A question about leftist ideology and revisionism

[Comrade Chernov]

What's the big deal about revisionism?

Seriously. There's a reason that political theory is called political theory. Theories are ideas that aren't proven. Theories adapt and change over time. Capitalism's original form would be ripped to shreds by protests and revolutions and whatnot, should it ever surface in the western world again (it likely does still exist in the third world, but the western liberal media doesn't focus on that so long as they're paid to keep their mouths shut).

Capitalism adapted to various revolutions by abolishing child labor, cutting work hours, and (slightly) raising pay for their workers. Capitalism's core ideology - making a profit based on the exploitation of the labor of others - is working. It's not supposed to make everything great for everyone, it's supposed to make everything great for a few and keep the rest complacent in their disapproval, and it's doing exactly that. But it's only been able to accomplish this goal through three centuries of revision and modification.

So why do Communists and Socialists adhere to the Communist Manifesto as if it were the holy fucking bible or something? We've learned the mistakes that can easily be made in the midst of revolutions, though so many of us seem dead set on the idea that revisionism is evil and that the Manifesto of 1848 is applicable in the 21st century, when conditions are wholly different. (Still bad, but different.)

Communism and Socialism are theories. They need to be able to change and adapt to circumstances, not only changes through time, but also changes in culture, geography, etc. So why is revisionism so frequently demonized? Why are we so dead-set on trying the same methods that have been discontinued almost immediately after the various revolutions in favor of methods that were actually effective for the circumstances?

I realize I'm still relatively young, and as such, likely have much to learn; I'm not trying to challenge the movement in any way. I genuinely want the movement to be successful, but to be successful the movement needs to adapt, in my own personal opinion. This is a website where we can discuss these things, as comrades, in a civilized manner. So, in your opinions, what's wrong with revisionism?

[reb]

Most people who go on about revisionism are those who support some state-capitalist country and call it "socialist". They need to use this as an excuse because their conception of marxism is completely turn upon it's head to the point that it's just rhetoric masking their idealism. It basically boils down to everything Stalin said and did was right even the times when he wasn't and when he contradicts himself and if you disagree with that then you're a revisionist. It's basically nothing to do with marxism, more of a failure in them understanding marxism.

On the other hand, Marx's critique of capital still holds and his understanding of it is still valid. Sure, whatever tactical material, that he rarely gave out, is out of date such as working with parliament or trade unions, etc. Even a lot of his positions regarding history can be challenged and the relation of states to each other. I don't think people take the ten planks of the manifesto seriously these days and if they do then they're a fucking idiot.

[hashem]

socialism is not a theory. its a science. that is why its called scientific socialism. like every other scientific field, it enjoys evolution. basis of it is proletarian interests which is expressed in a scientific method. but revisionists try to include non scientific or non proletarian theories in it, thus ruining its scientific and proletarian nature.

[helot]

socialism is not a theory. its a science. that is why its called scientific socialism. like every other scientific field, it enjoys evolution. basis of it is proletarian interests which is expressed in a scientific method. but revisionists try to include non scientific or non proletarian theories in it, thus ruining its scientific and proletarian nature.

except science is filled with theories.

also, socialism is a non-existing mode of production not a science.




As for revisionism i suppose it's entirely dependent on what we're discussing with the word "revisionism". If your revolutionary theory is stuck in the 19th century you're doing it wrong. We should be updating our theories with the emergence of new data. In this sense we should be revising our theories.

The usual use of the term on here is a pejorative one based on abandoning core Marxist principles such as the self-emancipation of the working class, internationalism etc.

[Comrade Chernov]

Another question:

If the goal of Marxism is Internationalism and global revolution, why are Trotskyists ripped on so much?

That is a Trotskyist core value, right?

[reb]

socialism is not a theory. its a science. that is why its called scientific socialism. like every other scientific field, it enjoys evolution. basis of it is proletarian interests which is expressed in a scientific method. but revisionists try to include non scientific or non proletarian theories in it, thus ruining its scientific and proletarian nature.

It's called "scientific" in opposition to utopian socialism and nothing more.

