RIGHT-WING REVISIONISM TODAY -3

Right-wing revisionism today has succeeded from revision ism at the turn of the century and is similar to it. Yet it also has new features that are expressed in the following.

1. It continues to be a revision of Marxist theory all along the it revises all the component parts of Marxism (philosophy, political economy and scientific communism), yet it concentrates its attention on rejecting the basic laws of the from capitalism to socialism and socialist con- on the social and political problems of the day.

The revision of Marxism-Leninism is also changing its form. While Right-wing revisionism at the turn of the century had operated under the banner of an open "criticism of Marxism", it is today a hypocritical device of all Right- wing revisionists, who try to undermine Marxism with bourgeois concepts, to pretend that they are returning to the "authentic", "genuine" Marxism.

The accents in the revisionist rejection of the main principles of each of Marxism's three component parts are also changing. Revisionists reject primarily what is common to all component parts of principle of a class approach to social phenomena. But it is this approach which is the only correct one in a society where classes and the class struggle exist, in a world where the class struggle is developing both on national and international scale. The ignoring of a class approach is evident in the philosophy,economic views and social and political ideas of contemporary revisionism.

The focal point of the revision of Marxist-Leninist philosophy today is the rejection of the fundamental problem of philosophy and of the theory of reflection, attempts to take dialectics out of materialism and to turn it into a sophistry adapted to hypocritical speculation about abstract device widely employed by all anti-communists.

The focal point of revision of the economic theory of Marxism is the economic basis of socialism, including its major laws; socialisation of the principal means of produc- tion, economic planning, and the organic connection be- tween centralism and other democratic forms of government. The revision of scientific communism lies in the renun- ciation of the leading role of the class and its party in the fight for socialism, of the Leninist theory of socialist revolution, of the historical necessity of proletarian dictator- ship, of the basic principles of socialist democracy and the Leninist theory of the working-class party.

The fundamental tenets of all three component parts of Marxism are revised now, as in the past, by replacing Marxism with old and new bourgeois concepts.

The present-day bourgeois sociological theories of "in- dustrial society", and "the end of ideol- ogy" are having a particularly important impact on Right- wing revisionism. It is also being influenced by bourgeois philosophical ideas concerning abstract humanism, by eco- nomic theories of market socialism that have become part of the armoury of Right-wing socialist and anti-communist pro- paganda.

1. Just like their ideological forebears, present-day revi- sionists are continuing to falsify Marxism and, therefore, follow in the footsteps of the bourgeois "experts" on Marx. Revisionists borrow from bourgeois "experts" on Marxism the device of counterposing Marx to Engels, and Lenin to Marx and Engels; they oppose conclusions made by Marxist-Leninist parties to the conclusions of Lenin, oppose  the partisan nature of socialist ideology to its scientific nature. Revisionists reiterate bourgeois ideas that Marxism is outmoded or disintegrating; they reproduce the bourgeois calumny   that   Marxism-Leninism  is  anti-humanist,   and that it should be radically "humanised".

The main thrust of revisionism is today directed against Leninism. One example of this struggle is the book by the Austrian Right-wing revisionists Ernst Fischer and Franz Marek, entitled Was Lenin sagte (What Lenin Really Said) (Wien, 1969). As Friedl Secretary of the CG of the Communist Party of
Austria, has justly remarked, the book serves the sole purpose of stating that Leninism is a specifically Russian phenomenon and that Lenin's teaching is scarcely applicable on an international scale, i.e., to other countries. Attempts to play down the importance of Leninism and to distort its meaning have also been made by such renegades from the French Communist Party as Roger Garaudy and Andre Barjonet, and several other Right-wing revisionists.

To abject Leninism means directly to renounce the ideo- logical basis of the entire communist movement, insofar as Marxism of the contemporary just that basis.

