I was reading Carrillo’s “Eurocommunism and the State” for an article and he did that thing a lot of revisionist do where they go “well everything is revisionism!!! Lenin was a revisionist!!! Marx was a revisionist of himself!!!” Etc. Etc.
But really they are, honestly probably purposefully, obfuscating what revisionism is. For example, he uses the change from war communism to the NEP to post-nep policies as an example of lenin being a revisionist of himself, which…no? That’s not what revisionism is. That’s just applying different policies to material conditions. I mean it gets a little more complicated obviously but I honestly do very much hate it.
Everything that doesn’t fit within the viewpoints of our niche western commie party is revisionist. It doesn’t matter if we never had to actually run a state, we know what communism is.
i see revisionism like a trick used to degradate socialism and try to revert it to capitalism
Revisionism is a vague term but describes those who continue to be communist while trying to revision the movement such as Nikita Khrushchev did during the de-Stalinization when he liberalized the economy. This is different than reformism which wishes to reform communism make it “democratic” under democratic socialism or social democracy.
It has been used against Deng Xiaoping’s liberalization of China as Dengism continues today, it is important to note this accusation attacks AES and also it is believed that Dengism is being used to have controlled capitalism under a socialist government, so that China can properly transition from feudalism to capitalism to socialism like Karl Marx intended.
Honestly revisionism should just be dropped as a term due to how vague it is, and how it’s been used to demonize AES, and as a dogmatic adherence to whatever given text suits the demonizer.
Scientific socialism needs to undergo constant revisions and updates to suit changing conditions and particular situations.
Yeah, that seems fair. Like the impression I get is people who throw the accusation (in the best case) are meaning to say that some communists or other are abandoning core principles while still having a communist aesthetic, but at that point we could just say they’re communists in name only, if it was actually proven to be true. On the other hand, doing stuff some of the time that is not textbook is just what happens when you put theory in practice; doesn’t mean it’s necessarily in opposition to communist goals. Marxism and related theory is, as you say, a science. It’s not a religious dogma. A betrayal isn’t using theory and practice poorly, it’s abandoning the science and/or ethical goals.
That’s kinda the problem. It’s not just they specifically are communists in name only, but that they also spread their incorrect ideas. And they, like Carrillo, don’t often say “we’re revising marxism away from marxism,” they often don’t even say they are revising marxism. So revisionism [like moralism] is something that has to be abscribed. I.e, peaceful reform is revisionism not because the revisionist say it’s revisionism but because we prove that it is
I may be under-equipped on the subject myself. I just got the sense that Muad’s point was something like “marxist theory inherently revises in order to meet the conditions, so calling misuses of it revisionism could be a bit confusing” and I was kinda running with that thought.
It’s approaching the right direction.
The key difference in my experience is adaptation vs revision.
For example, saying “revolution can be led by a vanguard party leading the working class” isn’t revisionism, because it still holds the fundamental truths of class conflict
But “Socialism can be formed by a small group of conspirators taking control of the state and imposinh socialism” is revisionism, as that is, essentially, a form of utopianism or ideologism [I know Blanqui wasn’t a marxist obviously, but you get the point. I’m also debating whether to include economism as a form of revisionism or not]
Edit: This didn’t really answer that adaptation part.
A better example would be that if someone said "Socialism could have been reformed into via universal suffrage in early 1800s Britain that [presumably, since that’s what Marx believed] isn’t revisionism [not just because it was what marx believed. I think there’s a section on this in "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific].
But if someone said “socialism can be reformed into via universal suffrage in modern britain” that would be revisionism. It’s one lense seeing two different things and coming to two different conclusions.
I think I get the distinction you mean. Adaptation may be a better word for how theory morphs in response to conditions.
Revisionism is when you do things differently from what you did before and the more different they are the more revisionist it is.
what is revisionism anyways? it gets thrown around a lot but ive never actually seen anyone explain it
To put it simply it is claiming to be a communist while revising core principles. I.e, a social democrat [modern] is not a revisionist because they don’t claim to be marxist in the first place. But social democrats of the 1900s were revisionist because they claimed to follow marxism while promoting “peaceful reform” and such
