Anti-Revisionist
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In the Marxist-Leninist movement, an anti-revisionist is one who favors the line of theory and practice associated with Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Anti-revisionists claim that the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership represented the most correct and successful practical implementation of the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The anti-revisionist movement is split with regard to the status of Mao and the People's Republic of China under his rule: Maoists and similar groups typically consider Mao to be a legitimate and highly important anti-revisionist, whereas Hoxhaist groups do not.
Anti-revisionism is based on the view that the Soviet Union successfully implemented Marxism-Leninism during its first decades of existence (that is, from the 1920s until the late 1950s). Anti-revisionists point to the fact that the system created by Stalin achieved impressive rates of economic growth and argue that such growth could have been sustained and a prosperous communism could have been achieved if the Soviet Union had remained on the Stalinist course. According to anti-revisionists, the later attempts to "fix" or revise the Soviet system were unnecessary and misguided, and ultimately led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and other similar countries. Thus, revisionism is seen as the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union and the East European people's republics.
Anti-revisionism is seen by its followers as a healthy, solid, scientific ideological road, devoid of both the alleged corruption and elitism of Trotskyism, and the perceived idealism of Left Communism. Nevertheless, "anti-revisionism" can also be a vague and controversial label, particularly in those cases where it is not clear what ideas or policies are "revisionist". Groups will sometimes argue over which of them is the true anti-revisionist.
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[edit] Background
Self-proclaimed anti-revisionists firmly oppose the reforms initiated in Communist countries by leaders like Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and Deng Xiaoping in China. They generally refer to such reforms and states as state capitalist and social-imperialist. They also reject Trotskyism and its "Permanent Revolution" as hypocritical by arguing that Trotsky himself had at one time thought it acceptable that socialism could work in a single country as long as that country was industrialized, but that Trotsky had considered Russia too backward to achieve such industrialization — what it later in fact did achieve, mostly through his archenemy Stalin's Five Year Plans. In their own right, anti-revisionists also acknowledge that the Soviet Union contained a "new class" or "'red' bourgeoisie," but they generally place the blame for the formation of that class on Nikita Khruschev and his successors. Therefore, in anti-revisionist circles, there is very little talk of class conflict in the Soviet Union before 1956, except when talking about specific contexts such as the Russian Civil War (when some agents of the former feudal ruling class tried to retake state power from the Bolsheviks) and World War II (fought principally between communists and fascists, representing the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie respectively).
During the Sino-Soviet split, the governments of the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong and Albania under Hoxha proclaimed themselves to be taking an anti-revisionist line and denounced Khrushchev's policies in the Soviet Union. In the United States, those who supported China or Albania at the time were expelled from the United States Communist Party under orders from Moscow, and in 1961 they formed the Progressive Labor Movement. Anti-revisionist groups were further divided by the Sino-Albanian split, with those following Albania being loosely described as Hoxhaist.
Several communist parties in the United States still see themselves as explicitly anti-revisionist. Not every contemporary communist party around the world adhering to elements of anti-revisionism necessarily adopts the label "anti-revisionist"; many such organizations may call themselves Maoist, Marxist-Leninist or even just simply "revolutionary communist". The Workers Party of Korea still claims an anti-revisionist political line; however, this may not be an accurate label either in self-description or description by others, because of the official 'supersedence' of Marxist-Leninist thought in North Korea by the ideology of Juche.
[edit] Criticisms
Critics argue that anti-revisionists have an inclination towards the cult of personality, and that an indispensable principle of the scientific method is actually the desirability of revision. Critics also argue against the elevation of a doctrine to the status of unquestionable truth, which they say anti-revisionists do, and that therefore, while anti-revisionism may be ideologically pure, it would be far from scientific. Some critics of anti-revisionism call it a dogma and would even liken it to treating Marxist political theory as a type of religious faith.
Anti-revisionists counter that these criticisms amount to mischaracterization and slander; that there is a difference between development of a party line to arrive at different conclusions, and the attempt of revisionism to, in their view, revise Marxist fundamentals; and that critics' characterization of anti-revisionists, even taken alone, does not correspond to what anti-revisionists do in practice from day to day.
[edit] Anti-Revisionist leaders
Those at a state level claiming an anti-revisionist orientation actually vary widely in their ideological perspectives from within communism. An amalgamated list of the more famous self-proclaimed anti-revisionist leaders:
- Kim Il-Sung
- Enver Hoxha
- Mao Tse-Tung
- Hardial Bains
- Bill Bland
- Harry Haywood
- Bob Avakian
- Prachanda (of Prachanda Path)
- Hua Guofeng
- Gang of Four
- Ludo Martens
- Harpal Brar
- Jose Maria Sison
[edit] Some Anti-Revisionist Groups
- Workers Party of Korea
- Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
- Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
- Communist Party of the Philippines
- Freedom Road Socialist Organization
- Maoist Internationalist Movement
- Communist Party of India (Maoist)
- Ray O. Light Group
- Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
- Parti marxiste-léniniste du Québec
