisionism is the kind of position a dogmatic, conservative priest takes with a theologian with radical ideas, it's not a very well-thought out political position to take. That's not to say Khrushchev or Brezhnev had better ideas, but taking an abstractly "anti-revisionist" stance is just silly.

[Tommy4ever]

Anti-Revisionists are basically Stalinist purists who disagree with the different directions taken by Communist Parties after the death of Stalin. They usually uphold the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha (who lived for 3 decades after Stalin).

Some Maoists also like to prattle on about Revisionism.

Stalinism and Maoism, and even Leninism, are indeed revisions of the Marxist theory that came before them as well.

[Sixiang]

Now that you've heard the views of people who don't understand or believe in anti-revisionism, how about you hear from someone who does?

Now, I can only speak from the perspective of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism because that is what I believe, support, and uphold as correct. That is also the communist ideology I am most well-read on. I cannot tell you about the Hoxhaist approach or any of the other trends of Marxism-Leninism.

Now, for Maoists, "revisionism" refers to the party leaders who achieved power in the USSR and PRC after the Stalin and Mao supporters. Mao referred to Khrushchev's Phony Communism as revisionism. Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his supporters and the policies in place during their years of power. Specifically, he accused Stalin of fostering a cult of personality and putting power solely in his hands. Mao denounced Khrushchev and his supporters as revisionist both for denouncing Stalin and for reversing many of the policies of the Stalin-era CPSU. Maoists believe that the Soviet Union was socialist during the Stalin years but after this, it became another imperialist power in the world alongside the U.S. The USSR adopting "specialization" policies was one of Mao's biggest criticisms. The USSR lent out loans to certain countries that were supportive of the USSR so that these smaller countries became economically dependent on the USSR and the USSR was able to put the whole class struggle and industrialization under socialism thing aside. Maoists also consider the PRC to be socialist up until the end of the cultural revolution and when Deng Xiaping and his supporters instituted what is often called a coup to kick out the Mao camp and instill their camp. Once Deng kicked out the Mao camp from power, he and his supporters took about abolishing the people's communes, stripping the masses of power and criticism through the mass line, and making the military no longer accountable to the masses. He also said that China needs to basically industrialize more and became a global power and this can only be achieved through market based reforms. He called his market socialism with Chinese characteristics. It just began a process of economic liberalization and restoration of capitalism in China. Maoists say that this was revisionist and we often call supporters of this "capitalist roaders", because they are reversing the great advances and successes made by socialism in China.

The Maoist movement had an initial split in the 70's among the Mao and Deng camps. In the 80's, the Mao camp came together in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and showed support for the Mao era and said the Deng era and beyond are revisionist. They also began to outline and show support for future revolutions in other parts of the world, putting their theory to practice. These Maoist revolutions are called "Protracted People's Wars" and have been waged in the past 20 years or so most notably in Peru, India, Nepal, Turkey, and the Philippines.

For us, revisionists are those who support the Khrushchev and Deng era leaders. As far as Cuba, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Albania, etc. there is a bit more to it and I'm not going to get into those here because what is essentially important are those two. Revisionists are those who undermine socialism and communism and try to either outright restore capitalism, become imperialist, or make concessions to be part capitalist and part socialist in the economy. Maoists also sometimes refer to ultra dogmatism - or focusing too much on theory and not on practice and historical examples - as revisionist. Revisionists are those who put aside proletarian liberation, liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world, anti-imperialism, and socialism and communism in favor of capitalism, nationalism, liberalism, imperialism and the like.

[Ismail]

Anti-revisionism simply means opposition to revisionism. Lenin, for instance, strongly denounced the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, and other pseudo-socialists in the service of the bourgeoisie. See: http://marx2mao.com/Lenin/MR08.html

Also, believe it or not, the analysis of revisionism isn't restricted to "Stalinists" either. The Soviets themselves claimed (mainly because anti-revisionism began with Lenin, but also because of Maoist and Albanian attacks) that they were "struggling" against revisionism as well. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1970's edition) states that revisionism is "the antiscientific revision of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism. An opportunist trend within the revolutionary working-class movement that, under the pretext of creatively assimilating new phenomena, revises the basic tenets of Marxist theory, which have been confirmed in practice."


