theories and
critical studies
__TITLE__ Right-Wing Revisionism Today __TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2009-06-03T12:30:16-0700 __TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW
Translated from the Russian by Jim Riordan
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First printing 1976
© Translation into English. Progress Publishers 1976 Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
10504-242 014(01)-76~^^71^^"^^75^^
CONTENTS
Page
Preface .....................
9
Chapter 1. Leninism and Right-Wing Revisionism.....
13
Historic Significance of Lenin's Fight Against Revisionism ...................
13
Right-Wing Revisionism Today...........
39
Anti-Communism and Right-Wing Revisionism.....
44
Chapter 2. New Stage in the Anti-Revisionist Struggle ....
55
Reasons for the Revisionist Resurgence........
56
Strategy and Tactics of Revisionism.........
65
The Present Stage of Anti-Revisionist Struggle.....
76
Part I
CRITIQUE OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
Chapter 3. Revisionist Falsification of Marxism-Leninism ...
87
The Conception of ``Open'' Marxism........
88
``Pluralism" of Marxism..............
92
Negation of Leninism...............
97
Chapter 4. Critique of the Revisionist Falsification of the MarxistLeninist Conception of Ideology and Social Cognition . . .
103
Revision of Marxism-Leninism under the Guise of Dispelling
Ideological Illusions..............• .
103
Revisionist Distortion of Class Interest and Social Cognition .....................
114
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
7
Chapter 12. Critique of Right-Wing Revisionist Conceptions of
the Socialist Economy...............
296
The Theory of Market Socialism...........
296
Bourgeois Sources of the "Market Socialism" Theory . . .
302
Chapter 13. Political and Economic Roots of Right-Wing Revisionism ...................
313
Chapter 14. Revisionist Falsification of the Class Structure of
Socialist Society.................
334
Social Structure and Social Relations in Socialist Society . .
336
Revisionist Notions of Socialist Social Structure.....
343
Chapter 15. Right-Wing Revisionism and the Socialist Political
System....................
351
Rejection of the Leading Role of the Party and the Idea of
Bourgeois Pluralism...............
351
Revisionist Theory and Practice of Weakening the State and
Dismantling the Socialist Political System.......
357
Chapter 16. Attempts To Disunite the Socialist Countries ....
365
Distortions of Socialist Internationalism.........
365
Revisionist Distortion of the Principle of Unity of National
and International Interests among Socialist Nations ....
370
Socialist Economic Integration and Its Revisionist Critics . .
375
Revisionist Speculation on Defence of National Sovereignty . .
382
Unity of Socialist States..............
385
Chapter 17. Right-Wing Revisionist Ideas on War and Peace . .
391
Chapter 18. Revisionism and Anti-Sovietism........
402
The Class Nature of Revisionism and Anti-Sovietism . . .
402
Revisionism Becomes Open Anti-Sovietism.......
406
Chapter 5. The Philosophical Basis of Right-Wing Revisionism .
135
``Materialism" Without Matter...........
138
``Dialectics" Without Materialism...........
156
Chapter 6. Fundamental Inadequacies of Revisionist Interpretation
of Socialism..................
163
Socialism and the Critical Essence of Dialectics......
163
Socialism and Antagonistic Contradictions........
167
Social Unity and Contradiction...........
172
Spontaneous Development and Conscious Activity ....
174
Social Contradiction and the State...........
178
Chapter 7. Revisionism and the Individual under Socialism.
Speculation in Regard to the Problem of ``Alienation'' ...
188
Part II
REVISIONIST NOTIONS OF THE STATE OF THE MODERN
WORLD AND THE TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM TO
SOCIALISM
Chapter 8. Critique of Revisionist Notions of the World
Today ,...................
201
Revision of Leninist Analysis of the World Today ....
203 Scientific and Technological Revolution and Social
Progress....................
206
Rejection of the Leading Role of the Working Class ....
220
Chapter 9. Revisionism and Socialist Revolution.......
233
Rejection of the Objective Basis for Socialist Revolution . .
233 The Main Criterion and Raison d'fitre of Socialist Revolution ....................
244
Ways of Implementing Socialist Revolution.......
250
Rejection of the Leading Role of the Marxist-Leninist Party
in Socialist Revolution..............
261
Chapter 10, The Ideological Similarity of Revisionism and the
Bourgeois Theories of Industrial Society and Stages of Growth
266
The Theory of Industrial Society..........
266
Ideological Similarity of Revisionism and the Bourgeois
Theory of Stages of Growth............
271
Part IV
CRITIQUE OF RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Chapter 19. Critique of the Methodological Principles of Revisionist Philosophy in Czechoslovakia..........415
Chapter 20. The Nature and Functions of Contemporary Philosophical Revisionism in Czechoslovakia.........429
Roots of Philosophical Revisionism..........429
Principal Features of Philosophical Revisionism in Czechoslovakia ...........,........433
Chapter 21. Critique of "Democratic Socialism" in Czechoslovakia 446
Chapter 22. Right-Wing Revisionism in Czechoslovakia and the
Political System of Socialism............ 463
Revisionism of Marxism-Leninism as a Scientific Basis for the
Part III
CRITIQUE OF REVISIONIST CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIALISM Chapter 11. The Revisionist Conception of "Models of Socialism" 287
Bankruptcy of Revisionist "Models of Socialism".....287
Pluralism of "Models of Socialism"..........291
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Socialist Political System .............466
Critique of the "New Model" of Socialist Political System in Czechoslovakia.................470
Chapter 23. Revisionist Right-Wing Opportunist Economic Ideas 485 Reasons for the Appearance of Revisionism and Opportunism
in Economic Theory and Practice...........485
Revisionist Distortion of the Plan as the Basic Instrument of
Balanced Management of Socialist Economy......491
Revisionist Interpretation of Socialist Ownership of the Means
of Production.................499
Revisionists on the Role of the Socialist Enterprise .... 504
Chapter 24. Attempts by Right-Wing Opportunists To Destroy the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as a Party of a Leninist
Type ....................511
The Need for a Revolutionary Workers' Party of a Leninist
Type.....................511
Pluralism as a Programme for Abolishing the Leninist Party 515
Opportunists and Ideology.............524
Leninist Principles of Party Organisation.......529
Chapter 25. Failure of Revisionist Assault on Socialist Internationalist Principles .......,........538
The present book, written by a group of Soviet and Czechoslovak authors, is primarily intended as a critical analysis and expose of the anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist nature of contemporary Right-wing revisionist ideas that are inimical to the interests of the working class, world socialism and the international communist movement.
The idea of the need for such a book arose during the political crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The events of that period utterly exposed the political nature of Rightwing revisionism and opportunism as allies of imperialist forces; they also revealed the great danger of Right-wing revisionism when it is not properly repulsed.
The International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, held in Moscow in 1969, had as its main theme the struggle against Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism and against opportunism of all brands. This Meeting made an important contribution to further strengthening the ideological unity of fraternal parties on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
Present-day revisionism continues to be an international phenomenon; it finds a fertile soil wherever intermediate sections of the population stand alongside the working class, where the consciousness of the working class, the common people and Communists is under pressure from hostile bourgeois ideology. Revisionism strikes when the working people drop their guard and relax their fight against it. Although differences exist in the views of Roger Garaudy, Ota Sik,
10PREFACE
PREFACE
11Teodoro Petkoff and other revisionists, they relate to secondary issues and not the principal problems of the day. As an ideological trend, revisionism is a system of kindred views, alien to Marxism-Leninism, on the fundamental problems of the international working-class movement and the construction of socialism and communism. The authors of this book included in their critical analysis the most essential aspects of present-day Right-wing revisionism which lead to a betrayal of the working-class cause, to opportunism and to renegade actions. They thereby criticise both revisionist ideas and their argumentation.
Revisionism is by no means novel to the history of the world working-class movement. Marxism-Leninism has had to deal firmly with numerous versions of revisionism and opportunism since the end of the 1890s. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, made an enormous contribution to this fight. His works are a classic model of Marxist scientific criticism of ideas and theories hostile to the working class; they remain a powerful weapon in the hands of Communists in their contention with Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism and all manner of opportunism.
Contemporary Right-wing revisionist ideas and theories have inherited the worst aspects of Bernsteinism, the reformist ideology of Right-wing socialism and the most reactionary old and new bourgeois concepts and theories. Guided by the Leninist method of combating ideological opponents of Marxism, the authors of this book have tried to show both the class and ideological sources of revisionist concepts, their theoretical and logical contradictions and falseness, and the practical damage they can cause, as evidenced by historical facts and the revolutionary experience of class struggle, by the experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, by the building of socialism and communism in the USSR and elsewhere.
Contemporary revisionism uses all the means at its disposal, including support from bourgeois ``experts'' on Marxism, to gain public recognition as a variety of Marxism in
order to perform its main function of disorientating and disuniting the international working class. The authors of this book have drawn attention to the Leninist idea of the integral nature of Marxism both in its historical development and in the structural unity and dialectical relationship of all its component parts.
Experience has shown that the revisionists' attempts to speculate on their adherence to Marxism and to mask their anti-Marxist nature by Marxist phraseology are inevitably doomed to failure. Communists expose revisionists and exclude them from their ranks. This has been the fate of latter-day Right-wing revisionist ideologists like Garaudy, Sik and Ernst Fischer. Nevertheless, a criticism of their ideas retains its relevance and importance. It is a weapon that Communists use in the fight for the purity of MarxistLeninist theory and a stronger unity and solidarity of all Communist and Workers' parties.
The authors have relied on the main theoretical and political documents of Communist and Workers' parties. These include material from the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in 1969, the subsequent regional meetings, the communist conferences and seminars on theory. Documents of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and other recent congresses of fraternal parties have served as an important guide in evaluating the various revisionist ideas and a source of rational argument in criticising revisionist views. These Party documents creatively develop Marxist-Leninist theory. As Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, has said: "The successes of communist construction depend in many ways on the development of Marxist-Leninist theory, which is our unerring scientific compass. The decisions of the congresses and plenary meetings of the CC of our Party and major Party documents are a model of the creative development of Marxism-Leninism. But the very character of the tasks confronting us demands
12PREFACE
CHAPTER 1
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
an increasingly active elaboration of the theoretical problems of social development and a creative approach to all the phenomena of life."* The fight against revisionists cannot be successful without development of such theory.
Revisionism today is very much a product of the growth in nationalism fanned by the elaborate propaganda apparatus of bourgeois states. At the same time, revisionist concepts create a fertile soil for nationalist sentiments and views that are alien to proletarian, socialist ideology. In criticising revisionism and its sources, the authors of this book take a Leninist approach in interpreting the principles of proletarian internationalism that underlie the documents of the world communist movement intended further to consolidate the unity of the socialist community, the international working
class and all anti-imperialist forces.
# # *
The First through Eighteenth chapters have been written by Soviet authors, and the Nineteenth through TwentyFifth chapters by Czechoslovak authors: Y. D. Modrzhinskaya (Chapter 1), V. V. Midtsev (Chapter 2), S. I. Popov (Chapter 3), M. K. Igitkhanyan (Chapter 4), I . D. Zagoryanov (Chapter 5), M. B. Savelyev (Chapter 6), V. S. Bobrovsky (Chapter 7), Y. D. Modrzhinskaya, L. S. Yeremenko and V. S. Yeremenko (Chapter 8), G. A. Davydova and V. A. Nikitin (Chapter 9), G. P. Davidyuk and V. I. Bovsh (Chapter 10), Ye. P. Sitkovsky (Chapter 11), Editorial Board, on the basis of the material supplied by Yu. Ya. Olsevich et al. (Chapter 12), R. I. Kosolapov (Chapter 13), A. A. Amvrosov and A. P. Sertsova (Chapter 14), B. S. Mankovsky (Chapter 15), F. T. Konstantinov and A. P. Sertsova (Chapter 16), N. A. Ponomaryov (Chapter 17), G. D. Karpov (Chapter 18), V. Rural (Chapter 19), A. K. Netopilik (Chapter 20), L. Hrzal (Chapter 21), J. Matejcik (Chapter 22), M. Fremer and F. Kolacek (Chapter 23), F. Havlicek (Chapter 24), and J. Kvasnicka (Chapter 25).
* L. I. Brezhnev, The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Moscow, 1972, pp. 80, 81.
HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF LENIN'S FIGHT AGAINST REVISIONISM
Throughout his life, Lenin resolutely fought various opportunist trends. This struggle continued, in the new historical setting, the traditions of Marx and Engels who had created and defended their philosophy in sharp clashes with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas.
Lenin's long experience of opposing Right- and ``Left''- wing revisionism in Russia and abroad still retains its historic significance. Furthermore, a profound study of that experience can equip Communists of all countries with a powerful means of mounting an offensive against the various types of revisionism and opportunism today.
A variety of unscientific schools first attacked Marxism without any pretensions of being Marxists themselves; they were, therefore, not revisionists. As Lenin himself noted, Marxism was created (1844-1848) in a fight against various types of petty-bourgeois socialism and, for the first half century of its existence, continued to fight against theories which were radically antagonistic towards it.* The ideological opponents of Marxism masquerading under ``socialism'' existed until the appearance of revisionism---i.e., roughly until the 1890s. They included the Young Hegelians who professed a philosophical idealism; the Proudhonists---a petty-bourgeois school opposed to the class struggle, prole-
* See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 31-32; Vol. 21, p. 47.
RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
15tarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat; the Bakuninists---a petty-bourgeois anarchist and pseudorevolutionary movement; the Lassallians---a petty-bourgeois school which rejected proletarian revolution and the revolutionary potential of the peasants, and idealised the bourgeois state.
Marxist opposition to revisionism began after the exclusion from the labour movement of all these and other more or less integral trends wholly alien to Marxism, at a time when proponents of these trends began to seek other means for expression. Lenin wrote, "The forms and causes of the struggle changed, but the struggle continued. And the second half-century of the existence of Marxism began (in the nineties) with the struggle of a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism itself.""" Revisionism was just such a trend.
Lenin associates the appearance of revisionism with the name of Eduard Bernstein who wrote a number of articles for Die Neue Zeit, the organ of the German Social-- Democratic Party, in the period 1896 to 1898; in these articles he revised the philosophical, economic and political tenets of revolutionary Marxism.** Bernstein was backed up by opportunist elements of several parties in the Second International.
These views were 'initially supported in Russia by the "Legal Marxists"---the bourgeois economists P. Struve and S. Bulgakov. Lenin later remarked that as soon as the Russian Social Democracy became an organisation associated with the mass working-class movement (i.e., after 1894) it began to struggle against the petty-bourgeois, opportunist trends in Russia. Such trends included Economism (1894-- 1902) and Menshevism (1903-1908), which became both the ideological and the organisational continuation of Economist ideas. During the first Russian Revolution of 1905, the Mensheviks devised tactics that were objectively meant to
make the proletariat dependent on the liberal bourgeoisie, and expressed their own petty-bourgeois opportunist views. Later, in the period 1908-1914, Menshevism gave rise to Liquidationism, and the latter group became social-- chauvinist between 1914 and 1915.*
During and after Lenin's life, the Soviet Communist Party conducted a constant struggle against Trotskyism as a revisionist, opportunist, anti-Marxist, adventure-seeking, subversive trend which became, after Trotsky's expulsion from the Party, an out-and-out anti-Soviet, counter-- revolutionary group. The Party also had to deal firmly with Rightwing opportunists who expressed the ideology of the exploiting rich farmers (kulaks) and opposed the high rate of industrialisation, the collectivisation of agriculture and the elimination of the kulaks as a class.**
The CPSU upheld and implemented Lenin's plan for building socialism in the USSR in a fierce struggle with Trotskyists, Right-wing opportunists, national-deviationists and other antagonistic groups. The rich experience of the Soviet Communist Party and the world communist movement helps to expose and defeat opportunist trends of the present day.
In criticising present-day revisionism, Communists base themselves upon the definition by Lenin of the essence of revisionism, on Lenin's scientific analysis of the social and epistemological roots of revisionism and opportunism, and on the basic methods used by Lenin in criticising revisionism. These questions are of prime importance.
As soon as an anti-Marxist trend appeared among Social Democrats at the end of the last century, Lenin emphasised that it was an international revisionist and opportunist trend. He wrote, "the English Fabians, the French Ministerialists, the German Bernsteinians, and the Russian Critics---all
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 32. ** Ibid., pp. 32-38.
* See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 259. ** See Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Moscow, 1967, p. 12.
16RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
17belong to the same family, all extol each other, learn from each other, and together take up arms against `dogmatic' Marxism."*
In noting the international nature of revisionism and opportunism, Lenin also pointed out their national characteristics: "In one country the opportunists have long ago come out under a separate flag; in another, they have ignored theory and in fact pursued the policy of the Radicals-- Socialists; in a third, some members of the revolutionary party have deserted to the camp of opportunism and strive to achieve their aims, not in open struggle for principles and for new tactics, but by gradual, imperceptible, and, if one may so put it, unpunishable corruption of their party. . . .:rt'
By revisionism, Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class and which, under the guise of Marxism, actually carried out a revision of the fundamental tenets of Marxist theory, replacing the basic principles of that theory by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. He branded opportunism as a betrayal of the liberation of the working class, as a deal with the class enemy of the proletariat and a siding with the bourgeoisie in politics.