[Tim Redd]

It is a common misperception to think that because a scientific theory such as the theory of relativity is called a theory that it hasn't been proven. Actually in the scientific realm the dichotomy is between a hypothesis and a theory. It is a hypothesis that is tentative and unproven and it is a theory which in fact is proven.

[Red Shaker]

Marxism is the science of class struggle. It is constantly changing and advancing as we learn more about the revolutionary process. Revisionism is when Marxism ceases to be a science and loses its revolutionary core. It originally was used by Lenin to describe the ideas of Bernstein and the German Social Democratic Party.

[Comrade #138672]

I think you call it revisionism when Marxism is being adapted to fit bourgeois ideology, which is precisely what is wrong with it.

[Misericordia]

Theories are ideas that aren't proven
Apparently, evolution, natural selection, general relatively and gravity are all unproven then?

Your whole premise is based on an elementary misunderstanding. A hypothesis is not proven; a theory is by definition something that has been proven.

[Dodo]

It is not about taking the manifesto as a bible. Taking anything as bible is anti-Marxist.

The revisionism is like a toy in the hands of "Marxist" groups to disregard other "Marxists" in their chase of certain policies.

IMO you should not be worried about revisionism as long as you stick to the fact that classes need to be abolished to start solving major problems in our social structures. And our methodology shows us that this can only happen through revolutionary change of production relations as reformation is unable to remove the core contradictionary principles of the class society.
The rest that goes around is interpretations that I do not really care much about...and of course when it comes to practice, politics everyone gets divided over zillions of things.

Like the poster above said, when Marxist methodology adapts to bourgouise world/theories and works its way through their framework, or the tools of the "old world-e.g state capitalism" it misses the whole point of putting the future into the hands of the oppressed, and is doomed to failure.

Nothing is sacred to Marxists and you should not accept any doctrine dogmatically. Marxists only put the future in the hands of the oppressed working class and that progress can be achieived through their revolutioanry action against the system.

[Comrade Chernov]

Apparently, evolution, natural selection, general relatively and gravity are all unproven then?

Your whole premise is based on an elementary misunderstanding. A hypothesis is not proven; a theory is by definition something that has been proven.

I could have sworn a theory was an idea that explained something, but was not necessarily true/proven. It's been a couple years since we discussed this in my science classes. :P

[IBleedRed]

Whatever your thoughts on the Soviet Union or other nominally socialist states might be, the fact of the matter is that the USSR was an attempt at constructing socialism. To completely ignore its history and brush it off with a "that wasn't real socialism" would be to ignore a goldmine of historical information that might be very informative in the future. The Soviet Union was the first major attempt at socialism. It failed. But WHY? What did it do right? What did it do wrong? We need to ask and answer these questions. In fact, that the Soviet Union failed is not an indication that socialism is an impossible dream, but an indication the Tzarist Russia might not have been ready at that time in history for such a revolution. I still contend, however, that whatever its faults, the USSR was vastly superior to what came before (Imperial Russia)

[Comrade Chernov]

It did almost everything wrong. I'm not a fan of discussing the Soviet Union, because it attempted to be socialist, but it ended up being merely a populist, imperialist, bureaucracy-ridden "republic" that fostered nationalism and hatred towards outsiders. The Russian Communist Party doesn't genuinely believe in Communism, it believes in Russia being strong and unchallenged in world politics again.

I'm not going to speak kindly of a xenophobic, racist, imperialist, authoritarian government that denied rights to millions of its own citizens for the sole purpose of attempting to construct socialism.

[Red Shaker]

Marxism is a theory of revolution. Its a theory that has developed over the last 150 years as our experiences of building revolutionary movements has grown. Like any science, more experience deepens our understanding of the science. Revisionism develops when you abandon the revolutionary core of Marxism. Think about evolutionary theory. Darwin developed the idea. Others have improved on it as we learned more about genetics and discovered a better fossil record. But along the way some abandoned scientific inquiry got into the pseudo-sciences of Social Darwinism and Creationism. I would call this revisionism.