The most absurd thing about the allegation of "anti-revisionism" is that any sane Communist party in 2011 would be taking on different ideological positions from Stalin's Russia....

Revisionism is the way honest intellectualism works. Instead of continuing with a bad idea simply because it is accepted previously, you analyze the idea in itself and abandon it in accordance with its own nature. Anti-revisionism is the kind of position a dogmatic, conservative priest takes with a theologian with radical ideas, it's not a very well-thought out political position to take. That's not to say Khrushchev or Brezhnev had better ideas, but taking an abstractly "anti-revisionist" stance is just silly.This is assuming that anti-revisionism means literally adopting the exact same views Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin had without ever changing them in light of new scientific findings. That's a strawman, that's not anti-revisionism. Enver Hoxha criticized dogmatism and stated that it must be combated, and that Marxism-Leninism, being a scientific doctrine, cannot be dogmatic so long as it is properly applied, tested and analyzed.

No one would say that Albania operated exactly like the USSR or that Hoxha was a carbon-copy of Stalin. Hoxha himself noted that the Party of Labour of Albania creatively applied Marxism-Leninism to the concrete historical conditions of Albania. Of course revisionists also claim to "creatively apply" this or that to allegedly new conditions. The difference is that revisionism robs Marxism-Leninism of its scientific and revolutionary positions. Revisionists argued, for instance, that "new conditions" made reformism possible. Or that "new conditions" justified the claim that imperialist war could be averted even with the existence of capitalist superpowers (something Stalin pointed out was incorrect but which was promptly denounced as "dogmatic" after his death.)


'Anti-revisionists' hold the position that the allegedly socialist countries of the past 100 years were good until the evil revisionists managed to worm themselves into positions of power. This certainly revises Marx's materialist conception of history, replacing it with Great Man theory.Yet you're ignoring the fact that anti-revisionists also discuss the conditions which allowed revisionism to emerge. Khrushchev wasn't an island, nor was Brezhnev or Gorbachev. They had a strata of the Party already backing them. The "Secret Speech" of 1956 signaled the triumph of the rightist, revisionist wing of the Party which had obviously been significantly larger in influence than the left-wing.


Stalin (who said commodity production continues with socialism)Stalin was refuting rightist claims that, because commodity production continued, production must be based on profit. Pointing out that what the Soviets were producing at home is not revisionism.

How about you actually read Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/EPS52.html) to begin with? It was actually denounced after Stalin's death as "dogmatic" and "left-deviationist."

A good read on Stalin's views of political economy, including commodities under socialism: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/polecon.htm
A shorter summary of Stalin's views on commodity production under socialism: http://eserver.org/Clogic/2010/Ball.pdf (pp. 7-13.)


and Mao (who advocated class collaboration)Mao wasn't an anti-revisionist in any meaningful sense. Hoxha's memoirs (a useful abridged compendium is in The Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha, but you can view The Khrushchevites and the two-volume Reflections on China online anyway) note that Mao and Co. were supporters of Khrushchev until he began threatening China's aspirations to become a superpower.

For instance, at the 1957 Moscow Conference:

"Another aspect of Mao’s speech that drew immediate attention was his discussion of the internal struggle in the CPSU. When talking about unity, Mao inserted the following comment about the ouster of Molotov:

'I endorsed the CPSU Central Committee’s solution on the Molotov question. That was a struggle of opposites. The facts prove that unity could not be achieved and that the two sides were mutually exclusive. The Molotov clique took the opportunity to attack at a time when Comrade Khrushchev was abroad and unprepared. However, even though they waged a surprise attack, our Comrade Khrushchev is no fool. He is a smart person who immediately mobilized his troops and waged a victorious counterattack. That struggle was one between two lines: one erroneous and one relatively correct. In the four or five years since Stalin’s death the situation has improved considerably in the Soviet Union in the sphere of both domestic policy and foreign policy. This indicates that the line represented by Comrade Khrushchev is correct and that opposition to his line is incorrect.'"
(Zhihua Shen & Yafeng Xia. "Hidden Currents during the Honeymoon: Mao, Khrushchev, and the 1957 Moscow Conference," in Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 11, Number 4, Fall 2009, pp. 108-109.)