In the new historical epoch, Lenin defended and enriched the fundamental principles of Marxism as the ideology of the working class: he creatively developed all three com- ponent parts of materialism, economic theory (an important contribution to which was Lenin's teaching on imperialism) and the theory of scientific com- munism. Leninism signified the practical embodiment of the ideas of Marx. It was under the banner of Leninism that the process of profound revolutionary worldwide change began, developed and is continuing today.

Any renunciation of Leninism leads to the working class and its vanguard being disarmed ideologically, to a renun- ciation of the fight for socialist revolution and for building socialism and communism; it leads to an ideological capitulation to imperialism.

1. While, in the past, revisionism in theory frequently coincided with opportunism in practice, today Right-wing revisionism has completely coalesced with opportunism. There can no longer be purely theoretical arguments with the revisionists because pressing issues of the questions of the transition from capitalism to socialism and the practical construction of socialism and stand at the centre of the struggle. Each of the issues on which the revisionists oppose Leninism is connected with the practical struggle between the world of socialism and the world of capitalism, between the reactionaries and the progressives. The indissoluble connection between revision- ism and opportunism is shown by the fact that any proponent of revisionist views is, by the very logic of class struggle, cast upon the other side of the barricades and ultimately finds himself among the enemies of socialism.

2. A characteristic feature of contemporary Right-wing revisionism is its union with revisionism from the Nationalism and serve as a basis for such a union.

Leonid Brezhnev said at the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties that, "a frequent feature of both and Right-wing opportunism is concessions to nationalism, and sometimes even an outright switch to nationalistic This is because the social and political roots of both forms of present-day revisionism are so similar. Both forms rest on unstable, non-proletarian and petty-bourgeois strata with their ingrained national egoism and philistine prejudices. It is precisely these strata that are most influenced by bourgeois nationalism and inclined to purvey their own selfish interests as those of the whole nation.

Both forms of revisionism, being carriers of bourgeois ideology, freely take in the dogmas of imperialist propaganda aimed at splitting the world communist movement and the socialist community, the more so because these dogmas are put out under the hypocritical pretext of "concern" for national sovereignty, national equality and independence. The imperialist bourgeoisie sometimes succeeds in using trends of petty-bourgeois nationalism which are typical of revisionism and which declare, as Lenin aptly put it, in- ternationalism to be "the mere recognition of the equality of nations, and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact. . .

Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalism remove both forms of revisionism from the genuinely national interest of the overwhelming majority of a working people, because the only true way to ensure that their in- terests are served is through proletarian internationalism, mutual assistance and solidarity in the fight against the common

Both forms of revisionism, being infected by nationalist prejudices and tendencies, are easily influenced by bourgeois anti-Soviet propaganda, playing on the philistine moods and hostility towards the Soviet Union, distorting its real role within the socialist community and the international communist movement.

For the purposes of anti-Sovietism, both Right- and wing revisionism employ Trotskyist ideas about the reactionary role of the Soviet Union, about a "degeneration" of the Party and the Soviet state. Both have seized upon Trotskyist methods of using the politically immature and inexperienced young people.

The CC Theses on the Centenary of the Birth of V. I. Lenin said: "Present-day revisionism the ideas of various anti-Leninist which were at one time or another defeated in open confrontation with Marxism-Leninism, and it is trying to use them to infiltrate the communist parties in order to impose its own line upon them, taking advantage of instances of ideological im- maturity and

1. An important characteristic of Right-wing revisionism today is its link with which stakes on re- visionism as its ideological and political ally in the plans to the communist movement and undermine socialism from within.

In present-day circumstances, a single ideological front has been formed which embraces various political and ideo- logical trends that are inimical to Marxism-Leninism and to socialism, they range from and Right-wing op- portunism to the most virulent anti-communism. The most diverse political forces today exist in a single camp of op- ponents of Marxism-Leninism, the communist movement and the socialist community. They include imperialists, Maoists, nationalists, militant Zionists and rivisionists of all shades.