[IBleedRed]

It did almost everything wrong. I'm not a fan of discussing the Soviet Union, because it attempted to be socialist, but it ended up being merely a populist, imperialist, bureaucracy-ridden "republic" that fostered nationalism and hatred towards outsiders. The Russian Communist Party doesn't genuinely believe in Communism, it believes in Russia being strong and unchallenged in world politics again.

I'm not going to speak kindly of a xenophobic, racist, imperialist, authoritarian government that denied rights to millions of its own citizens for the sole purpose of attempting to construct socialism.
Where did I ask you to speak kindly of it? No offense, but your "analysis" of the Soviet Union reeks of naivete. Granted, many of the things you said are true, but as scientific socialists, our attention needs to be on the matter of why the attempted experiment turned out that way. In other words, what were the conditions that led to these developments?

To not at all examine the Soviet Union's historical record would be silly. It has never been true that we need to agree with something or some society in order to study it, so why should we be hesitant in examining, precisely, the Soviet experiment?

[Sabot Cat]

It did almost everything wrong. I'm not a fan of discussing the Soviet Union, because it attempted to be socialist, but it ended up being merely a populist, imperialist, bureaucracy-ridden "republic" that fostered nationalism and hatred towards outsiders. The Russian Communist Party doesn't genuinely believe in Communism, it believes in Russia being strong and unchallenged in world politics again.

I'm not going to speak kindly of a xenophobic, racist, imperialist, authoritarian government that denied rights to millions of its own citizens for the sole purpose of attempting to construct socialism.

This isn't to mention the legacy of the Soviet Union, which is primarily embodied in how it corrupted Marxism and all socialist theory through the appropriation of its terminology and symbology, inspiring other state capitalists to follow suit while making "Communism" equivalent to authoritarianism and exploitation from an unaccountable bureaucratic class, at least in the minds of many members of the proletariat who might've become class conscious if not for them.

[BrosephStalin]

I saw this explanation of Revisionism by a redditor and freind of mine named "bradleyvlr" on a subreddit called "debate communism". I thought his expanation was pretty good and with his permission i decided to post it here as an intruduction of sorts to, what we marxist-leninist call revisionism, as i dont think the other comments are giving you an accurate discription of what can be called revisionism.


"Revisionism is essentially changing a fundamental aspect of the theory, in this sense Dialectical Materialism.
Theoretical development is leaving the fundamental theory in tact and using the tools of the theory to prove further aspects of the theory.
I'm working on a senior project in Mathematics, so I will use this analogy. In algebra, we take basic assumptions about numbers. Let w, x, y, and z be numbers. We know that w=w by assuming the reflexive axiom, and we know that if w=x, then x=w by assuming the symmetric axiom. And we know that if w=x and y=z, then w+y=x+z by assuming the additive axiom, and we have a similar multiplicative axiom. We can use these combined with a language of formal logic to prove a whole number of things. We can theoretically develop algebra to show that there are infinitely many numbers, that there are different levels of infinity, and so on.
In the math analogy, theoretical development would be using the axioms and existing theorems to prove something like the distributive property, that is x(y+z)=xy+xz. Revisionism, in algebra, however, would be denying the multiplicative axiom, or adding a new axiom to construct an altogether different theory of algebra.
To relate this to Marxism, that is the theory stemming from the method of Dialectical Materialism. Vladimir Lenin developed the theory by using the Dialectical Method to establish the theory of Imperialism as a new, higher stage of capitalism. Nothing fundamental was changed in the method, the existing tools were used to develop the theory.
Eduard Bernstein, however, revised the theory to take out the idea of punctuated equilibrium. He removed, essentially, the dialectic from the theory of transitioning from capitalism to socialism and produced the general theory of reformism. This is different from Lenin's development of theory because it changed fundamental aspects of the theory to build a whole new theory.
A non-Leninist Marxism would have to identify what their development of Marxist theory is different from that of Leninism.
Taking the theory of Imperialism first, Lenin wrote a book called "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" in which he shows with many statistics the trend for advanced capitalist countries to move from the exportation of goods to the exportation of capital. A Marxist who does not want to be a revisionist but still wants to deny Imperialism would have to use the Dialectical method to show that the process of outsourcing manufacturing in an attempt to expand surplus value is not an inherent function of the advanced development of capitalism.
Now a revisionist, in my opinion, who wants to reject the theory of Imperialism would read Marx's Capital and say, "well Marx never mentioned this form of imperialism so it can't exist." This denies the possibility of capitalism developing in a systemic way, which I think is contrary to the philosophy of dialectics.
Now the reason Marx could not develop a theory of Imperialism is because in many ways, it did not exist yet. There were empires, but they largely were political and just extracted raw materials from colonies. It was not until the end of the 19th century that imperialist capital became the dominant economic force."