The Albanians, by contrast, did not at all support the view that "the situation has improved considerably in the Soviet Union in the sphere of both domestic policy and foreign policy."

[NoOneIsIllegal]

The problem with a lot of "anti-revisionists" is that they are hypocritical. A century ago, Lenin and co. added a lot of new ideas and different strategies to Marxism. However, if anyone were to do that today, they would be immediately denounced as revisionists.

They glorify the past and want to relive it. It's a go-nowhere ideology.

[Sheepy]

"Revisionism" is just a word that Stalinists cry out whenever they don't get their way.

[Ismail]

The problem with a lot of "anti-revisionists" is that they are hypocritical. A century ago, Lenin and co. added a lot of new ideas and different strategies to Marxism. However, if anyone were to do that today, they would be immediately denounced as revisionists.Not really. Lenin genuinely advanced Marxism and showed the path towards proletarian revolution. He didn't make apologia for reformism or anything of the sort. He took Marxism, which was then in the hands of opportunists both in Russia and in just about all of Western Europe (from "Legal Marxism" to the SPD) and kept its revolutionary traditions alive and unhindered within Russia, and encouraged said revolutionary traditions abroad after 1917 against the treachery and blatant revisionism of the Second International.

Again, anti-revisionism doesn't mean "adverse to change." It means being adverse to distortions of Marxism-Leninism which deprive it of both its revolutionary and its scientific character. Even Trots have "struggled" against revisionism and used the word occasionally.

Nor does having different views classify one as a revisionist. Rosa Luxemburg, despite being an ultra-leftist in various matters, was recognized by Lenin and by subsequent Communists as a fighter against revisionism of the Bernstein and Kautsky variety, and as a genuine revolutionary despite her faults. No one would call Daniel DeLeon or Eugene Debs revisionists either. We would, however, consider Earl Browder and Gus Hall to be revisionists, for both posed as "Communists" while in fact advancing in the case of Browder class collaboration and the denial of the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism, and in the case of Hall the defense of Soviet social-imperialism and state-capitalism (and, well, class collaboration as well since that naturally followed servility to the Soviet revisionist road.)


"Revisionism" is just a word that Stalinists cry out whenever they don't get their way.Well in Albania Khrushchev tried to get his way. He tried bullying the PLA to rehabilitate Koçi Xoxe and Co., who were Yugoslav agents, just so Khrushchev could appease Tito who hated Hoxha. That failed. Then Khrushchev called on Hoxha to abandon the "Stalinist" economic strategy for the country in favor of growing lemons and oranges for the USSR. That failed. Then Khrushchev tried toppling Hoxha. That failed. Then Khrushchev got mad and broke off all diplomatic and economic relations.

[Ocean Seal]

Why are so many communists anti-revisionist? Is it because it can lead to tyranny or something? I dont get how they can be anti-revisionist yet they support stalin and mao? Were they not revisionists themselves?
Revisionism means different things to different people.

[Sixiang]

This is assuming that anti-revisionism means literally adopting the exact same views Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin had without ever changing them in light of new scientific findings. That's a strawman, that's not anti-revisionism. Enver Hoxha criticized dogmatism and stated that it must be combated, and that Marxism-Leninism, being a scientific doctrine, cannot be dogmatic so long as it is properly applied, tested and analyzed.
Yeah. All of those people and Mao, too, mentioned on many occasions in their writings that Marxism is not about carbon copying every aspect of some revolution that was successful. They all talked about applying basic principles to specific situations and working what is proven to work. Mao referred to following this list as a method of finding correct ideas: theory-learn from examples and practice-revise theory-put new theory into practice-repeat as often as necessary.