Under cover of Marxist terminology and a claim to be ``creatively'' developing Marxism, revisionists actually replace Marxism by views that are alien and inimical to it. As Lenin said, revisionists allegedly recognise certain principles of Marxism but, in practice, replace them with bourgeois notions.""^^11^^''*
Therefore, the class nature of revisionism is a replacement of Marxism by bourgeois ideas, even though the social roots of revisionist ideas are usually associated with the petty bourgeoisie. It is important for an analysis of the class essence of social trends, as Lenin emphasised, to "take as
our basis, not individuals or groups, but a class analysis of the content of social trends, and an ideological and political examination of their essential and main principles".*
On that basis, Lenin noted that revisionism swims with the tide of bourgeois ideology. What was Lenin's view of the ideological nature of revisionism?
In philosophy, according to Lenin, revisionism follows "in the wake of bourgeois professorial science".""* The major bourgeois philosophical trend under whose banner a revision of Marxism took place was then neo-Kantianism---a subjective-idealist philosophy alien to a scientific cognition of nature and society. Revisionists opposed both materialism and dialectics, replacing them, as Lenin said, "by simple (and tranquil) evolution".*** A renunciation of dialectical materialism actually led to a renunciation of the scientific justification for socialism.
In political economy, revisionists rejected "the fact of growing impoverishment, the process of proletarisation, and the intensification of capitalist contradictions",**** and "said that concentration and the ousting of small-scale production by large-scale production do not occur in agriculture at all, while they proceed very slowly in commerce and industry. It was said that crises had now become rarer and weaker, and that cartels and trusts would probably enable capital to eliminate them altogether".*****
In the early years of this century, Lenin wrote that reality had very quickly shown that crises had by no means come to an end: "The forms, the sequence, the picture of particular crises changed, but crises remained an inevitable component of the capitalist system."****** Cartels and trusts which had concentrated production into enormous firms had, at the same
*
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 154.
**
Ibid., Vol. 15, p. 33.
***
Ibid.
****
Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 353.
****
Ibid., Vol. 15, p. 34.
****
Ibid., p. 35.
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 352-53. ** Ibid., p. 360. *** Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 85, p. 16.
2---2332
18RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
19time, exacerbated class contradictions to an unprecedented degree.
In scientific communism and socio-political ideas, revisionism rejected the theory of the class struggle, the opposing nature of liberalism and socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, declaring that the very concept of the ultimate aim of the communist movement held no water.*
The fundamental concepts of the revisionists were bound up with the opportunist policy of collusion with and adaptation to capitalism. As Lenin put it, "The movement is everything, the ultimate aim is nothing---this catch-phrase of Bernstein's expresses the substance of revisionism better than many long disquisitions. To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment---such is the policy of revisionism."**
Lenin revealed the organic connection between theoretical revisionism and political opportunism. Revisionism, appearing in the early part of the century under the banner of "freedom of criticism", meant, in Lenin's words, "freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism".***
Lenin demonstrated that revisionism inevitably leads to opportunism and a renegade position; he showed that the followers of Bernstein had corrupted socialist consciousness, had vulgarised Marxism by preaching a theory of playing down social antagonisms, declaring absurd the idea of social
revolution and proletarian dictatorship, and confining the working-class movement and the class struggle to a narrow trade union approach and to a ``realistic'' fight for minor, gradual reforms/'"
At the same time, opportunist policy drew revisionist views in its wake and required a corresponding argument for its justification. The following passage from Lenin is worth quoting in full because it reveals this connection: "Social-Democracy must change from a party of social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms. Bernstein has surrounded this political demand with a whole battery of well-attuned `new' arguments and reasonings. Denied was the possibility of putting socialism on a scientific basis and of demonstrating its necessity and inevitability from the point of view of the materialist conception of history. Denied was the fact of growing impoverishment, the process of proletarisation, and the intensification of capitalist contradictions; the very concept, 'ultimate aim', was declared to be unsound, and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was completely rejected. Denied was the antithesis in principle between liberalism and socialism. Denied was the theory of the class struggle, on the alleged grounds that it could not be applied to a strictly democratic society governed according to the will of the majority, etc.
``Thus, the demand for a decisive turn from revolutionary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism was accompanied by a no less decisive turn towards bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. In view of the fact that this criticism of Marxism has long been directed from the political platform, from university chairs, in numerous pamphlets and in a series of learned treatises ... the 'new critical' trend .. . was transferred bodily from bourgeois to socialist literature."""*
It goes without saying that the link between revisionism and bourgeois ideology is masked in every possible way. In
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 353. ** Ibid., Vol. 15, p. 37. *** Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 355.
* Ibid., pp. 362-63. ** Ibid., pp. 353-54.
20RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
21the early part of the century, Lenin noted the trend towards an ever increasing subtle falsification of Marxism, an increasingly frantic attempt to pass off anti-materialist doctrines as Marxism in philosophy, economics and politics.
In his analysis of revisionism, Lenin pinpointed its two basic forms: "revisionism from the right" and "revisionism from the left". The latter, it is true, had not at that time developed as much as the former/^^1^^" After the October Revolution Lenin once more returned to the generalised characterisation of these two basic forms of revisionist, pettybourgeois vacillation, noting that each turn in history evoked a change in the form of these trends. He referred to these forms as petty-bourgeois reformism which was "servility to the bourgeoisie covered by a cloak of sentimental democratic and social-democratic phrases and fatuous wishes",** and petty bourgeois revolutionising.
The same basic forms of revisionism exist today, filled with content that corresponds to the present stage of the struggle. At the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in 1969, these forms were defined as Rightwing opportunism---signifying a move towards a liquidationist position, collusion with Social-Democrats in politics and ideology---and ``Left''-wing opportunism which urges the masses to venturesome action and pushes the party onto a sectarian path under the guise of ultra-revolutionary phrases. In spite of their differences, both these varieties of revisionist opportunism ultimately lead to similarly harmful consequences. Objectively, they are both agreed on a policy of nationalism and anti-Sovietism. This is confirmed by the frank interest of imperialism in promoting both forms of revisionist opportunist trends.
In this connection, it is worth noting Lenin's definition of opportunism; he underlined that "the fundamental class significance of opportunism---or, in other words, its social-
economic content---lies in certain elements of present-day democracy having gone over (in fact, though perhaps unconsciously) to the bourgeoisie, on a number of individual issues"."'
Thus, by contrast with revisionism, which revises Marxist-Leninist theory, opportunism is a policy alien to Marxism-Leninism, a policy which subordinates the interests of the working class and all working people to the interests of the bourgeoisie. In many of his works, Lenin emphasised that opportunists were, in fact, the allies and the agents of the bourgeoisie.""*
It is characteristic of opportunism that it tries to conceal, gloss over its de facto assistance to the bourgeoisie. This is another feature of opportunist policy which it shares with revisionism. Revisionism covers itself with the flag of Marxism, while opportunism covers itself with demagogic hypocrisy, equivocal phrases, retreat from clarity and principled position. Lenin wrote: "When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a characteristic feature of present-day opportunism in every sphere, namely, its vagueness, amorphousness, elusiveness. An opportunist, by his very nature, will always evade taking a clear and decisive stand, he will always seek a middle course, he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually exclusive points of view."*'^^1^^"*
In the last decade of the 19th century and in the first two decades of this century---i.e., at a time when Lenin wrote his works on revisionism and opportunism, the opportunists among Social-Democrats were simultaneously revisionists, in so far as they were revising Marxism while operating under the banner of Marxism.
Two brands of opportunism exist today: first, opportunist trends of a Right- and ``Left''-wing persuasion within individual Communist parties; and second, an opportunist
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 153-54. ** Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 120. *** Ibid., Vol. 7, p. 404.
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 38. ** Ibid., Vol. 33, p. 21.
22RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
23trend within present-day Social-Democratic parties which has been called social reformism. The latter trend, while remaining opportunist, is no longer literally revisionist, in so far as it does not operate under a Marxist label.
The CPSU Programme, adopted in 1961, stated that "the Right Wing of Social-Democracy has completely broken with Marxism and contraposed so-called democratic socialism to scientific socialism. Its adherents deny the existence of antagonistic classes and the class struggle in bourgeois society; they forcefully deny the necessity of the proletarian revolution and oppose the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. They assert that capitalism is being `transformed' into socialism.
``The Right-wing Socialists began by advocating social reforms in place of the socialist revolution and went as far as to defend state-monopoly capitalism. In the past they impressed on the minds of the proletariat that their differences with revolutionary Marxism bore not so much on the ultimate goal of the working-class movement as on the ways of achieving it. Now they openly renounce socialism. Formerly the Right-wing Socialists refused to recognise the class struggle to the point of recognising the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today they deny, not only the existence of the class struggle in bourgeois society, but also the very existence of antagonistic classes.
``Even when reformist parties come to power they limit themselves to partial reforms that do not affect the rule of the monopoly bourgeoisie."*
Right-wing Social-Democracy continues to be, as it was during Lenin's lifetime, a vehicle of bourgeois influence on the proletariat, helping the monopolies and the capitalist state to blunt the workers' struggle against the capitalist system and for socialism; it supports the foreign policy of imperialism and conducts an anti-communist campaign.
Present-day ideologists of social reformism have moved even further to the right by comparison with the early part of the century, rejecting Marxism both in words and in deeds. In the main programme-documents of the Socialist International and its parties, reformist ideologists reject Marxism and the traditional socialist demands of the working-class movement. Thus, speaking in May, 1968 in Trier, Julius Braunthal, former Secretary of the Socialist International and theoretician of Right-wing Social-Democracy, said: "Until the great historical turning-point of the First World War ... Marxism was the predominant ideology of the Second International." In regard to the post-- SecondWorld- War period, he said that "in the Socialist International ... reformism became the predominant ideology. Almost all its Member Parties had entered into government after the war, either governing alone, or sharing power in coalition with bourgeois parties.... The ideology which guided the policies of ... Social-Democrats was based on Reformism---the theory of a gradual development of the social order through the nationalisation of key industries, through a system of social planning and control of productivity ... and through a comprehensive system of social security. Therefore, in the European democracies, Marxism is no longer a really effective force as a theory of the proletarian class struggle and the social revolution.... But it is no longer the theory of Marxism---the theory of class warfare as a conscious struggle for a classless society---which inspires the workers and their intellectual leaders.... It is the theory of evolutionary Socialism and not revolutionary Marxism which guides their endeavours".*
We are not here analysing the content of contemporary social-reformism. However, in looking at the very concept of opportunism, one cannot fail to notice the political and ideological kinship between modern Right-wing revisionism
* The Road to Communism, Documents of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1961, pp. 501-02.
* J. Braunthal, "Karl Marx and the Present Day", Socialist International Information, London, May 11, 1968, p. 100.
24RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
25and Right-wing Social-Democracy. Moreover, while contemporary social reformism in the working-class movement no longer puts on a Marxist disguise, revisionism, in trying to operate within the communist movement, claims to adhere to Marxism. The CPSU Programme states that "the ideological struggle of the imperialist bourgeoisie is spearheaded primarily against the working class and its Marxist-Leninist parties. Social-Democratism in the working-class movement and revisionism in the communist movement reflect the bourgeois influence on the working class.""'
The renunciation of Marxism by Right-wing leaders and theoreticians of Social-Democracy is accompanied by the most intensive falsification of Marxism-Leninism which fully accords with the bourgeois falsification of Marxism undertaken by the host of ``experts'' on Marxism who never have been Marxists and have no connection with Marxism, but who portray themselves as its ``objective'' researchers and specialists.
Right-wing revisionism today is also akin to contemporary bourgeois falsification of Marxism.**
Lenin related the social roots of revisionism to the following:
1. existence of petty-bourgeois strata in society;
2. peculiarities in the numerical growth of the Communist parties;
3. economic backwardness of individual countries;
4. zigzag movements in bourgeois tactics;
5. the impact of bourgeois ideology on the working class. All these basically objective sources for revisional vacillations exist today.
Nowadays, as in the early part of the century, every capitalist country has wide sections of the petty bourgeoisie, small businessmen, the so-called middle class, which capitalism inevitably reproduces and which stand alongside the
proletariat. As Lenin put it, the working class is not divided from other classes by some kind of "Great Wall of China".* Moreover, sections exist in capitalist states and within the working-class movement which may be termed a labour, trade union and co-operative bureaucracy and a labour aristocracy, while political parties contain petty-bourgeois fellow-travellers and opportunist intellectuals who, whether they realise it or not, are actually vehicles of bourgeois influence on the proletariat.**
A serious objective source of revisionism is the "buying off" of the working class elite by the monopolies through their super-profits. The labour aristocracy and bureaucracy comprise a social basis both for reformism and for Rightwing revisionism within the working-class movement.
The numerical composition and role of middle classes, employees and intellectuals have sharply grown today as a consequence of the scientific and technological revolution. At the same time, as a result of the concentration of production in capitalist states, a considerable number of pettybourgeois elements are being forced out of agriculture into the working class.
This process of the increasing share of wage labour in the able-bodied population of capitalist states is progressive because it involves more and more social groups in the fight against capital and increasingly reveals the deformed nature of the growing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a numerically small group of monopolists. At the same time, however, the process is fraught with the mounting danger of these petty-bourgeois sections influencing the working class and pervading the Communist and Workers' parties with their petty-bourgeois views.
In this context, Lenin's forecasts of certain trends in the social structure of capitalism are particularly topical today. According to Lenin, capitalism rapidly increases the number
The Road to Communism, p. 501. See Chapter 3 of this book.
* See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 285. ** Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 161.
26RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
27of employees and demands more and more intellectuals. The latter occupy a peculiar position among other classes, aligning themselves partly to the bourgeoisie in their relations and views, and partly to wage workers, inasmuch as capitalism increasingly removes the independent status of the intellectual, turns him into a dependent employee and threatens his standard of living. Lenin foresaw that as a result of the dynamics of social processes, "a new intermediate social estate" would arise and new groups of the petty-bourgeoisie and intellectuals would appear which would find it more difficult to live in capitalist society. In Lenin's opinion, the transitory, unstable and contradictory status of such social groups would show itself in their widespread acceptance of half-hearted, eclectic views, contradictory principles and attitudes.*
Lenin regarded the growth of the working-class and the communist movement as a potential source of revisionism. He said: "If this movement is not measured by the criterion of some fantastic ideal, but is regarded as the practical movement of ordinary people, it will be clear that the enlistment of larger and larger numbers of new recruits, the attraction of new sections of the working people must inevitably be accompanied by waverings in the sphere of theory and tactics."**
He noted that petty-bourgeois philosophy again and again would penetrate the ranks of popular workers' parties,**"" that an abundance of intellectuals with their peculiar psychology within the Marxist ranks would inevitably give rise to opportunism in diverse spheres and in various forms.**** For that and many other reasons, Lenin ascribed immense importance to ideological work within the Party, pointing out the danger of underestimating such work and showing disregard for theory, for any manifestations of deviation,
••' See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 434; Vol. 4, p. 202. ** Ibid., Vol. 16, p. 348. *** Ibid., Vol 15, p. 39. **** Ibid., Vol. 7, pp. 403-04.
permissiveness and liberalism towards those "vacillations in theory". He attributed a particularly important role in the ideological activity of the Party to the intellectuals, but only to those who really took a Marxist and working-class stand.
The working-class and communist movement continues to grow; the number of Communists in the world has increased from 1,600,000 in 1928 to over 50 million today. Representatives of the intermediate sections have greatly replenished the Communist parties in Eastern Europe after the countries there took the road of socialism. This rapid growth signified an enormous success for the communist movement but, to a certain extent, it resulted from the inclusion in the Communist parties of insufficiently mature, theoretically unstable and inexperienced people.
Similar trends generally occur wherever Communist parties come to power; that compels them to conduct systematic and serious work in ideological and political education of their members.
Lenin included an insufficiently high level of economic development in his enumeration of objective factors that encourage revisionist vacillation. He wrote, ". . .the rate at which capitalism develops varies in different countries and in different spheres of the national economy. Marxism is most easily, rapidly, completely and lastingly assimilated by the working class and its ideologists where large-scale industry is most developed. Economic relations which are backward, or which lag in their development, constantly lead to the appearance of supporters of the labour movement who assimilate only certain aspects of Marxism, only certain parts of the new world outlook, or individual slogans and demands, being unable to make a determined break with all the traditions of the bourgeois world outlook in general and the bourgeois-democratic world outlook in particular."*
In Lenin's opinion, the tactical manoeuvring of the bourgeois ruling classes is another important factor that engenders
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 348.
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29revisionist vacillation within the working-class movement. He wrote, "The zigzags of bourgeois tactics intensify revisionism within the labour movement and not infrequently bring the differences within the labour movement to the point of an outright split.""" In analysing the tactics of the ruling classes, Lenin noted that everywhere the bourgeoisie invariably devises and uses two basic systems of administration, two methods of fighting for its interests and safeguarding its domination, which methods now replace each other, now intertwine in various combinations. First, there is the method of coercion, rejection of any concessions to the working-class movement, support for all old and outmoded institutions, rejection of reforms. The second is the method of liberalism, a concession to the workers in the sphere of political liberties, reforms, and so on.
