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Anti-Revisionism

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In the Marxist movement, anti-revisionism refers to opposition to revisionism of Marxism. Anti-revisionists typically label reformist socialism, and also in the case of Marxism-Leninism label Trotskyism as unacceptable revisions of Marxism.

After years of direct experience with China that led him first to write the book Fanshen, author William Hinton then experienced Chinese economic reform and, with this experience, wrote an angry anti-revisionist book entitled The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China. Both books, as well as Hinton's work generally, still tend to have much resonance among many anti-revisionists in the communist movement today.

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[edit] Background

Αnti-revisionist caricature of 1976 by Albanian cartoonist Zef Bumçi depicting Nikita Khrushchev as a servant of capitalism

Self-proclaimed anti-revisionists firmly oppose the reforms initiated in Communist countries by leaders like Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and Deng Xiaoping in China. They generally refer to such reforms and states as state capitalist and social-imperialist. They also reject Trotskyism and its "Permanent Revolution" as hypocritical by arguing that Leon Trotsky himself had at one time thought it acceptable that socialism could work in a single country as long as that country was industrialized, but that Trotsky had considered Russia too backward to achieve such industrialization – what it later in fact did achieve, mostly through his archenemy Joseph Stalin's Five Year Plans. In their own right, anti-revisionists also acknowledge that the Soviet Union contained a "new class" or "'red' bourgeoisie," but they generally place the blame for the formation of that class on Khrushchev and his successors. Therefore, in anti-revisionist circles, there is very little talk of class conflict in the Soviet Union before 1956, except when talking about specific contexts such as the Russian Civil War (when some agents of the former feudal ruling class tried to retake state power from the Bolsheviks) and World War II (fought principally between communists and fascists, representing the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie respectively).

During the Sino-Soviet split, the governments of the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong and the People's Republic of Albania under Enver Hoxha proclaimed themselves to be taking an anti-revisionist line and denounced Khrushchev's policies in the Soviet Union. In the United States, those who supported China or Albania at the time were expelled from the United States Communist Party under orders from Moscow, and in 1961 they formed the Progressive Labor Movement and other "new communist movement" communist parties. A short time later, anti-revisionist groups were further divided by the Sino-Albanian split, with those following Albania being loosely described as Hoxhaist.

On the whole, the original 1960s-era anti-revisionists tended to take a careful, selective approach to the Cuban Revolution and the way it soon aligned itself with Soviet ideas and practice, criticizing the latter action, while simultaneously acknowledging some aspects of Cuban self-described socialism as genuinely revolutionary — in particular the writing and thinking of Che Guevara. Anti-revisionists also took a hopeful approach towards the Vietnamese communists, expressing confidence that they too were genuinely revolutionary-communist in their aspirations, and supported their struggle against the United States in the Vietnam War — a side which, ironically, got a lot of support from the Soviet Union, anti-revisionists' "state capitalist" enemy.

Several present-day communist parties worldwide still see themselves as explicitly anti-revisionist, but not every such party adhering to elements of anti-revisionism necessarily adopts the label "anti-revisionist". Many such organizations may call themselves Maoist, Marxist-Leninist or even just simply "revolutionary communist". Australian Greens Senator Elect Lee Rhiannon was an anti-revisionist, though very touchy about the subject.

The Workers Party of Korea still claims an anti-revisionist political line; however, this may not be an accurate label either in self-description or description by others, because of the official 'superseding' of Marxist-Leninist thought in North Korea by Juche, a heavily nationalist, militaristic ideology.

[edit] Anti-revisionist leaders

Those at a national level claiming an anti-revisionist orientation actually vary widely in their ideological perspectives from within communism. An amalgamated list of the more famous self-proclaimed anti-revisionist leaders:

[edit] Anti-revisionist groups

[edit] Historical anti-revisionist groups

[edit] External links

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