Of course revisionists also claim to "creatively apply" this or that to allegedly new conditions. The difference is that revisionism robs Marxism-Leninism of its scientific and revolutionary positions. Revisionists argued, for instance, that "new conditions" made reformism possible. Or that "new conditions" justified the claim that imperialist war could be averted even with the existence of capitalist superpowers (something Stalin pointed out was incorrect but which was promptly denounced as "dogmatic" after his death.)
Yep. Thank you for pointing that out. All of these attacks against anti-revisionism in this thread are absolutely incorrect and not based any sort of evidence.


Mao wasn't an anti-revisionist in any meaningful sense. Hoxha's memoirs (a useful abridged compendium is in The Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha, but you can view The Khrushchevites and the two-volume Reflections on China online anyway) note that Mao and Co. were supporters of Khrushchev until he began threatening China's aspirations to become a superpower.

For instance, at the 1957 Moscow Conference:

"Another aspect of Mao’s speech that drew immediate attention was his discussion of the internal struggle in the CPSU. When talking about unity, Mao inserted the following comment about the ouster of Molotov:

'I endorsed the CPSU Central Committee’s solution on the Molotov question. That was a struggle of opposites. The facts prove that unity could not be achieved and that the two sides were mutually exclusive. The Molotov clique took the opportunity to attack at a time when Comrade Khrushchev was abroad and unprepared. However, even though they waged a surprise attack, our Comrade Khrushchev is no fool. He is a smart person who immediately mobilized his troops and waged a victorious counterattack. That struggle was one between two lines: one erroneous and one relatively correct. In the four or five years since Stalin’s death the situation has improved considerably in the Soviet Union in the sphere of both domestic policy and foreign policy. This indicates that the line represented by Comrade Khrushchev is correct and that opposition to his line is incorrect.'"
(Zhihua Shen & Yafeng Xia. "Hidden Currents during the Honeymoon: Mao, Khrushchev, and the 1957 Moscow Conference," in Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 11, Number 4, Fall 2009, pp. 108-109.)

The Albanians, by contrast, did not at all support the view that "the situation has improved considerably in the Soviet Union in the sphere of both domestic policy and foreign policy."
Yeah, cause nothing says supporting Khrushchev like writing something with a title like this: http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm

The CPSU and CCP had tensions and differences that worsened over time until an eventual split. Maybe Mao said that, but that was years before formal relations between the two parties were cut off and the parties officially denounced each other. The situation was re-assessed, people can change their minds.

But whatever. That's a debate for a different time. I don't want to turn this thread into a war between us as the critics of anti-revisionism watch us fight. I respect you and Hoxha despite my Maoist convictions. And you're knowledge of the specifics of this era and matter seem to far exceed mine. You are the more informed historian on the matter. I just didn't want to let that go.


Not really. Lenin genuinely advanced Marxism and showed the path towards proletarian revolution. He didn't make apologia for reformism or anything of the sort. He took Marxism, which was then in the hands of opportunists both in Russia and in just about all of Western Europe (from "Legal Marxism" to the SPD) and kept its revolutionary traditions alive and unhindered within Russia, and encouraged said revolutionary traditions abroad after 1917 against the treachery and blatant revisionism of the Second International.

Again, anti-revisionism doesn't mean "adverse to change." It means being adverse to distortions of Marxism-Leninism which deprive it of both its revolutionary and its scientific character. Even Trots have "struggled" against revisionism and used the word occasionally.