[Remus Bleys]

this is a relevant add i think
http://www.international-communist-party.org/BasicTexts/English/52HistIn.htm

It basically asserts that when Bordigists say that marxism is historical, they mean the core aspects of it are as invariant as capitalism itself, and view revisionism, (trotskyism, reformism, stalinism etc) as simply bourgeois tactics to destroy the revolutionary aspect of marxism, and thus should be opposed.

[Comrade Chernov]

Capitalism has changed over time, though. Why should leftist ideologies not follow suit?

[Remus Bleys]

Capitalism has changed over time, though. Why should leftist ideologies not follow suit?
yes and that is a danger that invariance seems to provoke. However, many of the basic features of capitalism are invariant, are a fundamental aspect to capitalism, and thus, marxism should not change because it wouldn't reflect any actual changes.
Invariance, as used by the Bordigists, doesn't mean everything Marx said was right and should be carried on to this day.
It is simply an acknowledgement that core features, in fact most features, of capitalism do not change, and thus marxism should not.
edit: of course this view is taken to the extreme several times whereby they forget that marxism itself was a product of "material conditions"

[Logical seal]

Another question:

If the goal of Marxism is Internationalism and global revolution, why are Trotskyists ripped on so much?

That is a Trotskyist core value, right?


soviet union man, soviet union.


The horrific past of that fake-and-not-socialist nations ridicliuous *colarbation with facists revisionism* bullshit is still in the heads of most marxists

[Remus Bleys]

soviet union man, soviet union.


The horrific past of that fake-and-not-socialist nations ridicliuous *colarbation with facists revisionism* bullshit is still in the heads of most marxists
Im sorry what?
What?
What?
I seriously don't understand any of this post.

[BrosephStalin]

Capitalism has changed over time, though. Why should leftist ideologies not follow suit?
You have to understand comrade that their is a big difference between advancing theory and revising it.

[blake 3:17]

"Revisionism is essentially changing a fundamental aspect of the theory, in this sense Dialectical Materialism.
Theoretical development is leaving the fundamental theory in tact and using the tools of the theory to prove further aspects of the theory.
I'm working on a senior project in Mathematics, so I will use this analogy. In algebra, we take basic assumptions about numbers. Let w, x, y, and z be numbers. We know that w=w by assuming the reflexive axiom, and we know that if w=x, then x=w by assuming the symmetric axiom. And we know that if w=x and y=z, then w+y=x+z by assuming the additive axiom, and we have a similar multiplicative axiom. We can use these combined with a language of formal logic to prove a whole number of things. We can theoretically develop algebra to show that there are infinitely many numbers, that there are different levels of infinity, and so on.
In the math analogy, theoretical development would be using the axioms and existing theorems to prove something like the distributive property, that is x(y+z)=xy+xz. Revisionism, in algebra, however, would be denying the multiplicative axiom, or adding a new axiom to construct an altogether different theory of algebra.
To relate this to Marxism, that is the theory stemming from the method of Dialectical Materialism. Vladimir Lenin developed the theory by using the Dialectical Method to establish the theory of Imperialism as a new, higher stage of capitalism. Nothing fundamental was changed in the method, the existing tools were used to develop the theory.
Eduard Bernstein, however, revised the theory to take out the idea of punctuated equilibrium. He removed, essentially, the dialectic from the theory of transitioning from capitalism to socialism and produced the general theory of reformism. This is different from Lenin's development of theory because it changed fundamental aspects of the theory to build a whole new theory.
A non-Leninist Marxism would have to identify what their development of Marxist theory is different from that of Leninism.
Taking the theory of Imperialism first, Lenin wrote a book called "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" in which he shows with many statistics the trend for advanced capitalist countries to move from the exportation of goods to the exportation of capital. A Marxist who does not want to be a revisionist but still wants to deny Imperialism would have to use the Dialectical method to show that the process of outsourcing manufacturing in an attempt to expand surplus value is not an inherent function of the advanced development of capitalism.
Now a revisionist, in my opinion, who wants to reject the theory of Imperialism would read Marx's Capital and say, "well Marx never mentioned this form of imperialism so it can't exist." This denies the possibility of capitalism developing in a systemic way, which I think is contrary to the philosophy of dialectics.
Now the reason Marx could not develop a theory of Imperialism is because in many ways, it did not exist yet. There were empires, but they largely were political and just extracted raw materials from colonies. It was not until the end of the 19th century that imperialist capital became the dominant economic force."

