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Stand for Socialism against Modern Revisionism
Armando Liwanag - 14.09.2011 15:07
Revisionism is the systematic revision of and deviation from
Marxism, the basic revolutionary principles of the proletariat
laid down by Marx and Engels and further developed by the series
of thinkers and leaders in socialist revolution and construction.
The revisionists call themselves Marxists, even claim to make an
updated and creative application of Marxism but they do so
essentially to sugarcoat the bourgeois antiproletarian and
anti-Marxist ideas that they propagate.
The classical revisionists who dominated the Second International
in 1912 were in social-democratic parties that acted as tails to
bourgeois regimes and supported the war budgets of the capitalist
countries in Europe. They denied the revolutionary essence of
Marxism and the necessity of proletarian dictatorship, engaged in
bourgeois reformism and social pacifism and supported colonialism
and modern imperialism. Lenin stood firmly against the classical
revisionists, defended Marxism and led the Bolsheviks in
establishing the first socialist state in 1917.
The modern revisionists were in the ruling communist parties in
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They systematically revised
the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism by denying the
continuing existence of exploiting classes and class struggle and
the proletarian character of the party and the state in socialist
society. And they proceeded to destroy the proletarian party and
the socialist state from within. They masqueraded as communists
even as they gave up Marxist-Leninist principles. They attacked
Stalin in order to replace the principles of Lenin with the
discredited fallacies of his social democratic opponents and
claimed to make a "creative application" of Marxism-Leninism.
The total collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes
in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, has made it so much
easier than before for Marxist-Leninists to sum up the emergence
and development of socialism and the peaceful evolution of
socialism into capitalism through modern revisionism. It is
necessary to trace the entire historical trajectory and draw the
correct lessons in the face of the ceaseless efforts of the
detractors of Marxism-Leninism to sow ideological and political
confusion within the ranks of the revolutionary movement.
Among the most common lines of attack are the following:
"genuine" socialism never came into existence; if socialism ever
existed, it was afflicted with or distorted by the "curse" of
"Stalinism", which could never be exorcised by his anti-Stalin
successors and therefore Stalin was responsible even for the
anti-Stalin regimes after his death; and socialism existed up to
1989 or 1991 and was never overpowered by modern revisionism
before then or that modern revisionism never existed and it was
an irremediably "flawed" socialism that fell in 1989-1991.
There are, of course, continuities as well as discontinuities
from the Stalin to the post-Stalin periods. But social science
demands that a leader be held responsible mainly for the period
of his leadership. The main responsibility of Gorbachov for his
own period of leadership should not be shifted to Stalin just as
that of Marcos, for example, cannot be shifted to Quezon. It is
necessary to trace the continuities between the Stalin and the
post-Stalin regimes. And it is also necessary to recognize the
discontinuities, especially because the post-Stalin regimes were
anti-Stalin in character. In the face of the efforts of the
imperialists, the revisionists and the unremoulded petty
bourgeois to explain everything in anti-Stalin terms and to
condemn the essential principles and the entire lot of
Marxism-Leninism, there is a strong reason and necessity to
recognize the sharp differences between the Stalin and
post-Stalin regimes. The phenomenon of modern revisionism
deserves attention, if we are to explain the blatant restoration
of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship in 1989-91.
After his death, the positive achievements of Stalin (such as the
socialist construction, the defense of the Soviet Union, the high
rate of growth of the Soviet economy, the social guarantees,
etc.) continued for a considerable while. So were his errors
continued and exaggerated by his successors up to the point of
discontinuing socialism. We refer to the denial of the existence
and the resurgence of the exploiting classes and class struggle
in Soviet society; and the unhindered propagation of the
petty-bourgeois mode of thinking and the growth of the
bureaucratism of the monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie in command
of the great mass of petty-bourgeois bureaucrats.
From the Khrushchov period through the long Brezhnev period to
the Gorbachov period, the dominant revisionist idea was that the
working class had achieved its historic tasks and that it was
time for the Soviet leaders and experts in the state and ruling
party to depart from the proletarian stand. The ghost of Stalin
was blamed for bureaucratism and other ills. But in fact, the
modern revisionists promoted these on their own account and in
the interest of a growing bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The general
run of new intelligentsia and bureaucrats was petty
bourgeois-minded and provided the social base for the monopoly
bureaucrat bourgeoisie. In the face of the collapse of the
revisionist ruling parties and regimes, there is in fact cause
for the Party to celebrate the vindication of its
Marxist-Leninist, antirevisionist line. The correctness of this
line is confirmed by the total bankruptcy and collapse of the
revisionist ruling parties, especially the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, the chief disseminator of modern revisionism on a
world scale since 1956. It is clearly proven that the modern
revisionist line means the disguised restoration of capitalism
over a long period of time and ultimately leads to the
undisguised restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship.
The supraclass sloganeering of the petty bourgeoisie has been the
sugarcoating for the antiproletarian ideas of the big bourgeoisie
in the Soviet state and party.
In the Philippines, the political group that is most embarrassed,
discredited and orphaned by the collapse of the revisionist
ruling parties and regimes is that of the Lavas and their
successors. It is certainly not the Communist Party of the
Philippines, reestablished in 1968. But the imperialists, the
bourgeois mass media and c
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