Nor does having different views classify one as a revisionist. Rosa Luxemburg, despite being an ultra-leftist in various matters, was recognized by Lenin and by subsequent Communists as a fighter against revisionism of the Bernstein and Kautsky variety, and as a genuine revolutionary despite her faults. No one would call Daniel DeLeon or Eugene Debs revisionists either. We would, however, consider Earl Browder and Gus Hall to be revisionists, for both posed as "Communists" while in fact advancing in the case of Browder class collaboration and the denial of the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism, and in the case of Hall the defense of Soviet social-imperialism and state-capitalism (and, well, class collaboration as well since that naturally followed servility to the Soviet revisionist road.)

:golfclap: Couldn't have put it better myself. Anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism is all about moving upward and forward, progressing onward to the future, not about worshiping the past and trying to exactly replicate previous struggles we support. These are common misconceptions about anti-revisionism.

[Ismail]

A good example of revisionism is the prototype of Eurocommunism (an openly reformist variant of revisionism), Togliatti's "polycentrism" views, as espoused at the 1957 Moscow Conference and which grew from the decisions of the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU. The following is taken from Hoxha's memoir The Khrushchevites, pp. 334-336:

Palmiro Togliatti got up in the meeting and proclaimed his ultra-revisionist theses:

“We must go further with the line of the 20th Congress to turn the communist parties into broad mass parties, must open new roads, and bring out new slogans,” he said in essence. “Now we need great independence in working out slogans and forms of collaboration,” he continued, “therefore we are opposed to a single leading centre. This centre would not be advantageous to the development of the individuality of each party and to bringing the broad masses of catholics and others closer around us.”

Jacques Duclos, who was sitting beside me, could not contain himself:

“I am going to get up and attack him openly,” he said to me. “Do you hear the things he is saying, Comrade Enver?!”

“Yes,” I said to Duclos. “He is expressing here what he has been thinking and doing for a long time.”

“In 1945,” continued Togliatti, “we declared that we wanted to create a new party. We say a ‘new party’ and do not want to use Lenin’s thesis, ‘the party of the new type’ because, if we were to put it in this way, this would mark a great theoretical and political error, would mean to create such a communist party, which would break with the traditions of social-democracy. If we had built a party of the new type,” continued Togliatti, “we would have alienated the party from the masses of the people and we would never have created the situation we have today, when our party has become a great mass party.”

After these and other theses of Togliatti, tempers flared up. Jacques Duclos rose to speak:

“We listened carefully to Togliatti’s speech,” he said among other things, “but we declare that we do not agree in the least with what Togliatti said. His views open the way to opportunism and revisionism.”

“Our parties have been and are hindered by sectarianism and dogmatism,” interjected Togliatti.

At one moment Mao Zedong got up to calm the tempers, speaking in his style of allegories and implications. He said:

“On every human issue one must go into battle, but also towards conciliation. I have in mind the relations between comrades: when we have differences let us invite each other to talks. In Panmunjon we had negotiations with the Americans, in Vietnam with the French.”

After several phrases of this type, he came to the point:

“There are people,” he said, “who are 100 per cent Marxists, and others who are 80 per cent, 70 per cent or 50 per cent, indeed there are some who may be only 10 per cent Marxists. We ought to talk even with those who are 10 per cent Marxists, because there are only advantages in this.”

[Ismail]

More examples of Albanians denouncing Soviet: revisionism which I've transcribed:

"For Marxist-Leninists and for all realistic men it is clear that, under conditions of the division of the world into two opposing systems, there can be no question of any economic, much less political, integration, because it is impossible to imagine one world in which socialism and capitalism are fused together. The world can only be one on a single social basis, either on the basis of capitalism or on that of socialism. There is not and there cannot be any intermediate way. The Yugoslav revisionists deem it possible to create a single world, integrated even today, because in their view the existence of two opposing systems, the socialist and the capitalist, is not something objective, conditioned by the laws of development of human society in the present epoch, but an artificial division into military-political blocs which, as the Program of the LCY states, 'has resulted in the economic division of the world' and 'hinders the process of world integration and the social progress of mankind.'

