Thread on revisionism, because a lot of people, I think, either misunderstand what it is in a Marxist sense or have very rudimentary understandings.

Revisionism, when referred to in a Marxist sense, is in short a deliberate distortion of the findings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Revisionism can take many forms and has throughout history been something that has always plagued Marxist theory.

Revisionism had its inception in the ideas promoted by Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein rejected dialectical materialism promoting class reconciliation, and a the belief socialism could be created via a peaceful means.

However, Bernstein would prove to be only the first of a long line of revisionists. The next big source of modern revisionism was Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s own revisionist theories are numerous and deserving of their own thread so I won’t go into much detail.

In short, Trotskyism promoted the ideas that Russia did not need two revolutions, and could skip the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Trotsky also rejected the peasantry’s ability to work together with the proletariat.

The main revisionism, I feel is often misunderstood, however, is Khrushchevite revisionism. Often it is either simply taken as in and of itself, revisionist, with little considerate as to what makes it revisionist. At most the secret speech will be used as evidence.

While the acts of the XXth Party congress permitted the strengthening of Khruschev’s revisionism it is not the sole aspect of revisionism. Khrushchev’s regime also restored many elements of a capitalist economy as well as class conciliation through peaceful coexistence.

Under the guise of the Kosygin reforms, the Khrushchevites sought to restore profit as the primary dictator of economic success. Furthermore economic planning became subject to each plants manager, Kosygin in Pravda even promoting this as a “business like approach.”

Under the masque of “decentralization” the soviet revisionists went about taking from the workers their control over the economy and gave it to the control more and more to the Soviet revisionists.

Then there was commodity production. Yes the much debated commodity production, while marxism-Leninism does not in its earliest stage rid itself of the phenomena, as a vestige of capitalism, it does not permit it to grow or flourish, Khrushchev allowed exactly this however.

Khrushchev in the 22th party congress stresses that it was important for the USSR take full advantage of commodity production. Lenin meanwhile instructs that a society based on commodity production inevitably becomes capitalist.

With the economic power being stripped from the workers and given to the revisionists, these revisionists transformed into a new Soviet Bourgeoisie. A natural result of the restoration of the dictatorship of the bourgeois, labor power became re-commodified.

The re-commodification of labor power ensured the final transformation of the Soviet Union into a capitalist economic superstructure. While the Soviet economy still had state ownership of the MoP this was no more socialist that state-owned corporations found throughout capitalism

It is also important to note that Khruschev and his revisionist clique new bourgeoisie had created a monopoly capitalist system, and of course, as monopoly capitalist systems are to do, the Soviets created an imperialist system to back their economy.

The Soviets under Khrushchev began to promote the idea of “international socialists division of labor” this was a veiled method of creating economies dependent on the Soviet Union, as the revisionist USSR would concentrate all production within itself.

Meanwhile, raw mineral and resource extraction occurred within the Soviet’s sphere.

Then came Brezhnev. Brezhnev did little different economically then Khrushchev but diplomatically was simply more open about Soviet social-imperialism.

I’d like to pre-empt one argument that inventively follows talks of capitalist restoration. What of the NEP? The critical aspect that the NEP maintained was State (and workers) ownership of key areas of production. Under Khrushchev, key areas were under the control of bourgeoisie

Thus this was no NEP style “one step backwards two forwards.”

Revisionism today has not gone away, the working class, and all Marxists should be just as vigilant against revisionism as ever, lest we fall victim to the mistakes of the last.