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.

  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
    18·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
      3·
      1 day ago

      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.

      • Marat@lemmygrad.mlOP
        4·
        1 day ago

        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

        • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
          2·
          1 day ago

          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.

          • Marat@lemmygrad.mlOP
            2·
            1 day ago

            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.