But one knows that formerly the world was 'one.' There was one world system, that of capitalism. This 'unity' has been breached as a result of the triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia and in a good many other countries and by the creation of the world socialist system....

According to N. Khrushchev's group, peaceful coexistence is 'the general line of foreign policy of the socialist countries'; it is 'the only correct road for solving all the current vital problems of human society.' Thus, according to him, all other tasks and all other problems must be subordinated to peaceful coexistence, namely, world revolution and the national liberation struggle, while the peoples must remain with their arms folded and wait for their national and social liberation through the implementation of the policy of peaceful coexistence....

The anti-Marxist and revisionist conception of N. Khrushchev and his group regarding peaceful coexistence, such as the line of rapprochement with imperialism and of cessation of the struggle against it, is also closely bound to their opportunist preaching on the roads of transition to socialism... [alleging] that the possibility of the peaceful path grows from day to day, and, what is worse, it presents the peaceful path as a purely parliamentary one, as simply the winning of a majority in a bourgeois parliament, and totally neglects the fundamental teaching of Marxism-Leninism on the need to smash the bourgeois state machine and to replace it by organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

N. Khrushchev's propagandists recently have gone so far as to present the state monopoly capitalism of capitalist countries as one of the principal factors in the overthrow of the monopolist bourgeoisie and as almost the first step toward socialism. Thus... the director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences, A. Arzumanyan, said inter alia: 'At present, in the third state of the general crisis of capitalism, nationalization cannot be regarded as an ordinary reform. It is bound up with the revolutionary struggle for the liquidation of monopolies, for the overthrow of the power of the financial oligarchy. Through the correct policy of the working class, relying on an upsurge in the struggle of the broad popular masses, it may become a radical means of abolishing the domination of the monopolist bourgeoisie. The nationalization of industry and of the banks is now becoming the slogan of the antimonopolist coalition.' What is the difference between this concept and the well-known, fundamentally opportunist point of view in the Program of the LCY that 'specific forms of capitalist state relations can be the first step toward socialism,' that 'the ever growing impact of state-capitalist tendencies in the capitalist world is the most outstanding proof that mankind is entering every more deeply, in an uncontrollabe manner and in the most varied ways, into the epoch of socialism'? ....

We cannot fail to recall in this connection that in his time V.I. Lenin harshly criticized the bourgeois reformist notion that state monopoly capitalism is a non-capitalist order, a step toward socialism, which is necessary to the opportunist and reformist denial of the inevitability of the socialist revolution and their embellishing of capitalism. V.I. Lenin emphatically stressed that 'steps toward greater monopolism and state control of production are inevitably followed by an increase in the exploitation of the working masses, the intensification of oppression, difficulty in resisting exploiters, and the strengthening of reaction and military despotism. Parallel with this, they result in an extraordinary increase in the profits of the big capitalists to the detriment of all other strata of the population.'"
("Modern Revisionists to the Aid of the Basic Strategy of American Imperialism," Zëri i Popullit, September 19 and 20, 1962. Quoted in William E. Griffith. Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press. 1963. pp. 376-379.)

It's worth noting that at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in 1961 Khrushchev called Hoxha a "narrow nationalist" and "revisionist," which further cements my point that anti-revisionism (well, actual anti-revisionism, not Soviet lipservice) didn't originate with Hoxha and Mao. It had its origins in the days of Lenin, not to mention (although the word wasn't used then) the days of Marx versus Lassalle.

[Sixiang]

It's worth noting that at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in 1961 Khrushchev called Hoxha a "narrow nationalist" and "revisionist," which further cements my point that anti-revisionism (well, actual anti-revisionism, not Soviet lipservice) didn't originate with Hoxha and Mao. It had its origins in the days of Lenin, not to mention (although the word wasn't used then) the days of Marx versus Lassalle.

