Revisionism (Marxism)

Eduard Bernstein, father of Marxist “revisionism” and one of the main founders of Social Democracy, in a photograph taken in 1895.

Within the Marxist movement, the word “revisionism” is used to refer to various ideas, principles, and theories based on a significant revision of the fundamental premises of historical materialism. of Karl Marx in the XIX century. The current opposed to Marxist revisionism is Marxist anti-revisionism.

Strictly speaking, "revisionism" within the Marxist movement is any heterodox interpretation of Marxism. The term has historically been used by those Marxists who believe that such revisions are unjustified, thus representing an abandonment or betrayal of what they themselves interpret as the “purest” variant of Marxism. Because the term "revisionism" acquired a pejorative connotation over the decades, few Marxists today define themselves as "revisionists," but there are still openly "revisionist" Marxists. Those Marxists who call themselves "revisionists" affirm that "to revise Marxism is not to betray it but to adapt it to the specific conditions of a certain time and of a certain people."

Definition of the word "revisionism" and evolution of the term

Strictly speaking, “revisionism” can be defined as the action of subjecting established doctrines, appreciations or practices to a methodical review (in this case those concerning Marxism) with the aim of updating or modernize them. The word “revisionism” has been used in several different contexts, to refer to the different “revisions” to which Marxist theory has been subjected by various followers of Marxism. the same.

Reformist “revisionism”

Illustration of the German Eduard Bernstein, founder of the modern European Social Democracy and who originated "revisionism" within the Marxist movement.

Emergence of the term “revisionism” within Marxism

The term “revisionism” was first used within the Marxist movement in a pejorative sense to refer to the criticisms made by Eduard Bernstein at the turn of the century XIX in a series of articles published between 1896 and 1898 in Die Neue Zeit and in his 1899 book The Premises of Socialism and the tasks of social democracy.

1906 edition The premises of socialism and the tasks of social democracy Eduard Bernstein.

Bernstein himself recounted that the term arose around 1903 or 1904 as a reaction to Alfred Nossig's book titled precisely "Die Revision des Sozialismus" —whose translation from German into Spanish is "The Revision of the Socialism"—and that, although at first he rejected it, he ended up accepting it as it was applied, according to Bernstein, "to all those socialists who -including me- have a critical position regarding the traditional theory of social democracy".

Eduard Bernstein and other socialists such as Jean Jaurès revised Karl Marx's ideas about the supposedly inevitable violent transition from capitalism to socialism, and argued that violent revolution not it was inevitably necessary to achieve a socialist society. These criticisms gave rise to reformist theory within the Marxist movement, which claims that socialism can be achieved gradually through gradual and peaceful reforms undertaken from within the capitalist system itself.

What did "revisionism" originally stand for?

Fundamentally, revisionism, in Eduard Bernstein's formulation, consists of defending these points of view:

• Marxism is not purely materialistic or purely economical.
• In history, economic forces do not act exclusively.
• The theory of surplus value is simplistic and too abstract.
• Even admitting the class struggle, it is not given exclusively between capitalists and proletarians, but between the capitalists and the proletarians.
• There is no need for a violent revolution to achieve socialism, because it can be achieved through peaceful evolution through trade unionism and political action.

What was the “revisionism” criticizing of Marxism?

Revisionism criticized several aspects of Marxism:

• As for the class struggle, Bernstein initially criticized him that class struggle and transformations are not the only engine of history. “The true socialism does not want to bring down the order of the classes; it wants to base the classes on an organization of work that will be for all better than the current organization.” Finally, Social-Democrat Piotr Struve wanted to show that the state has an independent character, above the classes. And all this is far from Marx's fundamental conception. The proper application of Marx's ideas is his fault, and in his time there were different interpretations of Capital also called “marxismos”. To differentiate themselves from these pseudo-materialistic conceptions, not only from the Feuerbach case, the applied analysis of historical materialism and dialectical materialism increased to a scientific category. Its consequence: a doctrine, would like “some suggestions” about the direct, immediate and practical application of the politician, the proletariat or any of our institutional agents.

• On the other hand, while Marx predicted that commercial and financial capitalism would yield its position to the industrial one, the enormous growth of the trusts and holdings, showed that, on the contrary, modern capitalism is increasingly a banking capitalism. The financing of capital understood it as the international division of labour and the growing proletarization of the world, which it never developed as a “future” but the becoming of an increasingly segmented division of production processes. It would be nothing but Rosa Luxemburg who would fill this gap, highlighting the recurring monopoly imperialism to wars to level the countries' balance of payments.

