Revisionism (Marxism)

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Social democracy
Precursors Age of Enlightenment Classical liberalism Utopian socialism Trade unionism Revolutions of 1848 Orthodox Marxism
Development Revisionism Reformism Gradualism Frankfurt Declaration
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Leaders Social Democrats · Clement Attlee · Eduard Bernstein · Léon Blum · Hjalmar Branting · Ignacy Daszyński · Tommy Douglas · Friedrich Ebert · Michael Joseph Savage · Bülent Ecevit · Jean Jaurès · Karl Kautsky · Ferdinand Lassalle  · Georgi Plekhanov · John Curtin ·
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Within the Marxist movement, the word revisionism is used to refer to various ideas, principles and theories that are based on a significant revision of fundamental Marxist premises.^[1] The term is most often used by those Marxists who believe that such revisions are unwarranted and represent a "watering down" or abandonment of Marxism. As such, revisionism often carries pejorative connotations. Few Marxists label themselves as revisionists. The opposing term and concept, even used among Marxists, is Marxist dogmatism.

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 social democrats 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 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.

• 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 and encouraged democratic reforms. Revisionism was one of the charges leveled at Titoists in a series of purges beginning in 1949 in Eastern Europe. After Stalin's death revisionism became briefly acceptable in Hungary during Imre Nagy's government (1953-1955) and in Poland during Władysław Gomułka's government, although neither Nagy nor Gomułka described themselves as revisionists.

• Following the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, many people, particularly intellectuals, resigned from western Communist parties in protest. They were sometimes accused of revisionism by "loyalist" Communists. E. P. Thompson's New Reasoner was an example of this revisionism. This movement eventually became known as the New Left.

• 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).

[edit] See also

• Anti-Revisionism

[edit] References