Yeah. Actually, wikipedia shows quite well how revisionism and anti-revisionism date back to the 19th century and how the attack of being "revisionist" has been thrown back and forth between both sides of an argument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionism_(Marxism)


The term "revisionism" has been used in a number of different contexts to refer to a number of different revisions (or claimed revisions) of Marxist theory:
In the late 19th century, revisionism was used to describe democratic socialist writers such as Eduard Bernstein and Jean Jaurès, who sought to revise Karl Marx's ideas about the transition to socialism and claimed that a revolution through force was not necessary to achieve a socialist society. The views of Bernstein and Jaurès gave rise to reformist theory, which asserts that socialism can be achieved through gradual peaceful reforms from within a capitalist system.[2]
In the 1920s and 1930s, the International Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky, which had been expelled from the Communist International, accused the "revisionist" leadership of the Comintern and Soviet Union of revising the internationalist principles of Marxism and Leninism in favor of the aspirations of an elite bureaucratic caste which had come to power in the Soviet Union.[3] The Trotskyists saw the nascent "Stalinist" bureaucracy as a roadblock on the proletariat's path to world socialist revolution, and to the shifting policies of the Comintern, they counterposed the Marxist theory of Permanent Revolution. The Soviet authorities, meanwhile, labeled the Trotskyists as "revisionists" and eventually expelled them from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, whereupon the Trotskyists founded their Fourth International.
In the 1940s and 1950s within the international communist movement, revisionism was a term used by Stalinists to describe communists who focused on consumer goods production instead of heavy industry; accepted national differences instead of promoting proletarian internationalism; and encouraged democratic (non-communist) reforms instead of remaining faithful to the idea of communist revolution. Revisionism was also one of the charges leveled at Titoists as punishment for their pursuance of a relatively independent form of communist ideology, amidst a series of post-World War 2 purges beginning in 1949 in Eastern Europe by the Soviet administration under Stalin. After Stalin's death a more participatory, more democratic form of socialism became briefly acceptable in Hungary during Imre Nagy's government (1953-1955) and in Poland during Władysław Gomułka's government, containing ideas that the rest of the Soviet bloc, and the Soviet Union itself, variously considered revisionist, although neither Nagy nor Gomułka described themselves as revisionists, since to do so would have been self-deprecating.
Following the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and also the Secret Speech of that same year denouncing Stalin, many communist activists, astounded and disheartened by what they saw as the betrayal of Marxist-Leninist principles by the very people who had founded them, resigned from western communist parties in protest. These quitters were sometimes accused of revisionism by those communists who remained in these parties, although some of these same loyalists also shortly thereafter split from the same communist parties in the 1960s to become the New Left "anti-revisionists", indicating that they, too, were disillusioned by the actions of the Soviet Union by that point in time. Most of those who left in the sixties started aligning themselves closely with Mao Zedong as opposed to the Soviet Union. E. P. Thompson's New Reasoner was an example.
In the early 1960s, Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China revived the term revisionism to attack Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Union over various ideological and political issues, as part of the Sino-Soviet split. The Chinese routinely described the Soviets as "modern revisionists" through the 1960s. This usage was copied by the various Maoist groups that split off from communist parties around the world. In 1978, the Sino-Albanian Split occurred, which caused Enver Hoxha, the General Secretary of Albania, to also condemn Maoism as revisionist. This caused a split in the Maoist movement, with some following the Albanian Party of Labour's line, most notably the Communist Party of New Zealand and the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist).

[Ismail]

Another quote summing up anti-revisionist views on the 20th Party Congress:

"At the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February, 1956, after three years of preparation, Khrushchev presented in the report of the Central Committee a number of 'new' theses described as 'a creative development of Marxist-Leninist theory' which were in fact a complete departure from Marxism-Leninism. Collaboration with imperialism which he labelled 'peaceful co-existence' was exalted as the general line of the foreign policy of all socialist countries... Khrushchev made it clear that he was prepared to give up international class struggle, renouncing on behalf of the colonial peoples any right to liberate themselves from oppression and reassuring capitalist governments by emphasising 'peaceful transition to socialism' or the Parliamentary road as the only correct line for communist parties everywhere. If only the United States imperialists were given to understand that their economic and military positions all over the world were not to be challenged then they would give up their aggressive designs against the socialist block.