• The last major criticism of revisionists, and in particular Bernstein, is Marx's mistake in predicting that industrial concentration had not produced a massive effect of unemployment among the petty bourgeois. As for the working class, its impoverishment had been offset by the development of cooperation. But this does not mean much but the previous premise of financing. He predicted nothing, because he was no prophet. On the basis of certain analyses he observed certain behaviors. One of them is the wage and target time applied. This is the reduction of the “value” of the salary and the automation of the surplus value. Thus, the reproduction of wealth does not have to do with industrial concentration but in the social relations that make it possible to maintain production, which led to the increase of the middle classes, not to confuse them with petty bourgeois, for even Marx saw in the petty bourgeoisie a revolutionary germ. It would be but Max Weber who would fill this gap about, not only the international financial reality of capitalism, but its growing bureaucratization. And not only that, without giving Marx credit, demonstrates Protestant ethics from a more or less foundation as a “materialistic ethics” that constituted industrial life.

“Revisionism” from a communist perspective

The term «revisionism» was used in a derogatory way by the communists, especially by the Soviets, to refer to those ideas or proposals that deviated from the «orthodox» Marxist doctrine established by the party.

• During the 1940s and 1950s, the term “revisionism” was used, within the International Communist Movement, by the “Stalinists” to refer to those communists who already proposed to focus on consumer goods instead of in the heavy industry and to those who accepted the implicit national differences (in particular those of the new Soviet “satellites”) and even encouraged the democratic reforms undertaken in some countries. Also the Titoists (followers of Yugoslav leader Jósip “Tito” Broz) were accused of being revisionists, in some late purges that began in 1949 in the then recent East Block (see Tito-Stalin Rupture).

• After the partial “deshielo” caused by the death of Iosif Stalin, on March 5, 1953, the idea of revisionism became acceptable for a short time in Hungary, during the Imre Nagy government (1953-1955) and in Poland during the period in which Władysław Gomułka was in power. However, at that time neither Nagy nor Gomułka described themselves as “revisionists”.

• Following the Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, several Western communist intellectuals renounced the Communist parties of their respective countries of origin as a form of protest. Because of this attitude, they would be accused of “revisionism” by those who continued to be supporters. The latter, for their part, would be pejoratively accused of “stallinists” by the resigners. This movement would eventually be known with the generic denomination of New Left.

“Contemporary revisionism”

Sino-Soviet schism

In the early 1960s, Chinese leader Mao Zedong (or Mao Tsetung), along with more radical elements within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) revived the term "revisionism" to attack the USSR in general and the premier of this, Nikita Khrushchev, in particular. This clear mutual distancing occurred within the framework of the Sino-Soviet ideological schism. One of the first consequences of it was the withdrawal of Soviet technical advisers from China.

Later, throughout that decade—which coincided with the greatest period of Maoist ideological turmoil—the Chinese would routinely use the nickname “modern revisionists” (or “contemporary revisionists”) against the Soviets in particular, and against all those who adhered to their ideological line in general. This denomination would be picked up and repeated by the Maoist groups or fractions that separated from some western and eastern communist parties, parties that they also accused of “quietism” and lack of sufficient revolutionary “ardor”.

Beijing's 25 points

In June 1963, the Communist Party of China published a major text, the 25 Beijing Points, which marked the definitive break with “Soviet revisionism”. The CCP sends a long letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, exposing to revolutionaries around the world the serious strategic and principled divergences that currently divide the International Communist Movement, which is about to split into two antagonistic class positions, two irreconcilable ideological and political currents: Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought and “contemporary revisionism”.

Sino-Albanian schism

In 1978, the Sino-Albanian schism took place, when Enver Hoxha, then General Secretary of the Albanian Party of Labor, also condemned the CCP as “revisionist”, as had done during the 1960s with Khrushchev's post-Stalinist Soviet Union —because for Hoxha, the “Deng Xiaoping Theory”, also known as “Dengism”, it is yet another branch of “modern revisionism”—. On those occasions, Hoxha had stated that he "had been forced to choose between 650 million Chinese and 200 million Russians (sic)." Actually, Hoxha did this because, after the death of Mao Tse Tung (occurred on September 9, 1976), China gradually abandoned the most radical aspects of Maoism, which by 1978 (with the rise of the pragmatic and more moderate Deng Xiaoping to power) was an obvious fact.