Modern revisionists are generally in one of two camps: those that try to kill the revolutionary spirit of Communism (they deny the necessity for a Proletarian Revolution, they deny the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and they choose to ally with the Bourgeoisie), and those that follow the bourgeois (pseudo-Marxist) Maoist philosophy (other forms of revisionism are the Juche philosophy of Kim Jong-il, the Communist Party of Belarus and its support for Lukashenko, and the Russian Communist Party and its embrace of nationalism and religion).
Both forms of revisionism are infections that need to be eliminated.
The first camp of revisionists follow the example of the “C”PUSA. These revisionists choose to ally with the Bourgeois regimes, rather than fight against them. As Sam Webb stated: “Discontinue the Bush tax cuts for the rich; repeal subsidies and tax breaks for big corporations; enact a tax on financial transactions that will generate billions in revenues and cut down short-term speculative transactions; take profit-making (and therefore inflationary pressures) out of the heath care system: lift the cap on Social Security taxes so the wealthy pay into the fund; roll back military/war spending; invest in clean energy and other green technologies; and enact a public works jobs program that will put millions back to work, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, and generate government revenues.”
These measures all seem good, right? Wrong. Sam Webb doesn’t want to put an end to Capitalism, he simply wishes to change it. This is an insidious form of revisionism that seeks to convince the worker that the Bourgeois government can work to the Proletariat’s advantage. It does not, however, address the disease of Capitalism. It simply attempts to fix a few of the symptoms of the disease, and thus it is NOT Marxist-Leninist.
I’ve previously posted how the CPUSA (and most other American “Communist” parties), refuse to even discuss the idea of Proletarian Revolution. They are little better than Utopian Socialists that believe in the alleged “power” of the ballot box.
As for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, just try to find the term used by members of most American Communist parties. They studiously avoid using the term, simply because of a gross misunderstanding of what it implies.
The second camp of revisionists, in the U.S. and abroad, follow the false Marxist Mao Tse-tung. Marxism-Leninism states that the achievements of human culture of all times and nations, must be mastered. The Maoists, on the other hand, proclaimed that they were building a new, proletarian culture on the ruins of the old culture. What provided those ruins? Why the so-called “Cultural Revolution”, of course. As Mao unleashed hoards of angry people on the history of China – he proved that his views were not Marxist-Leninist in the least. To quote from Maoism Unmasked: “An analysis of the articles written by Mao Tse-tung shows that many of the Lenin quotations used by him were obtained at second hand in distorted and abridged form. Moreover, it is known that he called those who studied Marx’s Capital “dogmatists uselessly racking their brains”. In fact, Mao Tse-tung has never known the basic works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Unquestionably, he has acquainted himself with Marxism, but his knowledge of it is superficial and distorted. Marxism-Leninism as an integral teaching and a harmonious system of dialectical, materialist views has remained a sealed book to him.”
Maoism is a pseudo Marxist-Leninist philosophy, formulated and edited to make it appear to fall in line with true Marxism-Leninism. One has only to examine the policies of the Chinese government, from 1949 until today, to recognise its bourgeois characteristics.
The People’s Republic of China, the Capitalist wonder that has resulted from the “thought of Mao Tse-tung”!
Revisionism has been a constant danger in the world-wide Communist Movement from the beginning. Lenin stated that revisionism is: “one of the chief, if not the chief, manifestation of bourgeois influence on the proletariat and bourgeois corruption of the workers.”
Those of us that have stayed true to Marxism-Leninism must constantly guard against the insidious infection of revisionism, and must do everything in our power to expose it wherever it may be found. True Communists must not be misled by the Bourgeois teachings of the Maoists and the “C”PUSA.
Workers of ALL Nations, Unite!
communistamerican 