These tactics are typical of the bourgeoisie and are not a result of any arbitrary action by individuals. Lenin wrote: "The bourgeoisie passes from one method to the other not because of the malicious intent of individuals, and not accidentally, but owing to the fundamentally contradictory nature of its own position .. . vacillations in the tactics of the bourgeoisie, transitions from the system of force to the system of apparent concessions have been characteristic of the history of all European countries during the last halfcentury___"**
Here he notes that the bourgeoisie for a certain time achieves its object by a liberal policy, which is a 'more crafty' policy. A part of the workers and a part of their representatives at times allow themselves to be deceived by seeming concessions. The revisionists declare that the doctrine of the class struggle is `antiquated', or begin to conduct a policy which is in fact a renunciation of the class struggle".***
Such ``zigzags'' and the methods and tactics by the pro-
letariat's class enemies are today characteristic of the class struggle both within capitalist states and internationally. The imperialist bourgeoisie continues to combine different forms of tactics---from fascist and neo-fascist armed force, naked agression and terror to a ``sophisticated'' cajoling policy of building bridges---explicitly aimed at undermining socialism from within.
The pressure of bourgeois ideology on the working-class and communist movement has become a major objective source of revisionism. This source is not new, Lenin noted even before 1917 that "the deviations from Marxism are generated by 'bourgeois counter-revolution', by bourgeois influence over the proletariat".*
Today, however, the pressure of bourgeois ideology on the working class and on the communist movement has grown immeasurably. The bourgeoisie has made ideological propaganda among the working people an inalienable part of its overall policy.
The pressure of the entire imperialist system and its anticommunist propaganda on the socialist countries is a serious external source for the emergence and proliferation of revisionism within socialist states. The appearance of revisionism in these states depends also on the degree of maturity of socialist social relations, on the stage of socialist changes in a particular country and on the extent to which the tasks of the transitional period have been resolved.
Alongside the objective conditions that nurture revisionist views, the subjective aspects are increasingly coming to the fore, particularly in socialist countries where one would naturally expect subjective factors to play an important part in socialist construction. It is, therefore, very important for the Communist parties to conduct a consistent MarxistLeninist policy in directing revolutionary change and in building socialism and communism, to pay undeviating attention to inculcating a communist outlook in people and in
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 351. ** Ibid., pp. 350-51. *** Ibid., p. 351.
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 154.
30RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
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31opposing bourgeois ideology and all varieties of opportunism, and finally, to remain watchful and give a timely rebuff to any incursions by imperialism and its agencies.
An uncompromising Leninist attitude towards opportunism and revisionism was one of the factors which, together with political vigilance, helped the Soviet people and its Party to overcome the enormous difficulties that faced them and to pioneer socialist and communist construction. That is one of the crucial lessons of Party experience. Accordingly, the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties noted that wherever Communists drop their guard and understimate the need for a class approach to social phenomena, imperialist intrigues bear fruit, Right-wing opportunist and even openly anti-socialist elements come to life and nationalist sentiments are reinforced. If these phenomena are not repulsed firmly and in time, they can do immense harm to the cause of socialism.
What, then, are the gnoseological sources of revisionist trends? In Lenin's view, the dialectical nature of social development and the potential that lies within it for distorting reality in people's minds provide an objective and constant gnoseological source for revisionism and opportunism. He wrote: "Capitalism is progressive because it destroys the old methods of production and develops productive forces, yet at the same time, at a certain stage of development, it retards the growth of productive forces. It develops, organises and disciplines the workers---and it crushes, oppresses, leads to degeneration, poverty, etc. Capitalism creates its own grave-digger, itself creates the elements of a new system, yet, at the same time, without a `leap' these individual elements change nothing in the general state of affairs and do not affect the rule of capital. It is Marxism, the theory of dialectical materialism, that is able to encompass these contradictions of living reality, of the living history of capitalism and the working-class movement. But ... certain individuals or groups constantly exaggerate, elevate to a one-sided theory, to a one-sided system of tactics, now one
and now another feature of capitalist development, now one and now another `lesson' of this development."*
The erroneous revisionist and opportunist positions result from a one-sided interpretation of real-life events. Lenin wrote: "Bourgeois ideologists, liberals and democrats, not understanding Marxism, and not understanding the modern labour movement, are constantly jumping from one futile extreme to another. At one time they explain the whole matter by asserting that evil-minded persons `incite' class against class---at another they console themselves with the idea that the workers' party is a 'peaceful party of reform'. Both anarcho-syndicalism and reformism must be regarded as a direct product of this bourgeois world outlook and its influence. They seize upon one aspect of the labour movement, elevate one-sidedness to a theory, and declare mutually exclusive those tendencies or features of this movement that are a specific peculiarity of a given period, of given conditions of working-class activity. But real life, real history, includes these different tendencies, just as life and development in nature include both slow evolution and rapid leaps, breaks in continuity."**
We may now proceed to examine the main methods of Lenin's criticism of revisionism and opportunism. In his criticism of revisionism, Lenin always relied on a scientific analysis of objective reality. He consistently applied the Marxist method in considering the objective content of the historical process at a given specific moment and, consequently, in understanding the movement of which class is the mainspring of social progress in these conditions.*** That is a strictly scientific, dialectical-materialist and class approach to an analysis of social phenomena. Such an approach includes historicism and so takes into consideration actual changes, new problems of development and the specific
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, pp. 348-49. ** Ibid., p. 349. ** See Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 143.
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33nature of a historical situation. This method demands a comprehensive analysis of social phenomena and processes and, therefore, a differentiation and account of the dialectical links between essence, content and form, the general, specific and individual, the necessary and the accidental aspects--- in a word, this method demands the application of scientific categories of materialist dialectics that reflect objective reality.
Lenin's critique of revisionism and opportunism is based precisely on a thorough scientific analysis of the problem, on an examination of the actual events and processes that are distorted by revisionism.
Lenin above all makes a radical distinction between revisionism, on the one hand, and a creative development of Marxism, on the other. It is particularly important to understand this distinction because revisionist arguments of yesterday and, especially, of today contain, typically, attempts to portray themselves as ``innovators'', representatives of creative Marxism, and to accuse Marxists-Leninists of dogmatism and ossification.
The creative development of theory is one of the essential principles of Marxism-Leninism as a dialectical materialist theory that is based on the reflection of being in consciousness.
The continual development of the world necessitates an advance and enrichment of Marxism-Leninism. Yet the fundamental principles of materialism and dialectics remain a scientific basis of that creative advance. In taking to task the Machists, Lenin recalled the words of Engels who said that "with each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science ['not to speak of the history of mankind'), materialism has to change its form."* Lenin went on to say that "a revision of the `form' of Engels' materialism, a revision of his natural-philosophical propositions is not only not revisionism, in the accepted meaning of the term, but, on the
contrary, is an essential requirement of Marxism. We criticise the Machists not for making such a revision, but for their purely revisionist trick of betraying the essence of materialism under the guise of criticising its form and adopting the fundamental propositions of reactionary bourgeois philosophy-----"*
Revisionism today, under the pretext of the "creative development" of Marxism continues to betray the very essence of Marxist-Leninist theory, rejecting the dialectical materialist philosophy and the vital principles of Marxist political economy and scientific communism, forming an alliance with bourgeois ideology all along the line.
In his criticism of revisionism, both in the area of theory and on many salient practical issues of revolutionary struggle, Lenin consistently applied materialist dialectics and a class analysis. One example of just such a scientific approach is his analysis of the historical necessity and essence of proletarian dictatorship.
Bourgeois antagonists of Marxism-Leninism and the Rightwing opportunist revisionists who follow in their wake, pontificate against the proletarian dictatorship, as they did in Lenin's day, falsely reducing it to coercion and interpreting it in a formal and abstract way. They metaphysically counterpose the word ``dictatorship'' to ``democracy'', completely ignoring the specific social content of these concepts.
Lenin regarded proletarian dictatorship from the point of view of reality and the essential requirements of the class struggle; he gave an all-round justification for its historical role; he explained its class nature, tasks, social content, qualitative features and, on that basis, showed its inalienable connection with the new type of democracy, the multiplicity of forms that it could take.
Lenin stressed that the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat would be a new type of dictatorship (against the
••• V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 251.
* Ibid., pp. 251-52. 3---2332
34RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
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35bourgeoisie) and a new form of democracy (for the working class and all working people); he said that proletarian dictatorship would combine force against the bourgeoisie with the complete development of democracy---i.e., the participation of the whole mass of the population in state affairs/^^1^^"
All nations, he said, would arrive at socialism, but not in the same way; each one would bring its own specific features to a particular form of democracy, a particular variety of proletarian dictatorship, a particular rate of change. He foresaw that the transition from capitalism to communism "is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat"?*
This essence manifests itself in the presence of the most diverse political forms which allow for both a pluralist and a one-party system, a form of Soviets and other forms which have been created, are being created or will be created by the peoples and their vanguard, depending on the balance of class forces, on the level of economic development in the country, on the degree of class consciousness and organisation of the working people, on national distinctions and traditions, and on the specific policy of various political parties.
The nature of political power during the transitional period can be seen in any country which starts to build socialism in the fact that the working class, led by a Communist party, plays a leading role in socialist construction. As Leonid Brezhnev has said, "the practice of the socialist countries has reaffirmed ... that the development of socialist society proceeds on the basis of general laws, that in one form or another the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., state leadership of the building of socialism by the working class,
is inevitable during the entire period of transition from capitalism to socialism".*
From the point of view of a Leninist methodology in criticising revisionism, it is important to have an integrated class and scientific approach. It is worth remembering that back in 1910, Lenin reacted to the suggestions of Vperyod (Forward) faction "to guarantee" Party members "complete freedom of revolutionary and philosophical thought", by showing quite clearly that it was a matter merely of the freedom to propagate bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. He said, "This slogan is thoroughly opportunist. In all countries this kind of slogan has been put forward in the socialist parties only by opportunists and in practice has meant nothing but `freedom' to corrupt the working class with bourgeois ideology.. .. The party of the proletariat ... is a free association, instituted to combat the `thoughts' (read: the ideology) of the bourgeoisie, to defend and put into effect one definite world outlook, namely, Marxism. This is
the ABC."**
The surrender of a class and, simultaneously, scientific position in the activity of a Communist party invariably leads to that party's liquidation. That was what Lenin had in mind when he emphasised that the direct road to such liquidation lies in "the destruction of the class independence of the proletariat, the corruption of its class-consciousness by bourgeois ideas", *** and that "the bourgeoisie are doing everything they can to spread and foster all ideas aimed at liquidating the party of the working class".**** Incidentally, the slogan "campaign for an open party", put forward by revisionists in Russia before the October Revolution, is now being presented by revisionists like Garaudy as an extremely novel and progressive demand.
* International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, Prague, 1969, pp. 147-48. ** V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 270. *** Ibid., Vol. 19, p. 156. **** Ibid., p. 155.
* See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 412; Vol. 23, p. 25; Vol. 29, pp. 182, 433.
** Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 413; Vol. 31, p. 92; Vol. 23, p. 70.
RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
37Lenin left us models of a profound analysis and criticism of Right-wing revisionism in a party's political tactics, uncovering the philosophical basis of such tactics from a class and scientific standpoint.
In evaluating the views and policies of Bernstein as an opportunist trend within socialism, Lenin remarked that the Bernsteinians were propagating defensive tactics. They regarded the parliamentary struggle, for example, not as a device of the struggle, but as the major and exclusive form of it, therefore obviating the need for violence against the exploiters. Moreover, Lenin distinguished between the subjective intentions and the objective meaning of a political line. He said: "It may not have been Plekhanov's intention to allay or blunt political and social antagonisms between the classes, and between the people and the old authorities; he may assure other people that he had no such intention; but in the present political situation this is precisely the effect of his arguments. ...
``Bernstein was not striving for social peace (or so he said); but the bourgeoisie rightly understood that this is what his arguments implied."*
Lenin also made a detailed expose of opportunist argument and its theoretical basis. He showed that the revisionists' campaign for petty reforms and renunciation of the ultimate objectives of struggle would inevitably lead to their recognition of the lack of a need for a revolutionary programme, a revolutionary party and tactics, to the conclusion that only a party of democratic and ``socialist'' reforms was necessary. In using such arguments, Lenin said, they were actually refuting the socialist theory of class struggle as the only real motive force of history and replacing it with a bourgeois theory of ``solidary'', ``social'' progress. According to Marxism, the real motive force of history is the revolutionary struggle between classes; reforms are only a by-product of that struggle. According to bourgeois philosophers, the
locomotive of progress is solidarity between all elements of society who have come to recognise the ``imperfection'' of a particular institution. "The first theory is materialist; the second is idealist. The first is revolutionary; the second is reformist. The first serves as the basis for the tactics of the proletariat in modern capitalist countries. The second serves as the basis of the tactics of the bourgeoisie."*
Here Lenin reveals the nature of the attitude of revolutionaries to reforms: "We shall never reduce our tasks to that of supporting the slogans of the reformist bourgeoisie that are most in vogue. We pursue an independent policy and put forward only such reforms as are undoubtedly favourable to the interests of the revolutionary struggle, that undoubtedly enhance the independence, class-consciousness and fighting efficiency of the proletariat. ... Only by such tactics can real progress be achieved in the matter of important reforms."**
Lenin frequently returned later to the part played by reforms in the class struggle and made the point that the only correct, Marxist tactic was not to let slip a single, slightest chance for real reforms and partial improvements and, at the same time, to explain to the people the falseness of reformism.
Lenin drew the important conclusion from his analysis of reformist tactics: "Two worlds of ideas: on the one hand, the point of view of the proletarian class struggle, which in certain historical periods can proceed on the basis of bourgeois legality, but which leads inevitably to a denoucement, an open collision, to the dilemma: either smash the bourgeois state to smithereens or be defeated and strangled. On the other hand, the point of view of the reformist, the petty bourgeois who cannot see the wood for the trees, who cannot, through the tinsel of constitutional legality, see the fierce class struggle."***
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 71. ** Ibid. *** Ibid., Vol. 16, p. 307.
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, pp. 471-72.
38RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
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39It is evident that on matters of tactics, Lenin showed the greatest flexibility, taking into account the need to use various approaches and means of struggle depending on the concrete situation; at the same time, he always saw the class differentiation in society, the strategic objective, the theoretical scientific reasons for the workers' practical struggle for the future of all working mankind.
Among the basic methodological questions concerning Lenin's approach to the fight against revisionism, we should include his ability to analyse individual changes in capitalist society in connection with the overall situation, in connection with a qualitative definiteness of the capitalist system--- the ultimately decisive question of the essence of these changes. This was the nature of Lenin's argument against revisionist ideologists who speculated upon, for example, such changes in capitalism as the development of the shareholding system. To counteract the arguments of the forerunners of contemporary bourgeois and revisionist ideologists about the ``transformation'' of capitalism Lenin wrote, "What the abundance of these small depositors signifies is not the decentralisation of big capital but the strengthening of the power of big capital, which is able to dispose of even the smallest mites in the people's savings. His share in big enterprises does not make the small depositor more independent; on the contrary, he becomes more dependent on the big proprietor."*
Lenin's analysis of the objective contradictions of capitalism and his criticism of inability to interpret its new aspects are particularly topical today when the scientific and technological revolution is engendering new phenomena within contemporary capitalism without changing its nature, in fact exacerbating the old and creating new contradictions. Lenin's experience of struggle against opportunism and revisionism serves today as a powerful weapon for all Communist parties.
In the Address of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties on the Centenary of the Birth of V. I- Lenin, it was stressed that loyalty to Marxism-Lenin-. jsm---a great international teaching---is a guarantee of further communist successes.
The ideological heritage of Lenin continues to be an inexhaustible source for a consistent struggle against bourgeois ideology, reformism and revisionism.
RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
Right-wing revisionism today has succeeded from revisionism at the turn of the century and is similar to it. Yet it also has new features that are expressed in the following.
1. It continues to be a revision of Marxist theory all along the line---i.e., it revises all the component parts of Marxism (philosophy, political economy and scientific communism), yet it concentrates its attention on rejecting the basic laws of the transition from capitalism to socialism and socialist construction---i.e., on the social and political problems of the day.
The revision of Marxism-Leninism is also changing its form. While Right-wing revisionism at the turn of the century had operated under the banner of an open "criticism of Marxism", it is today a hypocritical device of all Rightwing revisionists, who try to undermine Marxism with bourgeois concepts, to pretend that they are returning to the ``authentic'', ``genuine'' Marxism.
The accents in the revisionist rejection of the main principles of each of Marxism's three component parts are also changing. Revisionists reject primarily what is common to all component parts of Marxism---the principle of a class approach to social phenomena. But it is this approach which is the only correct one in a society where classes and the class struggle exist, in a world where the class struggle is developing both on national and international scale. The ignoring of a class approach is evident in the philosophy,
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 96.
40RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
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41economic views and social and political ideas of contemporary revisionism.
The focal point of the revision of Marxist-Leninist philosophy today is the rejection of the fundamental problem of philosophy and of the theory of reflection, attempts to take dialectics out of materialism and to turn it into a sophistry adapted to hypocritical speculation about abstract ``humanism''---a device widely employed by all anti-- communists.
The focal point of revision of the economic theory of Marxism is the economic basis of socialism, including its major laws; socialisation of the principal means of production, economic planning, and the organic connection between centralism and other democratic forms of government.
The revision of scientific communism lies in the renunciation of the leading role of the working class and its party in the fight for socialism, of the Leninist theory of socialist revolution, of the historical necessity of proletarian dictatorship, of the basic principles of socialist democracy and the Leninist theory of the working-class party.
The fundamental tenets of all three component parts of Marxism are revised now, as in the past, by replacing Marxism with old and new bourgeois concepts.
The present-day bourgeois sociological theories of " industrial society", ``deproletarisation'' and "the end of ideology" are having a particularly important impact on Rightwing revisionism. It is also being influenced by bourgeois philosophical ideas concerning abstract humanism, by economic theories of market socialism that have become part of the armoury of Right-wing socialist and anti-communist propaganda.
2. Just like their ideological forebears, present-day revisionists are continuing to falsify Marxism and, therefore, follow in the footsteps of the bourgeois ``experts'' on Marx.
Revisionists borrow from bourgeois ``experts'' on Marxism the device of counterposing Marx to Engels, and Lenin to Marx and Engels; they oppose conclusions made by Marxist-
Leninist parties to the conclusions of Lenin, oppose the partisan nature of socialist ideology to its scientific nature. Revisionists reiterate bourgeois ideas that Marxism is outmoded or disintegrating; they reproduce the bourgeois calumny that Marxism-Leninism is anti-humanist, and demand that it should be radically ``humanised''.
The main thrust of revisionism is today directed against Leninism. One example of this struggle is the book by the Austrian Right-wing revisionists Ernst Fischer and Franz Marek, entitled Was Lenin wirklich sagte (What Lenin Really Said) (Wien, Miinchen, Zurich, 1969). As Friedl Fiirnberg, Secretary of the CG of the Communist Party of Austria, has justly remarked, the book serves the sole purpose of stating that Leninism is a specifically Russian phenomenon and that Lenin's teaching is scarcely applicable on an international scale, i.e., to other countries. Attempts to play down the importance of Leninism and to distort its meaning have also been made by such renegades from the French Communist Party as Roger Garaudy and Andre Barjonet, and several other Right-wing revisionists.
To abject Leninism means directly to renounce the ideological basis of the entire communist movement, insofar as Leninism---the Marxism of the contemporary era---is just that basis.
In the new historical epoch, Lenin defended and enriched the fundamental principles of Marxism as the ideology of the working class: he creatively developed all three component parts of Marxism---dialectical materialism, economic theory (an important contribution to which was Lenin's teaching on imperialism) and the theory of scientific communism. Leninism signified the practical embodiment of the ideas of Marx. It was under the banner of Leninism that the process of profound revolutionary worldwide change began, developed and is continuing today.
Any renunciation of Leninism leads to the working class and its vanguard being disarmed ideologically, to a renunciation of the fight for socialist revolution and for building
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LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
43socialism and communism; it leads to an ideological capitulation to imperialism.
3. While, in the past, revisionism in theory frequently coincided with opportunism in practice, today Right-wing revisionism has completely coalesced with opportunism. There can no longer be purely theoretical arguments with the revisionists because pressing issues of the day---specific questions of the transition from capitalism to socialism and the practical construction of socialism and communism--- stand at the centre of the struggle. Each of the issues on which the revisionists oppose Leninism is connected with the practical struggle between the world of socialism and the world of capitalism, between the reactionaries and the progressives. The indissoluble connection between revisionism and opportunism is shown by the fact that any proponent of revisionist views is, by the very logic of class struggle, cast upon the other side of the barricades and ultimately finds himself among the enemies of socialism.
4. A characteristic feature of contemporary Right-wing revisionism is its union with revisionism from the ``Left''. Nationalism and anti-Sovietism serve as a basis for such a union.
Leonid Brezhnev said at the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties that, "a frequent feature of both `Left' and Right-wing opportunism is concessions to nationalism, and sometimes even an outright switch to nationalistic positions"."" This is because the social and political roots of both forms of present-day revisionism are so similar. Both forms rest on unstable, non-proletarian and petty-bourgeois strata with their ingrained national egoism and philistine prejudices. It is precisely these strata that are most influenced by bourgeois nationalism and inclined to purvey their own selfish interests as those of the whole nation.
Both forms of revisionism, being carriers of bourgeois ideology, freely take in the dogmas of imperialist propaganda aimed at splitting the world communist movement and the socialist community, the more so because these dogmas are put out under the hypocritical pretext of ``concern'' for national sovereignty, national equality and independence. The imperialist bourgeoisie sometimes succeeds in using trends of petty-bourgeois nationalism which are typical of revisionism and which declare, as Lenin aptly put it, internationalism to be "the mere recognition of the equality of nations, and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact. . . ."*
Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalism remove both forms of revisionism from the genuinely national interest of the overwhelming majority of a nation---the working people, because the only true way to ensure that their interests are served is through proletarian internationalism, mutual assistance and solidarity in the fight against the common enemy---imperialism.
Both forms of revisionism, being infected by nationalist prejudices and tendencies, are easily influenced by bourgeois anti-Soviet propaganda, playing on the philistine moods and enflaming hostility towards the Soviet Union, distorting its real role within the socialist community and the international communist movement.
For the purposes of anti-Sovietism, both Right- and ``Left''- wing revisionism employ Trotskyist ideas about the reactionary role of the Soviet Union, about a ``degeneration'' of the Party and the Soviet state. Both have seized upon Trotskyist methods of using the politically immature and inexperienced young people.
The CC CPSU Theses on the Centenary of the Birth of V. I. Lenin said: "Present-day revisionism 'is assimilating' the ideas of various anti-Leninist trends, which were at one
* International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, p. 156,
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 148.
44RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
45time or another defeated in open confrontation with Marxism-Leninism, and it is trying to use them to infiltrate the communist parties in order to impose its own line upon them, taking advantage of instances of ideological immaturity and dogmatism.""''
5. An important characteristic of Right-wing revisionism today is its link with anti-communism which stakes on revisionism as its ideological and political ally in the plans to disorganise the communist movement and undermine socialism from within.
In present-day circumstances, a single ideological front has been formed which embraces various political and ideological trends that are inimical to Marxism-Leninism and to socialism, they range from ``Left''- and Right-wing opportunism to the most virulent anti-communism. The most diverse political forces today exist in a single camp of opponents of Marxism-Leninism, the communist movement and the socialist community. They include imperialists, Maoists, nationalists, militant Zionists and rivisionists of all shades.
ANTI-COMMUNISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
Imperialist ideologists and politicians pin great hopes on revisionism and nationalism. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the leading anti-communist ideologists, has said, "the Western posture toward Communism is not one of crusading militancy. ... Today, the predominant Western attitude is that Communism will gradually moderate itself, eventually approximating social democracy. . . . The West . . . relies . . . on the erosive effects of time and the pressures for change within the Communist states themselves".**
Other ``experts'' on anti-communist affairs take the same line. Joseph Rothschild, an American expert on East
* The CC CPSU Theses on the Centenary of the Birth of V. I. Lenin, December 23, p. 3.
** Z. Brzezinski, "Tomorrow's Agenda", Beyond Left and Right, New York, 1968, p. 318.
European affairs, has written that "revisionism and polycentrism ... become ideological tools with which the People's Democracies can seek to carve out for themselves freedom to experiment with original or indigenous styles of politicoeconomic organisation". He insistently recommends " rewarding those countries and leaders who are prepared to assert and maximize their autonomy and independence from Moscow".* Behind the concern for the ``independence'' of socialist states, a major objective of imperialism is to weaken their unity and solidarity. Bourgeois ideologists therefore call for direct material assistance to anti-socialist forces so as to undermine the socialist system. Kurt London, director of an American anti-communist centre, declares that "the proper Western policy towards East Central Europe at the present juncture is that of peaceful engagement, i.e., the co-ordinated use of cultural exchange, financial credit, and diplomatic manoeuvre to promote the erosive forces already at work in the area".** He singles out the political importance of nationalism and revisionism, regarding revisionism as a system of views capable of eventually becoming a generally accepted doctrine in the socialist states, and nationalism, as an ideology capable of overtaking internationalism. The authors of another book on anti-communism recommend conducting a policy of liberalisation, "working from within its framework and its slogans---and then subtly, almost unconsciously changing their meaning, rather than smashing the works from outside, with unforseeable consequences".*** The works of anti-communists do not only make it clear that the overall tactical line of imperialism and revisionism coincides; they also directly praise revisionism and its representatives. Here one can also find the origins of many creative
* J. Rothschild, Communist Eastern Europe, New York, 1964 pp. 89-90.
** K. London (ed.), Eastern Europe in Transition, Baltimore, 1966, p. XIV.
*** P. Juviler, H. Morton (eds.), Soviet Policy-Making. Studies of Communism in Transition, New York, 1967, p. 117.
46RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
47discoveries of the revisionists who boast of enriching and developing Marxism.
To discover the real class essence of particular theories and conceptions, Lenin recommended asking the question: for whom are such views useful? It is undoubtedly more important to answer this question than to provide information on who exactly puts forward these views. The theoretical exercises of contemporary bourgeois ideologists and professional anti-communists convincingly show that revisionism is useful and profitable to our class enemies, that revisionist ideas converge with and at times are directly copied from their bourgeois prototypes.
Anti-communists gladly welcome revisionist distortions of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and their programme of improving socialism. The same ideas that revisionists present as their own are, in fact, met in the works of bourgeois anticommunist ``experts'' on Marxism. Here one finds the conclusion that socialism does not exist in the world today, that the working class has not fulfilled its historic role, that alienation is not removed by the abolition of private property, that determinism leaves no room for individual activity, that Lenin's interpretation of imperialism is outdated, and that proletarian dictatorship is a reactionary myth."' Anticommunists are even prepared to make common cause with revisionists on a ``Marxist'' platform if the latter agree with this type of ``improvement'' of Marxism. But what sort of Marxism do they have in mind? This question is answered by the professional anti-communist Alfred G. Meyer in a book which includes such authors and ``experts'' on Marxism as George Lichtheim, Maximilien Rubel, Robert C. Tucker, Gerhart Niemeyer and Herbert Marcuse, and revisionists like Gajo Petrovic and Karel Kosi'k. Meyer writes that ".. .we are all Marxists.. . . For we are all to some extent imbued with the ethics of Marx, we are all critics of aliena-
tion___We need not be critics of economic exploitation or
political domination. . .. We accept the individual bricks of building blocks that Marx has fashioned. . .. The critical, if you wish destructive, elements of Marxism provide convenient nomenclature when one wants to describe society on the other side of the so-called Iron Curtain.. .".* That is to say, "convenient nomenclature" for anti-socialist propaganda.
In another book, the joint platform of revisionists and anti-communists is formulated as follows: "In the words of Raymond Aron, we are all Marxists in a sense [!]; all modern societies have an ambition to construct an order conforming to their ideal and refuse to submit to any fatality."** Thus, Marxism without Marxism is the ideological platform which unites anti-communists and revisionists.
The bourgeois press accords special attention to the most energetic proponents of Right-wing revisionism. In a bookseries designed to popularise outstanding philosophers of all times and nations, books devoted to Buddha, Hegel, Confucius, Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Sartre, Husserl, Jaspers and Nietzsche were accompanied by a book singing praises of Garaudy.*** His activity is advertised also on the pages of Problems of Communism, a leading periodical of contemporary anti-communism. It states, for example, that in discussions with Jean-Paul Sartre he does not make "any attempt to defend the traditional Marxist notions that Sartre attacks. ... Garaudy seems virtually to take over from Sartre the project of reconciling existentialism with Marxism, apparently with the aim of producing a better synthesis of the two than Sartre's.. . . Garaudy takes Fichte as his own model in seeking to recover what is valuable in existentialism...". The journal regrets that Garaudy "had been cut off from the
* Ibid., pp. 99-101.
** L. Soubise, "Le marxisme apres Marx (1956-1965)", Qualre marxistes dissident frangais, Paris, 1967, p. 322.
*** See S. Perottino, Roger Garaudy et le marxisme du XX* siede Paris, 1969.
* N. Lobkowicz (ed.), Marx and the Western World, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1967.
48RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
49one audience he wished most to influence, and to convert ... from dogma to thought".*
The theoreticians of anti-communism especially approve of renunciation of Leninism and the leading role of the working class today. Anti-communism and revisionism have, here, a common ideological source---Karl Kautsky, whose followers have long tried to divorce Leninism from Marxism and to make it out to be a regional, local phenomenon.
In the words of Brzezinski, "Leninism has become an obsolete dogma which has little to say with regard to the novel psychological and scientific dilemmas of the postindustrial, technotronic age".** Furthermore, the " relativization of a hitherto absolute ideology is often the first stage in the erosion of the vitality of the ideology". Moreover, " revisionism was such erosion's harbinger."***
A good example of the fusion of revisionist views with anti-communism is the evolution of Milovan Djilas, who began as a renegade with anti-Soviet attacks and wild judgements on the flaws of ``Stalinism'' and ended up by declaring open war on Leninism and formulating a programme for restoring capitalism in the socialist states. In the words of another anti-communist ideologist, Ghita lonescu, this volteface is quite significant because it shows that "de-- Stalinisation is not enough and .. . de-Leninisation is now ineluctable".**** lonescu pinpoints the declaration by Djilas that Leninist ideas and practical reality do not conform with contemporary requirements and circumstances, that an answer to the question "What is to be done?" can no longer be found in Lenin. In his view, "Leninism is altogether incompatible with the essentially pluralistic industrial and
post-industrial society".* Djilas sees a way out of this situation in carrying out "economic, cultural, national and political pluralism",** which means, in fact, a complete renunciation of the fundamentals of the socialist system.
In the attempts to disprove Marxist-Leninist ideas concerning the inevitable transition of all countries to socialism and communism, bourgeois ideologists speculate upon the problems of the scientific and technological revolution. They ignore its divergent social consequences under capitalism and socialism; they examine this revolution as a self-- contained process allegedly liberating human society on the basis of the laws of social development discovered by Marx. The well-known American sociologist Daniel Bell concludes that "the older Marxist conception of 'laws of social development' is no longer valid" and that "the scientific and technological revolution cannot be led by the working class".*** Such bourgeois sociological conclusions are typical of all Right-wing opportunist revisionists.
How do anti-communist ideologists see the role of Rightwing revisionist ideas?
In the words of Michael Gamarnikow, "economic revisionism ... strikes at the economic roots of the party's power" and it is the path to "the transfer of decision-making power ... to the new managerial class"; further, "the new generation of economists and technocrats ... is much more inclined to reject outdated theoretical dogmas" and therefore lead to "the abolition of centralised planning". He writes with approval of revisionists who have declared that "the 'cult of the plan' has been a manifestation of Stalinism just as insidious as 'the cult of personality' ".**** He is in full agreement with the assertion of Professor L. Markovic of Belgrade
* Ibid., pp. 302, 303, 304. ** Ibid., p. 304.
*** D. Bell, "The Post-Industrial Society. The Evolution of an Idea", Survey, No. (2) 79, London, 1971, pp. 154-55.
»*** M. Gamarnikow, Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe, Detroit, 1968, pp. 15, 22, 46, 47.
* M. Cranston, "The Thought of Roger Garaudy", Problems of Communism, September-October 1970, pp. 14, 18.
** Z. Brzezinski, Foreign Affairs, Oct. 1970, p. 20.
*** Z. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc. Unity and Conflict, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, pp. 511-12.
**** The Political Quarterly, London, Vol. 41, No. 3, July-September 1970, p. 302.
4-2332
50RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
tENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
51University that "a Communist party is no longer capable of leading a modern industrial society".*
Problems of Communism, from which the last quotation was taken, relies on revisionist statements and tries to justify the prospect of creating in the socialist states a pluralistic political system of the Western type with legalised political opposition, the removal of communist parties from power and the creation of conditions for the "free play of political forces''.
Many anti-communist ideologists** paint just such a political picture and, as a rule, try to justify it by references to revisionist and nationalist views. They value such ideas as a means of striving for political changes in the socialist states. They believe it necessary to concentrate their efforts on theoretical problems and to influence people's thinking; "the activities of the revisionists carry political implications. ... Philosophic revisionism, which has been a primary cause of recent social upheaval, has not been extinguished". By "social upheaval", they are referring to the counter-- revolutionary actions in Poland in 1956 which were inspired by anti-socialist forces and revisionist elements. They conclude that "one of its stages has been completed, only to open the way for a new one."***
The imperialists, like their henchmen, have not laid down their arms or stopped trying to undermine socialism from within. Gustav Husak, General Secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, has said: "International reaction knows full well that anti-- communism in its old, primitive form can no longer break the bond between communist parties and broad sections of the working people. It therefore stubbornly uses every manifestation of Right-wing opportunism and revisionism in order to detract the working class from its revolutionary mission. Our recent experience and that of other parties convincingly confirm that revisionism naturally becomes open betrayal of socialism and of the revolutionary labour movement, a blatant transfer of its representatives to anti-communist and anti-Soviet positions."*
Communists and other progressives are not alone in learning lessons from the past. The lessons from the events in Czechoslovakia are attracting the rapt attention of reactionary politicians and anti-communist ideologists.