What this really amounted to was an attempt to freeze the world situation just as it was, with all its injustices and inequalities, for the sake of a 'peace' which the two major world powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, would guarantee with their nuclear might. The 'creative development of Marxism-Leninism' which Khrushchev was advancing was simply the division of the world into Soviet and American spheres of influence... 'Then', Khrushchev was to say, 'if any mad man wanted war, we, the two strongest countries in the world, would have but to shake our fingers to warn him off' - and included among the 'mad men', of course, were any popular leaders wishing to take their countries out of imperialist bondage. Instead of challenging the policy of nuclear blackmail which the United States government had used ever since the war to keep the world safe for the operations of monopoly capitalism, Khrushchev was going to use the Soviet Union's nuclear capacity to get in on the act. That this was the case was demonstrated later on when Albania's opposition to the Khrushchev line prompted the threat from Kozlov, a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Party, that 'either the Albanians will accept peaceful co-existence or an atom bomb from the imperialists will turn Albania into a heap of ashes and leave no Albanian alive'....

The basic political question on which Khrushchev's attempt to diverse the whole line of the Soviet Communist Party depended was whether or not class conflict had ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. Lenin always took an absolutely unequivocal stand on this issue, holding that during the entire historical period separating capitalism from the classless society of communism, that is the period designated as socialism, class conflict did continue and therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat remained a political necessity for the development of a socialist society. Indeed, after the assumption of state power by the working class, bourgeois elements would struggle even harder to re-establish themselves...

Furthermore, if class conflict had ceased to exist, the Party and state instead of being the political and governmental expressions of the dictatorship of the proletariat could be designed by Khrushchev as the Party and State of the 'whole people'. But in this formation he departed altogether from anything remotely resembling Marxism. The Marxist view developed by Lenin in such works as 'State and Revolution' ... was that the state always represented the interests of a particular class in a society in which there was still class conflict. Neither the state nor the communist party was above class struggle and they would cease to exist when classes ceased to exist, in 'the withering away of the state' which Marx had only predicated of the classless society of full communism. Therefore a party or a state of the 'whole people' was nonsense from a Marxist point of view; Stalin, in his last theoretical work, 'Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR', which attacked revisionist ideas in precisely the same terms the Chinese and Albanians were to use in the polemics following the 20th Congress, specifically criticised the 'state of the whole people' concept as an anti-Marxist attempt to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In fact, the denial of any further need for the leadership of the working class in a situation where other classes still existed merely prepared the way for those anti-working class elements to recapture political power and begin diverting the Soviet Union from a socialist course. That this was the intention of Khrushchev and the revisionist clique around him became apparent in the economic changes which accompanied these political manoeuvres The decentralisation of the economy was not a loosening of control from the centre but a change from control by organs responsible to the working people like the state and Party to control by experts, managers and bureaucrats. With this change went a shift in motivation from the socialist incentives of putting collective above personal interests to material incentives no different from those characteristic of capitalist society. The so-called economic liberalisation was simply a move from socialism to state capitalism and, as such, was naturally hailed as a break-through by bourgeois economists everywhere... But it was never intended that such a restoration would threaten the position of the revisionist party hacks and state officials who had brought it about - hence the continuing conflict between bourgeois writers and artists in the Soviet Union demanding the freedom of expression they might have expected in a bourgeois democratic society and the Soviet state apparatus with the same bourgeois values who were prepared to welcome works attacking Stalin and the dictatorship of the proletariat but were not prepared to countenance those criticizing themselves and the bureaucratic dictatorship they had imposed."
(William Ash. Pickaxe and Rifle: The Story of the Albanian People. London: Howard Baker Press Ltd. 1974. pp. 183-187.)