Of course!

And folks wonder why I've stopped identifying as a Marxist... Goofy commie anarchist hiphop head is fine by me.

Was having some laughs with a friend who studied under an Althusserian -- Where does the base end and superstructure start??!!? 82%! or 17%! or 50%!

[Glitchcraft]

Capitalism has changed over time, though. Why should leftist ideologies not follow suit?
I do not think Capitalism has really changed. Class relations are the same as 100 years ago. The use and effect of imperialism is still the same. New technology has not changed the role of the state or class relations in this world.

So how has capitalism changed in a way that Marxist theory (in general) hasn't followed suit?

There are different schools of Marxist thought it's not a unified theoretical community. The state capitalism theory and the degenerated workers state are both theories that evolved out marxism. The deformed workers state theory was developed by the 4th international after WW2 and Trotskys assassination.

Revolutionary Integration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_integrationism#Origins) is an example of the evolution of Marxist theory.
There are lot's of examples. But for the most part the conditions now are the same as they were a hundred years ago. We don't really need a bunch of new theories for the same old problems, what we really need is scientific examination of current events with a Marxist perspective.


Another question:

If the goal of Marxism is Internationalism and global revolution, why are Trotskyists ripped on so much?

That is a Trotskyist core value, right?

I've mostly heard the revisionist argument against Trotskyists from Stalinists. The MLs claim the USSR was %100 socialism and Trotskys DWS theory says it was socialism that had degenerated. The revision is that the USSR was not %100 perfect. How can Stalin explain Troskys assessment and criticism that things had gone horribly wrong in the USSR if Trotsky isn't revising Marx? The expulsion of the Left opposition by Stalin had to be justified.

I mean think about this
ML groups say : USSR %100 awesome perfect socialism
State Capitalist/Anarchist groups say : USSR %100 evil, all bad, should be destroyed
Trotskyists say : USSR was good for a while but then developed sever problems (for a lot of reasons) but still had made a lot of gains worth defending. As bad as it was it was better than capitalism.

Only one of these arguments sounds remotely reasonable to me.
Esp since Trots go on to say what is needed is a political overthrow of the Stalinist regimes and instate a workers democracy, get rid of the government but keep the class relations. Abolish the bureaucracy and insert democratic control over the planned economy.
I've never heard a reasonable rejection of this analysis. But I believe the majority of the posters here are of the %100 bad camp.

[Comrade Chernov]

I do not think Capitalism has really changed. Class relations are the same as 100 years ago. The use and effect of imperialism is still the same. New technology has not changed the role of the state or class relations in this world.

So how has capitalism changed in a way that Marxist theory (in general) hasn't followed suit?

Capitalism has taken actions to make it more appealing with the working class. Paid vacations, shortened work hours, a minimum wage, and making some basic attempts at communication with unions.

Marxism-Leninism is...well...Marxism-Leninism. Its most recent additions were a century ago, under Lenin. Communist party hardliners are Marxist-Leninists, and from what I've noticed, Marxist-Leninist political parties tend to take even the slightest opposition to Marxism-Leninism as revisionist anti-communist bourgeois counter-revolution, or something like that.