The offensive of right-wing forces in Czechoslovakia was closely associated with the centres of world anti-- communism. Channels have been discovered through which alien ideology penetrated into Czechoslovakia; they were Zionism, revisionist groupings inside certain communist parties, Trotskyist groups, Right-wing Social-Democrats and religious political organisations centred on the Vatican. Revisionist ideologists in Czechoslovakia had gone to America and other Western states for their instructions, and leading anti-communist ideologists had spoken about their doctrines directly in Prague. Brzezinski had given lectures in Prague on the "End of Leninism''.
It is characteristic that subsequently, after the complete failure of the plans by anti-communist reactionaries, its ideologists came to the conclusion that the "radical club" idea had been put forward prematurely and questions had been posed too acutely; on the other hand, the difficult and
* M. Gamarnikow, "Political Patterns and Economic Reforms", Problems of Communism, March-April 1969, p. 20.
** See Problems of Communism, September-October 1971, pp. 64-65; A. Z. Rubinstein, Communist Political System, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1966; R. Conquest, "The Limits of Detente", Foreign Affairs, July 1968; Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton, New Jersey, 1966, p. 41; R. Conquest (ed.), The Soviet Political System, London, 1968; Sowjetsystem und demokratische Gesellschaft. Eine vergleichende Enzyklopadie, Herausgegeben von C. D. Kernig, Bd. I, Freiburg, 1966, S. 1146.
*** W. J. Stankeiwicz (ed.), Political Thought since World War H, Glencoe, 1964, pp. 262, 269, 285.
* G. Husak, Report on Party Activity and Social Development After the Eighth Party Congress and Further Tasks of the Party Moscow 1971, p. 132 (Russ. ed.).
52RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
LENINISM AND RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM
53complex philosophical terminology of the inspirers of " ideology of protest" had prevented it from becoming "a weapon of direct political struggle". They believed that the hopes placed in the intellectuals had not been fulfilled because the intellectuals had been so amorphous/^^1^^" The anti-communists therefore were not happy to find in the midst of the Czechoslovak intellectuals, besides individual betrayers of socialism, many honest people who had rejected the plans and designs of their Western patrons. Yet Problems of Communism pours forth much praise for those forces "which provided the philosophical and ideological background of the mass revolutionary [i.e., counter-revolutionary.---Authors.} mood that emerged in Czechoslovakia during 1968".** It includes in such forces the philosopher Karel Kosik, activists of the Writers' Congress that took place in June 1967, Ivan Svitak, Milan Prucha, Ota Sik, Evzen Loebl and Ludvik Vaculik.*** Peter Ludz, currently Senior Fellow at the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia University, gives as the ingredients of that ``background'': "first, a new philosophy and ethic .. . influenced especially by existentialism", by Hegel and Schelling, phenomenology and neo-- Kantianism. In his words, this philosophy puts its accent on subjectivity and a "free individual", an "intellectual elite", an understanding of practice hostile to a Marxist-Leninist interpretation, and it rejects the idea of a party spirit and collectivism, and even the concept of the "working class"; "second a sweeping and radical critique of the bureaucratisation of party, state, economy and culture; and third, the aspiration to realise---with the help of the West European intelligentsia---the vision of a democratic socialism, an `open' Marxism..." and "a number of other basic rights associated with parliamentary democracy".****
* See P. Ludz, "Philosophy in Search of Reality", Problems of Communism, July-August, September-October 1969, pp. 34, 39, 40.
** Ibid., p. 33. *** Ibid., pp. 34, 35, 37. ***» Ibid., pp. 33, 34, 35.
Hopes for a regeneration of bourgeois democracy in the socialist states have long occupied a very important place in the political calculations of and-communists. Under the veiled talk of "democratic socialism", they had in mind the implementation of counter-revolutionary plans for re-- establishment in Czechoslovakia of political pluralism of a Western type, which would include the legalisation of political opposition and contention for power. They therefore wanted to create more favourable circumstances for the activity of anti-socialist forces and to legitimate their entry into the political arena. Of course, all that was termed " liberalisation and democratisation". The main link in this liberalisation has been the slanderous campaign against the Communist Party which is portrayed as the main obstacle in the way of modernisation, progress and freedom.*
What are the forces within the socialist states on which anti-communism counts? As before---nationalism and revisionism. The ideologists of anti-communism set great store by nationalism, a split in the unity of the socialist community. Anything that can contribute to undermining such unity is employed, including old-style speculation on interests for "national independence" and the doctrines "of reliance on one's own forces" and isolationism.**
In his analysis of the failure of imperialist plans in Czechoslovakia, George Gross, a specialist in anti-communist affairs, sees the mistakes of the Czechoslovak counter-- revolutionaries in the fact that they concentrated efforts on reforms whose implementation would have led to removing Communists from power. He feels that they should have primarily united on a platform of nationalism and agitated for changing the status quo within the framework of the socialist system, rather than proclaiming, from the very beginning, the slogan of ``reforming'' the socialist system
* Z. Brzezinski, "East-West Relations After Czechoslovakia", East Europe, No. 11-12, 1969, p. 6. ** Foreign Affairs, January 1969, p. 279.
54RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
CHAPTER 2
NEW STAGE IN THE ANTI-REVISIONIST STRUGGLE
In the opinion of Gross, "three words best sum up the conclusions of this study---division, opportunity, and nationalism. Of the three, nationalism deserves to be the last word, for it is the source of division and opportunity as well".*
A very important human virtue is to be able to draw the right lessons from experience. History teaches us that reactionaries do not always enjoy that virtue. It was once said about the French royalists that they never forgot anything and never learned anything. This is worth remembering in regard to present-day anti-communist and revisionist ideologists. That is why vigilance and solidarity in defence of socialist gains from the intrigues of international reactionaries and their henchmen, an uncompromising onslaught on anti-communism and revisionism and a rational expose and critique of revisionist ideas remain among the foremost tasks that Communists have to face.
The present international situation shows important positive trends towards the strengthening of peace and detente. The consistent implementation of the Peace Programme, formulated by the 24th CPSU Congress, a further strengthening of the positions of the fraternal socialist states and their unity, and the mounting influence of their co-ordinated policy on the course of international affairs, all contribute to an improvement in the international situation and to the widespread recognition of the principles of peaceful coexistence as a norm for relations between states with different social systems, contributing to a change on the international scene from the cold war to detente.
At the same time, peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems does not mean any lessening in the ideological struggle. The contention of the two antagonistic ideologies---bourgeois and socialist---continues today against a background of rapid shifts in the political situation within individual states and throughout the world, profound and sharp changes in the balance of class forces. This contention takes place against a background of the further deepening of internal contradictions within world capitalism and a debilitation of its positions, radical changes in the international balance of power in favour of world socialism, the communist, working-class and national liberation movements.
* G. Gross, "Communism Divided: Some Considerations for American Policy", The Russian Review, July 1969, p. 275.
56RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
NEW STAGE IN ANTI-REVISIONIST STRUGGLE
57Reactionary imperialist forces, even though they have forfeited the initiative and can no longer determine the direction and prospects of historical development, have not laid down their arms or left the battlefield. They are trying to launch the counter-offensive against the forces of peace, democracy, national independence and socialism. In its ideological campaign, the class enemy puts great hopes in the revisionists and opportunists of all shades.
REASONS FOR THE REVISIONIST RESURGENCE
In recent years, ". .. the attempts on various sides to attack Marxism-Leninism as the ideological-theoretical basis for the activity of the communist movement have been most acute.. .. Here and there tendencies towards nationalistic self-isolation have been stepped up, and both ``Left'' and Right-wing opportunism have been revived."*
Nationalist and revisionist trends within communist and workers' parties during the 1960s were encouraged by certain objective and subjective factors. One important factor was the aggravation of the international situation brought about by the intrigues of the aggressive forces of imperialism. During the 1960s, military conflicts, which posed a serious threat to world peace, occurred in Indochina and the Middle East; these were caused by the US aggression in Vietnam and the Israeli aggression against the Arab states. A strained situation, again caused by aggressive imperialist forces, was maintained around Cuba. In several parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, imperialism tried to gain revenge for its past defeats. Europe became a focal point of unresolved international problems. The nuclear and other arms race continued at a rapid pace. International trade and cultural exchange between countries with different social systems were at a low level. The icy winds of the cold war froze the
situation even more and prevented a solution of internationnal issues. As a result of a marked swing in the balance of power in favour of the world socialist system, of the international labour and national liberation movement, imperialism was obliged to make essential changes to its military and political doctrines.
Its strategic policy aimed at an all-out offensive on world socialism and the revolutionary forces had come to grief. Therefore, without discarding their plans to launch a new world war, local wars or counter-attacks at various sectors of the anti-imperialist front, imperialist ruling circles began more actively to pursue a policy of splitting the communist parties and the socialist states, trying to put them at loggerheads with one another, especially with the Soviet Union and the CPSU, at undermining world socialism, the international communist and national liberation movement, and all anti-imperialist forces.
At the 1969 International Meeting, Leonid Brezhnev said: "The tremendous social break-up of the pillars of the old world taking place under the onslaught of socialism and all the revolutionary forces is meeting with growing resistance from the bourgeoisie. To safeguard its positions it strives to use all the economic and political possibilities of statemonopoly capitalism. In the capitalist countries, anti-- communism has been elevated to the status of state policy. To erode the communist and the whole revolutionary movement from within is now one of the most important directions of the class strategy of imperialism.'"^^5^^'
Ideological pressure by imperialism on the socialist states,
the communist and revolutionary-democratic parties in these
years was stepped up, and a new, more acute stage in the
ideological struggle began.
Revisionist trends appeared wherever individual sectors
* 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 26.
* International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties Moscow 1969, p. 155.
58RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
NEW STAGE IN ANTI-REVISIONIST STRUGGLE
59of the anti-imperialist front, for various reasons, were insufficiently strong ideologically. In the advanced capitalist states, the ideological offensive against communist parties and the working class was accompanied during the 1960s, as occasionally in the past, by certain concessions to the working class in the social field---wage rises for certain categories of workers and employees, better housing conditions, social security, etc.
State-monopoly capitalism is today forced to make such concessions. In order to avoid social upheavals that menace its existence, it has to take into consideration the growth in the working-class movement and the mounting class struggle. At the same time, it is also bound to reckon with the conditions of competition and struggle between the two world social systems and with the successes of the socialist countries in the social sphere.
Wage increases and similar concessions remain for capitalism only measures of social manoeuvring. And although capital will tomorrow take from the workers, by thousands of devices, including tax and price increases, what it had given them only yesterday, some sections of industrial and white-collar workers are taken in by the apparent concessions which are praised by revisionists as evidence of radical changes in the very basis of the bourgeois system.
The resurgence of revisionist and nationalist tendencies in certain parties was also influenced by the fact that, for several years, these parties had been considerably supplemented by semi- and non-proletarians. In the advanced capitalist states, this influx was mainly from scientific and technical personnel, students, people from the field of literature and the arts, urban middle strata; they brought with them pettybourgeois ideas. In some newly independent states of Asia and Africa, the increase in the communist-party membership has come mainly from the peasants, who lean towards the ideas of nationalism and petty-bourgeois illusion.
The widening social base of the communist and workers' parties testifies, of course, to the growth in their political
prestige and influence. Nonetheless, in the parties which lack a measure of ideological education, the danger exists of pervading communist ranks with petty-bourgeois and bourgeois ideas, a growth in revisionist and nationalist tendencies.
A great impetus was given to the growth in revisionist and nationalist trends by the sharp departure during the 1960s of the leaders of the Communist Party of China from Marxist-Leninist principles, and the Maoist divisive activity within the international communist and national liberation movement. This began with dogmatism and ``Left''-wing adventurism. Already in the late 1950s, the Chinese leaders had taken a stand on certain vital questions of domestic and foreign policy that differed radically from that of most other fraternal parties. The adventurist trends in domestic policy were apparent in the rejection of the policy of the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of China and the launching of the ``great-leap-forward'' policy, permeated by a petty-bourgeois impatience and a striving to skip historically necessary stages of development. Behind the ultra-- revolutionary slogans in foreign policy, one could more frequently detect an urge to secure for China the leading position among the world revolutionary forces.
In June 1963, the Chinese leaders went against the jointly elaborated policy of the communist movement, which had been agreed upon by all communist and workers' parties, including the CPC, and published their notorious " TwentyFive Points"---"The Proposals Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement". In that document, they openly demanded a revision of Marxism-Leninism from a position of ``Left''-wing revisionism, petty-bourgeois revolutionism and adventurism, nationalism and chauvinism. The guidelines proposed by the Chinese leaders came not from a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the world political situation, but from subjective calls for a rapid destruction of imperialism and a forcing of world revolution by any means, including thermonuclear war.
60RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
NEW STAGE IN ANTI-REVISIONIST STRUGGLE
61In their further evolution the Maoists departed completely from Marxism-Leninism. In that period, the CPC leaders refused to co-operate with other Communist parties and began to create in several countries divisive groupings of a Left-wing opportunist colouring disguised as "Marxist-- Leninist" parties, with which the Trotskyists often formed an alliance. Peking tried to unite these groups under its aegis to oppose the international communist movement.
At the 9th CPG Congress, which took place in April 1969, the Mao Tse-tung thought was officially proclaimed as the "third stage" in the development of Marxism-Leninism and a new ideological and political platform of the Party. This was a special ideological and political platform opposed to Leninism on all basic questions of international affairs and the world communist movement. Maoism had gone beyond ``Left''-wing revisionism and opportunism and had become a national-chauvinist trend in contention with MarxismLeninism.
It would be wrong to believe that the anti-Leninist stand of Maoism and its divisive activity had stimulated only ``Left''-wing opportunist trends in the communist movement. The Maoists began to stimulate revisionist and opportunist trends of both a ``Left''-and a Right-wing persuasion. It is not accidental, therefore, that both ``Left''-and Right-wing revisionism take a conciliatory attitude to Maoism and, especially, to its anti-Soviet policy.
Those who yesterday highly praised the "democracy and liberalisation" of Dub£ek and Smrkovsky, today try with the same ardour to rehabilitate and justify the political careering of the Peking regime.
Maoism has stimulated any anti-Leninist trends within the communist movement. This is an important aspect of its servility to imperialism. Moreover, while Right- and ``Left''- wing revisionists in the fight against Marxism-Leninism regard Peking as their militant vanguard and bastion, US imperialism with its strategy directed at undermining the unity of the socialist states and the international communist move-
ment also looks to Peking for assistance---and not without reason.
Subjective circumstances have also contributed to a livening in revisionist trends within certain Communist parties. Many parties in advanced capitalist states have long been pursuing a policy of creating broad anti-monopoly alliances. In recent years, Communists have been making new steps towards collaboration and concerted action with SocialDemocrats and other Left-wing forces. This policy has been formulated in the d'ocuments of the International Meetings of Communist and Workers' Parties and of individual Marxist-Leninist parties.
In some countries, however, in an attempt to find common cause with the Social-Democrats, Communists have subdued their criticism of the ideological attitudes of Right-wing Social-Democrats hostile to Marxism-Leninism. In some cases, they have made concessions to Right-wing SocialDemocrats even on such matters of principle as the leading role of the revolutionary party of the working class, the paths and forms of transition to socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other cases, a fear of worsening relations with social democrats or with other allies in the anti-monopoly struggle has led to a surrender of positions even on such major political issues as judgement on the Czechoslovak events of 1968-1969 and the anti-Leninist policy of the Chinese leaders.
A blunting of the class approach to ideological opponents and their hostile attitude is a dangerous disease, primarily from the point of view of its revisionist complications. The well-known document adopted by the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Lessons Drawn from the Crisis Development in the Party and Society After the 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The document points out the subjective mistakes that were responsible for revisionist tendencies in Czechoslovakia. These mistakes include a certain self-complacency and the fact that the "weakening of polit-
62RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY
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63ical and ideological work blunted the fight against bourgeois ideology, petty-bourgeois tendencies and ideological subversion".*
Communists naturally cannot forget the fact that MarxismLeninism grew and became tempered in an uncompromising struggle against ideological tendencies and ideas hostile to the working class, and that Lenin would not allow any compromises in this ideological struggle, any concessions to the class foes on questions of principle concerning the theory and practice of the revolutionary struggle.
The Soviet Communist Party has always taken a principled stand on ideological questions. Leonid Brezhnev has said: "In accordance with the line laid down by the 1969 International Meeting, the CPSU is prepared to develop cooperation with the Social-Democrats both in the struggle for peace and democracy, and in the struggle for socialism, without, of course, making any concessions in ideology and revolutionary principles. However, this line of the Communists has been meeting with stubborn resistance from the Right-wing leaders of the Social-Democrats. Our Party has carried on and will continue to carry on an implacable struggle against any attitudes which tend to subordinate the working-class movement to the interests of monopoly capital, and to undermine the cause of the working people's struggle for peace, democracy and socialism."** This attitude does not leave any grounds for ideological concessions to the ideological enemy and it fully accords with the contemporary conditions of the ideological struggle.
To affirm the principles of peaceful coexistence as a norm for interstate relations does not eliminate the historic rivalry between the two world systems, between the forces of progress and those of imperialist reaction. As Leonid Brezhnev has pointed out, "competition, rivalry between the two
systems in the world arena continues. The crux of the matter is only to see to it that this process does not develop into armed clashes and wars between countries, into the use of force or threat of force in relations between them, and that it does not interfere with the development of mutually advantageous cooperation between states with differing social systems".*
In the situation of peaceful coexistence, economic rivalry between world socialism and world capitalism continues and moves to a higher stage; at the same time, the ideological struggle does not cease. Communists remain principled opponents of imperialism. Within the capitalist world, the forces of reaction and anti-communism continue vigorously to prevent any normalisation of the international situation, they try to combat progressive forces as, for example, in Chile, they continue ideological subversion against the Soviet state and other socialist countries. Leonid Brezhnev said: "While upholding the principle of peaceful coexistence we are aware that successes scored in this important field are by no means imply any let-up in ideological struggle. On the contrary, this struggle should be expected to grow in scale and scope and become a more uncompromising form of confrontation between the two social systems."** The justification for this conclusion is patently obvious. One must not, finally, forget the fact that revisionism has tried and is today trying to exploit certain unresolved theoretical questions. Wherever theoretical questions are ignored, wherever a creative approach to new problems is lacking and dogmatism and inertness find themselves a haven, favourable opportunities exist for every sort of revisionist speculation, for Right- and ``Left''-wing opportunist distortions of Marxism-Leninism.
* Lessons Drawn from the Crisis Development in the Party and Society after the 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Supplement to New Times, No. 4, January 27, 1971, p. 32.
** 24th Congress of the CPSU, p. 28.
* L. I. Brezhnev, Our Course: Peace and Socialism, Part Three, Moscow, 1973, p. 41.
** L. I. Brezhnev, 0 vneshney politike KPSS i Sovetskogo gosudarstva, Moscow, 1973, p. 445.
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65The above-mentioned document of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia points out that one of the most serious reasons for the resurgence of activities of revisionist tendencies in Czechoslovakia was to be found in the "insufficient generalization of the practice and the accumulated experience of the masses, underestimation of the class approach to social problems".*
The 24th CPSU Congress stressed the important role of theoretical work among Party members for combating present-day revisionism: "The struggle between the forces of capitalism and socialism on the world scene and the attempts of revisionists of all hues to emasculate the revolutionary teaching and distort the practice of socialist and communist construction require that we continue to pay undivided attention to the problems and creative development of theory. Repetition of old formulas where they have become outworn and an inability or reluctance to adopt a new approach to new problems harm the cause and create additional possibilities for the spread of revisionist counterfeits of MarxismLeninism."**
These are some of the fundamental reasons that led, during the last decade, to a livening of revisionist trends in the international communist movement. Of course, these reasons did not operate in all communist and workers' parties with the same force or lead to the same results. Most fraternal parties, tempered in class struggle, spotted the revisionist danger in time and resolutely rebuffed it. The conditions of class struggle today, however, have become so complex, and the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism, between the working class and the monopoly bourgeoisie, between the national liberation movement and imperialism have become so acute that no single communist or worker's party can guarantee that the revisionist danger will not reappear unless it fights against it. In addition, revisionism of
the past decade, despite its resounding defeats, is not finished; some anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist views still frequently appear in the ranks of the international communist movement and in individual parties.
STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF REVISIONISM
The principal features of the political strategy and tactics of Right-wing revisionism today consist in capitulation to the bourgeoisie and complicity in imperialism, divisive actions in the international communist movement and the world socialist community.
One of the most typical features of Right-wing revisionism is to adopt a social-democratic position in evaluating contemporary capitalism, to whitewash capitalism and ascribe features to various aspects of the capitalist system which put in doubt the need for class struggle. It rules out the historic objective of the working class---to overthrow exploiting classes, to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat and to ensure the victory of socialism.
Right-wing revisionists adopt a social-democratic, apologetic stance in regard to contemporary capitalism in all spheres, particularly in making judgement upon the social consequences of the scientific and technological revolution and the principles of bourgeois democracy. The French revisionist Garaudy, for example, has written of the scientific and technological revolution in words borrowed from bourgeois and social-democratic literature. They serve as a launching pad to destroy and, ultimately, reject the MarxistLeninist theory of socialist revolution. He sees the basis of contemporary social development not in a transition of more countries from capitalism to socialism but in "a second industrial revolution", which, in his opinion, signifies the transition from an era of machines to an era of computers.
He needed this idea to justify the false theory of a "new historical bloc", the basic elements of which would evidently be the working class and the intellectuals. He grants the
5-2332
* Lessons Drawn from the Crisis..., p. 32. ** 24th Congress of ike CPSU, pp. 123-24.
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67leading role in that bloc not to the working class (whose historical role, as a result of the "industrial revolution", is allegedly in decline), but to the technocrats (whose role is allegedly increasing due to that revolution).
Hence the conclusion, typical of Right-wing revisionists, that a working-class party is unnecessary, that communist parties must become socially amorphous organisations deprived of class ideology and their own class features. Garaudy writes: "If the Party does not want to be a sect of doctrinaires, but the germ of all the forces which, in France, want to build socialism, it cannot have an 'official philosophy'."* The reformist Socialist International came to the same conclusion back in 1951.
In regard to the grovelling before the formal principles of bourgeois democracy, the Czechoslovak Right-wing opportunists must have set many new records when they advocated in 1968 a return to political pluralism, to a system of rival political parties, the elimination of the leading role of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and a return to the bourgeois-democratic regime at the time of the MasarykBenes republic.
The ideas of pluralist democracy, renunciation of the leading role of the working-class party enjoy unanimous support from all Right-wing revisionists and opportunists who have penetrated communist and workers' parties. This is because idealisation of these formal principles assists the Right-wing opportunists to substantiate their renunciation of the class struggle. To make an absolute of peaceful, especially parliamentary, forms of struggle, typical of Rightwing revisionists, serves the same aims.
Lenin attached great importance to the need for the working class to master all forms of struggle---peaceful and nonpeaceful, parliamentary and non-parliamentary. He thought it imperative to be prepared for the rapid and unexpected replacement of one form of struggle by another. He tireless-
ly explained that Marxism "differs from all primitive forms of socialism by not binding the movement to any one particular form of struggle. It recognises the most varied forms of struggle; and it does not `concoct' them, but only generalises, organises, gives conscious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes which arise of themselves in the course of the movement. Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class-- consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle."""
Nowadays, as the documents of the International Meetings of Communist and Workers' Parties have pointed out, the opportunities for the working class to take power in alliance with other anti-monopoly forces by a peaceful, and in some circumstances parliamentary, way have increased. Yet a Right-wing revisionist absolutisation of peaceful forms of struggle and a parliamentary path to socialism means merely a return to social-democratic "parliamentary actinism", which thereby has demonstrated its utter futility. Such a policy could lead Communist parties only to isolation from specific forms of mass struggle and, consequently, to being divorced from the people and to their degeneration into reformist parties.
The revisionists set great hopes by the fact that, having won a parliamentary majority together with other Left-wing forces, the Communists could directly start making socialist changes in the capitalist countries without any transitional stages. Their theories erase the natural boundary between the democratic and socialist stages of revolution, and remove the question of the communist parties taking the leading role in the national alliance of democratic forces.
R. Garaudy, Le grand tournant du socialisme, Paris, 1969, p. 284.
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 213.
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At the present time, the democratic and socialist stages of revolution are drawing together to a certain extent. It would, nevertheless, be wrong to ignore differences of principle between these stages. The transition from the democratic to the socialist stage requires not only deep-going social, economic and political reforms; it requires above all radical change within the coalition of democratic forces when they come to power.
Experience shows that representation of the working class and the participation of its revolutionary party in a coalition government of Left-wing forces on equal terms with other Left-wing parties does not yet create conditions for implementing a programme of socialist reforms. In these circumstances, petty-bourgeois and bourgeois parties use their advantages of a government majority for realising their own programmes that do not go beyond democratic reforms and do not have a socialist character.
The working class and its revolutionary party can raise the popular revolutionary struggle to a new stage and ensure the complete abolition of capitalist power and the transfer to socialism only by guaranteeing for itself the leading role in the coalition of democratic forces. It is from this angle that the question was examined in the Main Document of the 1969 International Meeting: "In the course of anti-- monopolist and anti-imperialist united action, favourable conditions are created for uniting all democratic trends into a political alliance capable of decisively limiting the role played by the monopolies in the economies of the countries concerned, of putting an end to the power of big capital and of bringing about such radical political and economic changes as would ensure the most favourable conditions for continuing the struggle for socialism. The main force in this democratic alliance is the working class.":;"
On the issues of socialist revolution, latter-day revisionists
of a Right-wing persuasion tend to make a fetish of specific conditions in individual states. They reject the general laws of socialist revolution and absolutise the specific conditions of individual states; it is here that the historic role of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the international importance of the CPSU in building socialism and communism come under fire.
In denigrating the historic role of Leninism and the October Revolution and in maintaining that CPSU experience in building socialism and communism does not have international significance, the Right-wing revisionists propagate a petty-bourgeois nationalist theory about a multiplicity of the models of socialism. Such a theory has nothing in common with the Marxist-Leninist theory on the various forms of transition to socialism.
When Marxists speak of the possibility of various forms of transition to socialism, they mean that the essence of the transition from capitalism to socialism, given the great variety of forms it may take, remains the same. That is the socialisation of the main means of production, establishment of proletarian dictatorship, abolition of exploiting classes and human exploitation, and other principles of socialism. The various revisionist "socialist models" differ in both form and content. The revisionists use such an approach in order to ascribe to socialism anything they wish and to slander and attack genuine socialism.
Garaudy in his book Le grand tournant de socialisme examines the Soviet, Chinese, Yugoslav and other socialist models; he directs all his criticism, however, against the Soviet "socialist model". The anti-socialist and anti-Soviet essence of the theory of multiplicity of "socialist models", which is in fact a renunciation of the general laws of socialist construction, is here paraded in its full colours.
The paramount political attitudes of Right-wing opportunist revisionism in regard to international problems objectively correspond to the interests of imperialism. The revisionists underestimate the military danger whose source was
* International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, p. 25.
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71and remains imperialism. Thus, they put forward the demand for a unilateral disbanding of military and political blocs, thereby equating the aggressive bloc of imperialist states (NATO) with the defensive alliance of socialist states in the Warsaw Treaty, which had to be set up as a counter-- measure to the creation of NATO. Following bourgeois ideologists and politicians, Right-wing revisionists demand an extensive exchange of ideas and contacts between West and East. They, perhaps, forget that 'the socialist states can only agree to such co-operation when there is respect for the sovereignty, laws and customs of every country, when the Western states give up their cold war methods and when this co-operation will serve the cause of peace.
The policy of the revisionists on the most urgent questions of the international communist movement and the world socialist system serves the interests of the imperialists whose major concern is to weaken the unity and cohesion of antiimperialist forces.
!
The tasks of the anti-imperialist struggle insistently require a strengthening of the militant solidarity and cohesion of all anti-imperialist forces---the world socialist system, the international working class and the national liberation movement. In order to resolve this task, it is necessary further to consolidate the communist and workers' parties, to raise the unity of the communist movement to a new level.
Right-wing revisionists have made rabid attacks on Leninist principles of proletarian internationalism in an attempt to break the cohesion of communist parties and socialist states.
By acting the part of defenders of autonomy and independence of each party, its right to an independent interpretation of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and its independent resolution of questions of the anti-imperialist struggle, the revisionists advocate a defence of national seclusion among individual sections of the communist movement, their isolation from one another and against stronger unity and solidarity of the communist parties and socialist states.
Participants in the 1969 International Meeting affirmed "their common view that relations between the fraternal Parties are based on the principles of proletarian internationalism, solidarity, and mutual support, respect for independence and equality, and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. Strict adherence to these principles is an indispensable condition for developing comradely co-- operation between the fraternal Parties and strengthening the unity of the communist movement."*
Right-wing revisionists recognise only the second part of this formula---i.e., respect for the independence and equality of parties, non-intervention in each other's internal affairs. But they pass over in silence or completely reject the principles of proletarian internationalism, cohesion and support which comprise the first part of that formula. Many opportunists today try to counterpose proletarian internationalism .to independence, sovereignty and equality of communist parties. This can only lead to a distortion of the very basis of mutual relations between fraternal parties, to a descent from proletarian internationalist positions to petty-bourgeois nationalist attitudes. It runs counter to the interests of consolidating the international communist movement.
A joint declaration by delegations of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the French Communist Party stated that "while not in any measure rejecting or diminishing the independence, sovereignty and equality and the principles of non-interference in the internal affairs both of nations and of communist parties, Communists consider it a rule to respect and consistently to observe these principles precisely because they, along with solidarity and mutual assistance, are an organic part of proletarian internationalism".**
Revisionists try to justify their denigration of Soviet foreign and home policy, the rich experience accumulated by
* International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, p. 36. ** Pravda, July 6, 1971.
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73the CPSU in the struggle for socialism and communism. Moreover, according to the statements by some of them, Communists made "a serious and unforgivable error" when they defended the October Revolution, glorified the first Soviet five-year plans, showed solidarity with the people of the Soviet Union, and saluted unreservedly the emergence of new socialist states after 1945*
The revisionists believe that only the variety and the specific nature of the conditions in which communist parties now operate engender differences in an approach to practical tasks and, consequently, differences of opinion within the world communist movement. They look upon the reasons for the latter exclusively in objective circumstances in which communist and workers' parties operate today.
Such an attitude is essentially wrong and politically dangerous. To agree with the argument that the causes of disagreement are engendered only by objective circumstances would mean excluding subjective sources of revisionism and making impossible any pinpointing of the persons who are actually responsible for the disagreements, and the actual paths of overcoming them. This attitude completely suits the revisionists, who strive to "rise above" the actual conditions of the movement and, possibly, to be generally outside of the struggle. But such a position cannot satisfy Communists fighting to consolidate their ranks and to overcome prevailing difficulties and disagreements.
In order to surmount disagreements, one must take into account not simply the objective difficulties confronting the communist movement, the objective conditions that produce differences in approach to the resolution of practical tasks; subjective factors also have to be considered. It is necessary to expose those who today take a divisive attitude, hamper the unity of communist parties, and, by weakening their potential, assist the class enemy.
Motivated by the interests of uniting the communist move-
ment, the participants in the 1969 Meeting recorded that "the diverse conditions in which the Communist Parties operate, the different approaches to practical tasks and even differences on certain questions must not hinder concerted international action by fraternal Parties, particularly on the basic problems of the anti-imperialist struggle"."''
The tendency for Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism to move closer together has markedly strengthened of late. The ideological and political platform of contemporary ``Left''- wing revisionism is a policy of adventure-seeking which the Maoists had advocated in the 1960s and which they subsequently renounced in favour of an alliance with the most reactionary circles of imperialism.
The nationalistic ideas, that have nothing in common with the internationalist ideology of the working class, pervade unsubstantiated accusations of revisionism against the CPSU and most other fraternal parties by the Chinese leaders who are supported by certain Leftist ideologists. These ideas permeate the Maoist theory of the moving of the centre of revolutionary struggle to the East---to China, and the pettybourgeois theses concerning the decisive role of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America in the anti-imperialist struggle. These are replete with chauvinistic and hegemonistic pretentions for the Chinese leaders to play the leading role in the international communist and national liberation movement.
Petty-bourgeois ``revolutionism'' in ``Left''-wing revisionist theories is apparent in the counterposing of the popular struggle for peace to the anti-imperialist struggle, in the one-sided orientation of ``Left''-wing opportunists to armed struggle. Indicative in that respect is the declaration published in Calcutta of the Central Committee of the Marxist Communist Party of India on the subject of the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. The Meet-
* International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, p. 47.
Le Drapeau rouge, January 29, 1971, p. 21.
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75ing's conclusions are criticised from a Leftist revisionist viewpoint. The authors of the declaration see the ``sins'' of the Main Document of the 1969 Meeting in the following:
(i) It allegedly sets the work for peace as the main task of the anti-imperialist struggle and puts the national liberation struggle second;
(ii) Direct and comprehensive assistance of socialist countries to peoples conducting an armed struggle against imperialism comes second to successes of the socialist states in economic competition (this is asserted despite the fact that wherever armed anti-imperialist struggle takes place, it has always rested on the political and material support, including armed support from the Soviet Union and other socialist
states);
(iii) The Main Document contains formulations which bear witness to insufficient stress on the national liberation struggle in different countries. It plays down the importance of contradictions between imperialism and the national liberation struggle which is now in the forefront of struggle in Asia, Africa and Latin America;
(iv) The Main Document, it is alleged, contains an assertion of a revisionist viewpoint on the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism;
(v) In examining the situation in the newly liberated countries, the Main Document makes a reassuring statement that several of these countries have already entered upon the non-capitalist road to socialism.
The unsubstantiated nature of the above-mentioned assertions is apparent to any unbiased reader of the documents of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. They do not counterpose the struggle for peaceful coexistence and removal of the threat of a world thermonuclear war to the interests of the national liberation movement. They do not counterpose these interests to the importance of economic gains in the socialist community.
From the above-quoted extracts, it is apparent that the erroneous ideas of Peking are shared even by those parties
and groups which do not blindly follow Peking and which, on several issues, are out of step with it. However, they are sometimes captive to ``Left''-wing revisionist views, particularly on the questions of the struggle for peace, of the national liberation movement, and of armed anti-imperialist struggle. Furthermore, the Peking leaders themselves, being ideological and political mentors of various Leftist groupings, advocated a "revolutionary war" against imperialism only in words. In fact, they always preferred the people of other countries to conduct an anti-imperialist war, with China remaining on the sidelines.
In these circumstances, it was not the Peking leaders but the political parties and movements which had succumbed to their influence that had to pay for the reckless slogans emanating from Peking. Despite the situation being far from revolutionary, these parties had raised the flag of armed struggle and paid the cost. This is what happened to the Communist Party of Indonesia whose leaders came under the influence of Peking and took a reckless course which was far from Marxist-Leninist tactics and strategy of the revolutionary struggle. Much blood was shed for the same reason in Burma and other countries where communist and revolutionary-democratic leaders took a Leftist adventurist course.
Peking propagandists have recently been playing on the national feelings of small and poor peoples in newly-- independent countries, instilling in them the absurd idea (from a class viewpoint) of the growing antagonism between big and small, rich and poor countries. They maintain that big and rich countries (irrespective of their social system!) are trying to enslave the small and poor nations. They widely use the false conception of "one or two super-powers". In all these notions, nationalism and anti-Sovietism have, conveniently for imperialism, converged into a single stream. Accordingly, many authors, particularly in America, supported the Maoist propagandist outpourings.
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77THE PRESENT STAGE OF ANTI-REVISIONIST STRUGGLE
The present stage of the struggle against revisionism has certain peculiarities which distinguish it from previous stages. These are as follows.
Firstly, in recent years there has been a tendency for Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism to converge largely on an anti-Soviet and nationalistic basis, counterposed to the entire world communist movement and its individual detachments.
This process is evident both in the approximating of the ideological positions of Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism, and in the trend towards an organisational unity of various factional groupings. Peking is increasingly becoming the major centre which strives to attract to itself and take under its wing these anti-party and opportunist trends irrespective of their leanings.
While the danger of ``Left''-wing revisionism was shown in the shift of the Chinese leaders to special ideological positions incompatible with Leninism, the danger of Right-wing revisionism was glaringly apparent at the time of the political crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Czechoslovak events revealed that both Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism appeared at that historical moment important for the fate of socialism in Czechoslovakia in a single camp---the camp of the avowed enemies of socialism. In 1968, these revisionists operated in the same nationalist and anti-Soviet ranks against the USSR and other fraternal countries, against the interests of Czechoslovak working people, the international working class, world socialism and the class interests of the international communist movement.
The neutral position taken by Right-wingers and the proPeking position of ``Left''-wingers during the armed incidents, provoked by Peking, on the Sino-Soviet border in the spring and summer of 1969, was one more step to the convergence of Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionists.
Events have also demonstrated that differences within the communist movement were due not only to the subversive activity of imperialism and the special complexity of the political situation and other objective conditions; they have stemmed also to a large degree from the penetration of the communist movement by Right and ``Left'' revisionist influences.
The objective situation has shown that in the new conditions, both Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism presents a danger, especially since the ideological and political nexus between them is growing increasingly stronger.
For individual parties, of course, Right- or ``Left''-wing opportunism may present a greater danger, but the communist movement as a whole can be harmed by any opportunism, any departure from the Marxist-Leninist ideological and political basis of the communist movement. Speaking at the 1969 International Meeting, Leonid Brezhnev said: "We share the stand of the fraternal Parties which in their decisions draw attention to the need for resolutely combating this danger. The Communist Parties justly believe that the interests of their own cohesion, the interests of the whole anti-imperialist movement insistently demand an intensification of the struggle against revisionism and both Right and ``Left'' opportunism."*
Secondly, the joint platform of Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism at the present time is anti-Sovietism and nationalism. It is on this basis that both brands of revisionism are being integrated and fused into a single anti-party and anti-communist force. Anti-Bolshevism was typical of all revisionist trends at the beginning of the century and antiSovietism became a feature of every type of revisionism after the October Socialist Revolution. But it has never had such a profound and dominating effect on the revisionist stance as it has today.
* International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, p. 156.
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79Nationalism had also been typical of many opportunist trends in the past, particularly in certain periods like, for example, the First World War. As Lenin put it, "the ideological and political affinity, connection, and even identity between opportunism and social-nationalism are beyond doubt".* But this affinity has today become a characteristic feature of all opportunist trends.
Today, nationalism is the principal ideological weapon used by both types of opportunism against the principles of proletarian internationalism. It has become the policy of opportunism irrespective of its orientation in the fight against the unity of socialist states and of the international communist movement.
The propagandist centres of the imperialist states and the propagandist services of Peking are today principal sources of anti-Sovietism and nationalism. The ideological affinity of both are palpably clear. Having departed from Marxism-Leninism by making dogmatic mistakes and taking a ``Left''-wing opportunist line, the Chinese Party leaders have now formed an unprincipled bloc on an anti-Soviet platform with any, even the most reactionary, imperialist forces, including blatant apologists for capitalism and enemies of socialism and communism.
Nationalism and Great-Han chauvinism are the essence of the present ideological platform of Maoism. The revolutionary phrase-mongering which concealed the anti-- proletarian, anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist essence of Maoism culminating in the "cultural revolution" has now given way to a policy of complicity with imperialism, a cold political calculation subordinated to the same chauvinistic and hegemonistic goals.
Facts show that for more than a decade the Peking leaders, no matter with what theoretical formulas they tried to veil their true political face, have been conducting a campaign against the USSR and other socialist states, and operating
on the side of the imperialist forces against socialism. As the 10th Party Congress showed, the recent period is said to be characterised by Maoist leaders' even greater turn to the right. In their search for new contacts with the capitalist states they have joined forces with the most conservative and reactionary circles, with embittered foes of the working class, working people and the cause of peace and socialism.
The foreign and home policy of the present Chinese leadership is poisoned with anti-Sovietism. In their state of nationalistic and great-power frenzy, they have descended to absurd claims on Soviet territory. A stream of malicious and monstrous abuse is pouring forth from Peking against the Soviet social and state system and the Leninist policy of the CPSU.
The approach of the Chinese leaders to international problems is determined by their striving to do as much damage as possible to the interests of the Soviet Union and the socialist community. China is sabotaging the efforts of the Soviet Union and other socialist states to bring about disarmament and detente. Within the United Nations, the Chinese representatives continually slander Soviet policy and, in UN voting on Soviet proposals on a number of urgent issues, they have often been in the same camp as the most reactionary imperialist circles, including the racists of South Africa.
The fight against opportunism has today become above all a struggle against anti-Sovietism and nationalism, which are common to all anti-Leninist trends.
Leonid Brezhnev has said: "The fight against Right- and ``Left''-wing revisionism, against nationalism, continues to be urgent. It is precisely the nationalistic tendencies, especially those which assume the form of anti-Sovietism, that bourgeois ideologists and bourgeois propaganda have most willingly relied upon in the fight against socialism and the communist movement."""
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 154.
24th Congress of the CPSU, p. 27.
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81Thirdly, the special danger presented by both brands of revisionism lies in the fact that they are acting detrimentally to the unity of the socialist states, the world communist movement and all anti-imperialist forces. Peking is not ceasing its attempts to split the socialist camp and the world communist movement. Its efforts designed to attract certain socialist states and communist parties and to counterpose them to the CPSU and the USSR testify to the intention of the Chinese leaders to weaken the world socialist system and to cause its internal disintegration. The provocative activity of Maoism is being increasingly and firmly repulsed by the communist and workers' parties in the fraternal states, motivated by their interests in strengthening the international solidarity and unity of the socialist community.
The struggle against revisionism has become an important integral part of the struggle to unite and consolidate the socialist countries and the international communist movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
Events show that from making anti-Soviet and nationalist distortions, the revisionists have now taken the path of fighting against the communist parties in their own countries. They laud any idea aimed at disuniting the communist movement, and openly advocate the legalisation of factional activity inside communist parties. Both Fischer and Marek, for example, have decried as ``fateful'' the decision taken on Lenin's suggestion at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to ban factions. The Czechoslovak revisionists also demanded the freedom of factions and respect for the opinion of a minority which, one need hardly add, did not stop them from persecuting honest Communists opposed to the opportunist policy of Dubcek and Smrkovsky.
Besides opposing the unity of the international communist movement and trying to disunite the fraternal parties, the revisionists support and take to absurd limits the harmful theories of ``polycentrism'' which, they allege, is inevitable
in the present-day communist movement. They try to show that the lack of a single centre to guide the communist movement precludes the need and possibility of some sort of coordinated activity by the communist and workers' parties in the anti-imperialist struggle, the need for and possibility of joint elaboration by the communist and workers' parties of a common ideological policy on vital questions of world development and the anti-imperialist struggle. The absurdity of that approach to strategy and tactics is obvious.
The international communist movement does not have a single guiding organ as it had at the time of the Comintern. Communist parties can only co-ordinate their positions and work out a common policy by means of bilateral consultations and multilateral meetings. Experience has shown that the international meetings of fraternal parties provide valuable results. It enables them collectively to work out concerted positions on vital problems of the anti-imperialist struggle and it helps to consolidate the unity of fraternal parties.
Revisionists challenge the expediency of such international meetings. They pretend to be against any forms of internationalism like those of the past and want to pass themselves as supporters of new methods of regulating internationalism; they pour scorn upon the Comintern, stooping to a crude distortion of the historical truth and misrepresenting the facts of history, reiterating the insinuations made by bourgeois anti-communist propaganda.
If they really want to advocate new forms of international contacts, why is it that they refute the experience of the international meetings---a new and useful form of international contacts between Communists?
The revisionists question the expediency of international forums of fraternal parties not as fighters against a central organisation of Communists. Nobody is suggesting that a new Comintern or other similar organisation should be set up at the present time. The revisionists are against the international meetings because the whole system of their ideas is
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83aimed not at strengthening the ideological basis of the international communist movement, which has always been Marxism-Leninism, but at undermining this basis, not at uniting the communist movement around Marxist-Leninist principles, but at dividing fraternal parties and wreaking havoc in their ranks.
The modern ideal of revisionism is even not polycentrism but the absence of any co-ordinated activity within the communist movement, an ideological disorder and confusion, ``freedom'' of convictions and views as this is understood by the petty-bourgeoisie. This is a distinctive feature of the entire ideological outlook of Right-wing opportunism. They wanted Czechoslovakia to be a testing ground for such conception, even at the price of it leaving the socialist community and returning to the imperialist camp.
The entire experience of contemporary international communist movements is at odds with revisionist demands and ideas. Communists cannot reject the fundamental principles of their movement since that would mean a departure from the principles of Marxism-Leninism and inevitable defeat in the class struggle. They cannot renounce the practice of jointly working out tactical and strategic guidelines on important issues in the anti-imperialist struggle, for that would invariably lead to forfeiting their place as the vanguard of the world anti-imperialist movement; it would mean deserting from the anti-imperialist army. They cannot give up concerted action, insofar as that would be a break with proletarian internationalism, the dissolution of the world communist movement as a foremost political force in the antiimperialist struggle.
At the end of the 1960s, all kinds of revisionists made desperate efforts to prevent the convocation of the International Meeting of the Communist and Workers' Parties. They realised, of course, that the Meeting would speak out against their attacks on Marxism-Leninism as an ideological basis for the activity of the communist movement, against any divisive activity within the communist movement. The com-
munist parties made it their objective to rally the communist movement, to shore up its ideological foundation. The long and careful preparations for the Meeting, undertaken by all fraternal parties which expressed a desire to participate in it, the wide exchange of opinion at preparatory meetings and the Meeting itself, the documents adopted by the participants in the Meeting were all a hard blow to revisionism and opportunism of the Right and the ``Left''.
The 1969 Meeting equipped communist and workers' parties with new arguments and a new approach in the fight for the purity of Marxist-Leninist theory, for the victory of genuinely revolutionary tactics and strategy in the international communist movement. It laid down a comprehensive programme of anti-imperialist struggle, encouraged further unity and consolidation of the world communist movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
The 24th CPSU Congress contributed substantially to upholding the ideological principles of the international communist movement. In the Report of the Central Committee, delivered at the Congress by Leonid Brezhnev and in speeches of many delegates and foreign guests, a profound analysis was made of contemporary world problems from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint.
The fight against revisionism and nationalism in any country, of course, lies primarily within the competence of a particular fraternal party. At the same time, if that fight does not take place at some link of the communist movement, this is reflected in the movement as a whole.
The CPSU displays a Leninist attitude and resolution in safeguarding the ideological basis of the international communist movement. In decisively safeguarding the purity of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, together with other fraternal parties, it is consistently striving to strengthen the unity and solidarity of the socialist states, the international communist movement and all anti-imperialist forces.
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The 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in May 1971 marked a signal victory in the fight against revisionism and nationalism; it provided a MarxistLeninist evaluation of the reasons for the 1968-1969 political crisis and drew important political conclusions from these events. Communists in other fraternal parties have also begun to wage a more consistent and firm battle against revisionists and opportunists. The conviction is gaining ground in the communist movement that no fraternal party can successfully advance if it does not conduct a consistent and determined battle for the purity of Marxism-Leninism.
PART I
CRITIQUE OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL
AND IDEOLOGICAL
PRINCIPLES OF RICHT-WING
REVISIONISM
CHAPTER 3
REVISIONIST FALSIFICATION OF MARXISM-LENINISM
Present-day revisionist conceptions are aimed at destroying the monolithic integrity and structural unity of MarxistLeninist teaching. That is the objective of the Right-wing revisionist theories of ``pluralism'' of Marxism, of ``open'' Marxism and the ``deideologisation'' of Marxism. Revisionists make special efforts to undermine the philosophical foundations of Marxism, to take the ideology out of Marxist philosophy and to divorce it from the policy of the communist parties.
Right-wing revisionists fully accept the ideas of " worldoutlook neutrality" and "free spirit" of Party members that are officially stated in the guideline documents of parties belonging to the Socialist International. Of course, these Right-wing Socialist theoreticians are far from being neutral in regard to Marxism-Leninism; they wage a constant ideological war against it in the spirit of the very worst types of contemporary anti-communism.
The same is true of Right-wing revisionists. Predrag Vranicki, for example, asserts in his theses "On the Need for Different Versions in Marxist Philosophy" that "it has been an undialectical decision to proclaim a certain definite form of Marxist philosophy to be the theoretical basis of a single party, and to give that party the right to determine philosophical questions".* Garaudy says much the same. The
* Akten des XIV Internationalen Kongresses fur Philosophie, Vienna, 1968, Vol. II, p. 139.
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89unity of philosophy and politics, in his view, is "a totalitarian and clerical concept". A pluralistic society, he maintains, must of necessity rely on a division of philosophy and politics. While calling himself a materialist, he demands freedom of propaganda for idealism and religious views in a "pluralistic society", a society of "humane socialism". He and other revisionists strive to undermine both the ideological unity and the unity of action of Communists and to turn the party into a debate society, an arena of factional struggle.
Marxism-Leninism has never identified politics and philosophy as the same thing. Genuine Marxists have always proceeded from the idea that the programme, tactics and strategy of a communist party must be based on science. Marxist philosophy, being dialectical and historical materialism, is the ideological-theoretical basis of a Marxist-Leninist party, its political guidance of the class struggle of the working class, of the construction of socialism and communism. This was reaffirmed at the 24th CPSU Congress. Thus, the policy of the working class and of the Communist Party is organically linked with Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
The education of party members and all working people in a spirit of dialectical materialism, the fight against bourgeois ideology, idealist and religious views, and scientific atheist propaganda all comprise a vital element in the ideological work of Marxist-Leninist parties.
THE CONCEPTION OF ``OPEN'' MARXISM
Bourgeois philosophers and revisionists, opponents of the Marxist-Leninist principle of the partisan nature of ideology, have put forward the conception of ``open'' Marxism which boils down to attempts to ``synthesise'' separate Marxist propositions with the ``attainments'' of present-day non-Marxist philosophy.
In actual fact, these ``defenders'' of Marxism and of its "creative development" have not produced anything new.
They are merely repeating the discredited experience of Bernstein and other past revisionists who endeavoured to ``update'' Marxism and to ``open'' it up to new trends in the bourgeois-liberal social science of their time. The same mechanism of ideological transplant is operating in contemporary revisionism. All that has changed is the character of specific ideological sources. It is mainly existentialism, neo-positivism and neo-Freudianism that today serve as the philosophical sources of revisionism.
Existentialism has a particularly strong influence on present-day philosophical revisionism. Martin Heidegger's philosophy of being, Sartre's concept of freedom and Jaspers' ideas on the marginal situation are transferred virtually in toto by revisionists to their philosophical works under the guise of ``authentic'' Marxism.
The revisionists go to absurd lengths in their attempt to erode Marxism and deprive it of its clear-cut ideological outlines, Danko Grlic, for example, sees a similarity between the views of Marx and Nietzsche, the reactionary German philosopher and ideological forerunner of fascism. In his opinion, what they have in common is a prophetic vision of the world; the historical consequences of their ideas, despite their differences, "are very close in the major strivings of their path".* Finally, Grlic finds a parallel between Nietzsche's concept of the superman, his notorious " fairhaired beast" and the communist ideal of harmoniously developed personality. Such are the attempts by revisionists to ``synthesise'' the great revolutionary philosophy of the working class and the extreme reactionary bourgeois concepts.
As a result of such ``synthesis'' and ``enrichment'', Marxism in the writings of revisionists becomes something amorphous, completely dissolved in bourgeois philosophy. Then the revisionists say that Marxism is no longer valid and can no
* Quoted from S. F. Oduyev, Tropami Zaratustry, Moscow, 1971, p. 13 (in Russian).
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91longer exist as a special branch of social science. That is the view of Leszek Kolakowski, for example, who maintains that "the concept of Marxism as a special branch of thought will gradually fade away and in time will disappear altogether just as Newtonism no longer exists in physics, Linnaenism in botany and Harveyism in physiology. That will mean that the vital process of scientific development will assimilate the entire scientific attainment of Marx, restricting the sphere of application of certain ideas, correcting and removing others."""
In the course of such ``correction'' and ``removal'', revisionists attempt to deprive Marxism of its revolutionary essence, its scientific dialectical-materialist content and to convert it into a liberal-bourgeois doctrine.
Many bourgeois ideologists have in one way or another ``assimilated'' separate Marxist propositions and some even call themselves Marxists. In fact, these "non-communist Marxists", as they are sometimes called in Western literature, remain typical bourgeois ideologists remote from the working-class movement. They eclectically select certain Marxist propositions and formulas, taken out of context, deprive them of any real meaning and adapt them to the needs of bourgeois idealist philosophy. "Non-communist Marxism" is also dangerous because it serves as a direct ideological source of Right-wing revisionism. It is not accidental that bourgeois propaganda should create a halo of "creative Marxists" and "best socialist minds of the day" around the "non-communist Marxists" like Jean-Paul Sartre, Erich Fromm, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch. It counterposes them to real Marxism-Leninism, which is alleged to wallow in dogmatism and to have exhausted its creative potential.
Lenin's warning is still valid that no bourgeois professor who is "capable of making very valuable contributions in the
special fields of chemistry, history or physics, can be trusted one iota when it comes to philosophy. Why? For the same reason that not a single professor of political economy, who may be capable of very valuable contributions in the field of factual and specialised investigations, can be trusted one iota when it comes to the general theory of political economy. For in modern society the latter is as much a partisan science as is epistemology."*
An integration of ideological forces opposed to MarxismLeninism has been taking place in recent years. Open anticommunists, ``experts'' on Marxism, Sovietologists and revisionists of every sort are uniting on a common ideological platform in their fight against revolutionary theory. In spite of certain differences in initial premises and ideological conceptions, they have a single goal---to undermine the monolithic unity of the basic principles of Marxism-- Leninism, to ``mollify'' Marxism and open it up for the penetration of bourgeois ideas; this they do by open frontal attacks or with the aid of ideological subversion. Idealism and metaphysics, which have undivided sway over present-day bourgeois philosophy, ultimately serve as an ideological substantiation of imperialist policy.
Marxism is open for constant creative development by generalising the latest historical experience and attainments in special sciences. But it has always been closed to any penetration from ideological elements alien to it, to bourgeois ideas and conceptions. Just as there can be no convergence between socialism and capitalism, there can be no synthesis between Marxism-Leninism and contemporary bourgeois ideology.
Marxism-Leninism develops on its own theoretical and methodological foundation; the creative development of Marxist philosophy is effected by the collective efforts of all Communist and Workers' parties loyal to the spirit of Leninism.
* L. Kolakowski, "Aktualne i nieaktualne pojecie marksismu", Nowa Kultura, No. 4, January 27, 1957.
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 342.
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93The bold raising by the CPSU of new theoretical and practical issues of communist construction, the resolute struggle against dogmatism and phrase-mongering have created, especially of late, a situation favourable for a creative development of Marxist-Leninist theory in the USSR. Soviet philosophical thought is occupied with a creative search for and resolution of new issues presented by social development, the scientific and technological revolution and the achievements of sciences. Marxist-Leninist philosophy is also successfully developing in the fraternal socialist states, and Marxist philosophers in capitalist countries are making a considerable contribution to its development.
``PLURALISM'' OF MARXISM
Contemporary Right-wing revisionism tries to justify the ideas of ``pluralism'' of Marxism and Marxist philosophy by asserting that they are inevitably disintegrating into several schools of thought.
Vranicki, for example, assumes that philosophy depends on the meaning and level of historical practice and must demonstrate the "multilateral aspects of a theoretical understanding of the complex relations of history". He draws the incorrect conclusion that various versions of Marxist philosophy should exist: ". . .the modes of approach to historical and human problems are potentially so diverse that they permit the most varied conceptions of Marxist philosophy, and also the most acute divergences among them, although each of them may make its own contribution to the problems of human and historical affairs... . This shows the need radically to reject the viewpoint of a single Marxist philosophy or a single structure of that philosophy and to accept the need for different versions."*
Anti-communists like Raymond Aron, Brzezinski, Sidney
* Akten des XIV Internationalen Kongresses fur Philosophie, Vienna, 1968, Vol. II, p. 140.
Hook, Gustav Wetter and Innocent Bochensky are at pains to prove there is no single Marxism-Leninism. Let us note above all that logic is conspicuous by its absence in the ideas of Vranicki and other upholders of this conception. The need for many versions of Marxist philosophy does not follow from their assertion that philosophy depends on the level of historical practice and that it must in a multilateral way approach the reflection of complex relations of reality. It is precisely Marxist-Leninist philosophy---dialectical materialism---and nothing else which enriches and synthesises in its continual creative development all social and historical practice. Materialist dialectics as a science puts forward the vital methodological demand for a comprehensive examination of a subject in all its aspects and mediacies. But this does not prevent dialectical materialism from remaining structurally whole and a consistently scientific philosophical teaching. There cannot be different competing sciences studying one and the same object, just as there cannot be different (the more so, polar) truths about one and the same question. And if the latter axiom is not to the liking of philosophising revisionists, that does not mean that they are right and science is wrong. Being under the very strong influence of existentialism and other irrational trends in bourgeois philosophy, they do not regard philosophy, including Marxist philosophy, as a science. In their opinion, scientific method is incompatible with the spirit of Marxist philosophy which they reject as a system of scientific knowledge, and which they recognise arbitrarily only as a method of "total criticism" of all existing things, as a special mode of philosophising on the inner workings of human psyche, as the "free expression of the spirit", as an abstract anthropological humanism. All conclusions of Marxist-Leninist philosophy are based on theoretical generalisation of the data presented by the social and natural sciences.
The theory of the ``pluralism'' of Marxism has certain class and epistemological roots. Its class roots and social and political objectives are sufficiently clear: it is aimed at undermining
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95the unity of a single revolutionary philosophy of the working class, at portraying Leninism merely as an unadequate version of Marxism, which is valid with certain reservations only for backward countries with a predominantly peasant population. One of its aims, alien to the working class, is to rehabilitate revisionist and anti-Leninist ideas like Trotskyism and Maoism, which, it claims, are equally valid ``versions'' of Marxism.
The epistemological roots of the theory of ``pluralism'' or ``multiplicity'' of Marxism are to be found in the metaphysical absolutising of certain aspects of the complex process of cognising social reality, as opposed to the various functions of Marxist philosophy which express a specific approach to various aspects and relationships of objective reality (for example, the scientific methodological function of Marxism is opposed to the humanist one; creative and positive function---to the critical one).
The ideological source of the theory of ``multiplicity'' of Marxism lies in the irrational content of the contemporary bourgeois theory of knowledge which rejects any possibility of cognising the world and obtaining an objective truth, basing it on a purely subjective and absolutely relative character of human cognition.
Modern revisionists take a completely arbitrary attitude to criteria for separating out various versions of Marxism. This again testifies to the unscientific nature and subjectivism of the idea of their ``pluralist'' Marxist theory. Sometimes they base their delineation of Marxism on geography and produce concepts of "regional Marxisms"---"Western" and ``Eastern''. One cannot help noticing that Right-wing revisionist ideas on the existence of regional forms of Marxism are based on the reactionary concept of ``Eurocentrism''---the idea that Western Europe is the sole centre of world civilisation and culture and that everything created in the East has no scientific or cultural value. Marxism here is portrayed as a purely Western philosophy, while Leninism is presented as an Eastern teaching inapplicable to Western European
civilisation. This reactionary viewpoint rejects the indisputable fact of the integrity of human history and the international character of science.
Revisionists often distinguish separate types of Marxism, taking as their point of departure certain personalities who are artificially isolated from the overall development of Marxist philosophy, which is based on social and historical practice, and above all, on the revolutionary struggle of the international working class. Thus, the views of Marx are counterposed to those of Engels, the views of Marx and Engels---to those of Lenin, and so on. Finally, as the basis for compartmentalising Marxist philosophy, they take specific features of a revision of dialectical and historical materialism. For example, many revisionists speak of the existence of four major schools of Marxist philosophy: 1. The positivist-scientific (allegedly taken from the philosophical works of Engels); 2. Hegelian-dialectical (Lukacs and Bloch); 3. Anthropological-humanist (apparently taken from the early works of Marx); 4. Structural anti-humanist.
The most typical view is that Marxism and Marxist philosophy contain two basic approaches. The first--- ``scientistic'' is noted for its overestimation and fetishisation of the role of science in cognition. It is based on the concept of "objective laws", recognises the theory of reflection and sees Marxist philosophy as a universal method of scientific cognition and transformation of the world. This is regarded as being dialectical materialism whose founder was, in the eyes of the revisionists, Engels. The school of Engels was continued by Lenin, Plekhanov and other adherents to dialectical materialism.
Having proclaimed the thesis of a plurality of Marxist philosophy and of rivalry between its different versions, revisionist philosophers, those ardent followers of "free spirit", concentrate their criticism (and falsification) on this particular ``version'' of Marxist philosophy---i.e., dia. lectical and historical materialism which is said to have claims on being a scientific philosophy. In the spirit of con-
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97temporary Marxology, the Right-wing revisionists aver that Engels fell into sheer scientism of a positudst nature and obscured the "real sense" of the philosophical views of the early Marx. They campaign against dialectical materialism and declare it to be false, alienated from a form of philosophical thinking, leading to dogmatism, schematism, conformism and political apologetics.
Right-wing revisionists usually regard themselves as defenders of the second---i.e., the ``humanist'' or `` anthropological'' :school which they claim provides a real and authentic interpretation of Marxism. They take this from the early works of Marx (mainly from his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844) and link it with a certain doctored interpretation of alienation and the self-alienation of the human personality.
The revisionist interpretation of the early works of Marx converts the creator of dialectical materialism and scientific communism into an anthropologist of an existentialist type. Contemporary Marxist-Leninist thought has exposed such falsification sufficiently fully and convincingly. Revisionist attempts to counterpose the philosophical views of Engels to those of Marx simply stand established historical facts on their head.
Lenin, one of the most profound students of the works of Marx and Engels, frequently noted that Engels in his works set forth the philosophical teaching of Marx and that the views of Engels presented in his book Anti-Duhring (which Marx read in manuscript and approved) were in "full conformity" with "this materialist philosophy of Marx`s''.* Like bourgeois ``experts'' on Marx, Right-wing revisionists distort the historical fact that Marx and Engels were in complete unity of views and had a certain division of labour. In the last decades of his life, Marx worked on Capital, while Engels worked on the new teaching as an integral system, including its philosophical part. But this difference is rel-
ative; after all, Capital is not simply an economic work, it is also a profound philosophical study in which the dialectical method received unparalleled application and development. The philosophical meanderings of the contemporary Rightwing revisionists have nothing in common with the real views of Marx. Marx was the creator of dialectical materialism, while Engels was his co-worker and of the same mind.
NEGATION OF LENINISM
The prime aim of the proponents of ``pluralist'' Marxism, like all contemporary anti-communists, is to defame Leninism as Marxism of the contemporary era, to challenge its international character, its vitality and creative nature.
The book by Ernst Fischer, What Marx Actually Said is a good example of that. After enumerating the "four versions of Marxist convictions" of the present day, Fischer does not even refer to Leninism which, in his opinion, is a regional, ``Eastern'' teaching: "During the lifetime of Lenin, Leninism was called the views of that group (Bolsheviks) which Lenin headed inside Russian Social-Democracy and under whose leadership the October Revolution of 1917 took place."* The specific features of Leninism, in Fischer's opinion, are, firstly, an exaggeration of the role of the subjective factor in history which results in an actual departure from the social determinism of Marx and, secondly, elaboration of the question of using the peasant masses in revolution, which leads to the conclusion that a peasant question is the main feature of Leninism.
The above-mentioned view of Fischer is typical of all Right-wing revisionists, but is not new and does not in any way fit the facts. It is indisputable that Lenin provided a profound theoretical interpretation of the role of the subjective factor in history, especially at critical moments, during a period of revolutionary change. Lenin was a great
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 51.
* E. Fischer, Was Marx wirklich sagte, Vienna, 1968, pp. 158, 159. 7---2332
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tactician and strategist of class struggle who ably directed the revolutionary consciousness, energy and will of the working class and all working people to tackling objectively mature tasks of historical development. He was always severe with dogmatists and opportunists who underestimated the role of the subjective factor in history, who descended to a state of social fatalism and spontaneity.
Lenin did not exaggerate the role of the subjective factor in history or commit the sin of voluntarism. In fact, he soberly analysed the objective conditions of the revolutionary struggle, mercilessly fought against ``Left''-wing adventurists who would not take these conditions into consideration. There is no contradiction between Marx and Lenin in interpreting the basic principles of a materialist understanding of history.
It is also beyond doubt that Lenin made a huge service in theoretically substantiating the alliance between the working class and the peasantry. No socialist revolution or building of socialism in the USSR and elsewhere would have been possible without a resolution of that question. Nonetheless, although the question of the allies of the working class is extremely important, the main feature of Leninism is not the peasant question but the teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the ways to liberate the working class and all working people, the laws of the transition from capitalism to socialism on an international scale. It is these problems which make up the main aspects of Leninism as Marxism of the contemporary era.
While in a genetic respect Leninism is a new stage in the development of Marxism, in a structural respect, Marxism-Leninism is an organically whole philosophy based on a generalisation of all human history and on a theoretical analysis of the laws of the present historical epoch. MarxistLeninist philosophy, being the methodology of scientific cognition, generalises the latest attainments of the natural and social sciences. That is why the pulse of contemporaneity beats in the laws and categories of Leninism which express
the future development of mankind. The sum total of historical development of the present era bears witness to the vitality of Leninism.
Lenin revealed an unsurpassed model of creative attitude to revolutionary theory; he developed and raised all the component parts of Marxism to a new and higher stage. His early works which appeared in the mid-1890s laid the basis for a new stage in the development of Marxism, the Leninist stage. It was called forth by the requirements of the revolutionary struggle, the need for a theoretical interpretation of the laws of the new historical epoch and the revolution in natural science that was taking place at the turn of the century. All communist parties agree that the new stage in the development of Marxism was connected with the name of Lenin; therefore, the concept of Leninism is not some sort of personal invention, as Fischer and other revisionists maintain.
Despite the opinion of Right-wing revisionists, the Leninist stage of Marxism did not end with the death of Lenin; it is continuing today, when revolutionary theory is being developed by the collective efforts of the communist and workers' parties true to the creative spirit of Leninism. The works of Lenin constitute an entire era in the development of Marxist philosophy. His book Materialism and Empiric-Criticism and other works have given Marxist philosophy a new form corresponding to the revolutionary discoveries in natural science and the radical changes in human social development.
Lenin attributed immense importance to a further development of materialist dialectics as the logic, theory and method of cognising and transforming the world. In criticising metaphysics, he made more specific the dialectical materialist conception of development, creatively elaborated the laws and categories of materialist dialectics. He regarded dialectics and its principles as the living spirit of Marxism; he revealed the objective dialectics of the new historical epoch.
7*