HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF LENIN'S FIGHT AGAINST REVISIONISM

Throughout his life, Lenin resolutely fought various opportunist trends. This struggle continued, in the new historical setting, the traditions of Marx and Engels who had created and defended their philosophy in sharp clashes with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas.

Lenin's long experience of opposing Right- and wing revisionism in Russia and abroad still retains its historic significance. Furthermore, a profound study of that experience can equip Communists of all countries with a power- ful means of mounting an offensive against the various types of revisionism and opportunism today.

A variety of unscientific schools first attacked Marxism without any pretensions of being Marxists themselves; they were, therefore, not revisionists. As Lenin himself noted, Marxism was created (1844-1848) in a fight against various types of petty-bourgeois socialism and, for the first half century of its existence, continued to fight against theories which were radically antagonistic towards The ideologi- cal opponents of Marxism masquerading under "socialism" existed until the appearance of roughly until the 1890s. They included the Young Hegelians who professed a philosophical idealism; the petty-bourgeois school opposed to the class struggle, proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat; the petty-bourgeois anarchist and pseudo- revolutionary movement; the petty-bourgeois school which rejected proletarian revolution and the revolu- tionary potential of the peasants, and idealised the bourgeois state.

Marxist opposition to revisionism began after the exclusion from the labour movement of all these and other more or less integral trends wholly alien to Marxism, at a time when proponents of these trends began to seek other means for expression. Lenin wrote, "The forms and causes of the struggle changed, but the struggle continued. And the second half-century of the existence of Marxism began (in the nineties) with the struggle of a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism Revisionism was just such a trend. Lenin associates the appearance of revisionism with the name of Eduard Bernstein who wrote a number of articles for Die Zeit, the organ of the German Social-Demo- cratic Party, in the period 1896 to 1898; in these articles he revised the philosophical, economic and political tenets of revolutionary Bernstein was backed up by opportunist elements of several parties in the Second International.

These views were supported in Russia by the "Legal bourgeois economists P. Struve and S. Bulgakov. Lenin later remarked that as soon as the Rus- sian Social Democracy became an organisation associated with the mass working-class movement (i.e., after 1894) it began to struggle against the petty-bourgeois, opportunist trends in Russia. Such trends included Economism (1894- 1902) and Menshevism (1903-1908), which became both the ideological and the organisational continuation of Economist ideas. During the first Russian Revolution of 1905, the Mensheviks devised tactics that were objectively meant to make the proletariat dependent on the liberal bourgeoisie, and expressed their own petty-bourgeois opportunist views. Later, in the period 1908-1914, Menshevism gave rise to Liquidationism, and the latter group became social-chauvin- ist between 1914 and During and after Lenin's life, the Soviet Communist Party conducted a constant struggle against Trotskyism as a re- visionist, opportunist, anti-Marxist, adventure-seeking, subversive trend which became, after Trotsky's expulsion from the Party, an out-and-out anti-Soviet, counter-revolu- tionary group. The Party also had to deal firmly with Right- wing opportunists who expressed the ideology of the exploit- ing rich farmers (kulaks) and opposed the high rate of in- dustrialisation, the collectivisation of agriculture and the elimination of the kulaks as a

The CPSU upheld and implemented Lenin's plan for building socialism in the USSR in a fierce struggle with Trotskyists, Right-wing opportunists, national-deviationists and other antagonistic groups. The rich experience of the Soviet Communist Party and the world communist move- ment helps to expose and defeat opportunist trends of the present day.

In criticising present-day revisionism, Communists base themselves upon the definition by Lenin of the essence of revisionism, on Lenin's scientific analysis of the social and epistemological roots of revisionism and opportunism, and on the basic methods used by Lenin in criticising revisionism. These questions are of prime importance.

As soon as an anti-Marxist trend appeared among Social Democrats at the end of the last century, Lenin emphasised that it was an international revisionist and opportunist trend. He wrote, "the English Fabians, the French Ministerialists, the German Bernsteinians, and the Russian critics , all belong to the same family, all extol each other, learn from each other, and together take up arms against

In noting the international nature of revisionism and op- portunism, Lenin also pointed out their national character- istics: "In one country the opportunists have long ago come out under a separate flag; in another, they have ignored theory and in fact pursued the policy of the Radicals-Social- ists; in a third, some members of the revolutionary party have deserted to the camp of opportunism and strive to achieve their not in open struggle for principles and for new tactics, but by gradual, imperceptible, if one may so put it, unpunishable corruption of their party. . .

By revisionism, Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class and which, under the guise of Marxism, actually carried out a revision of the fundamental tenets of Marxist theory, replacing the basic principles of that theory by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. He branded opportunism as a betrayal of the libera- tion of the working class, as a deal with the class enemy of the proletariat and a siding with the bourgeoisie in politics. Under cover of Marxist terminology and a claim to be "creatively" developing Marxism, revisionists actually re- place Marxism by views that are alien and inimical to it. As Lenin revisionists allegedly recognise certain principles of Marxism but, in replace them with bourgeois notions.

Therefore, the class nature of revisionism is a replacement of Marxism by bourgeois ideas, even though the social roots of revisionist ideas are usually associated with the petty bourgeoisie. It is important for an analysis of the class essence of social trends, as Lenin emphasised, to "take as our basis, not individuals or groups, but a class analysis of the content of social trends, and an ideological and political examination of their essential and main

On that basis, Lenin noted that revisionism swims with the tide of bourgeois ideology. What was Lenin's view of the ideological nature of revisionism?

In philosophy, according to Lenin, revisionism follows "in the wake of bourgeois professorial The major bourgeois philosophical trend under whose banner a revision of Marxism took place was then

subjective-idealist philosophy alien to a scientific cognition of nature and society. Revisionists opposed both materialism and dialectics, replacing them, as Lenin said, "by simple (and tranquil) A renunciation of dialectical materialism actually led to a renunciation of the scientific justification for socialism.

In political economy, revisionists rejected "the fact of growing impoverishment, the process of proletarisation, and the intensification of capitalist contradictions   and "said that concentration and the ousting of small-scale production by large-scale production do not occur in agriculture at all, while they proceed very slowly in commerce and industry. It was said that crises had now become rarer and weaker, and that cartels and trusts would probably enable capital to eliminate them altogether

In the early years of this century, Lenin wrote that reality had very quickly shown that crises had by no means come to an end: "The forms, the sequence, the picture of particular crises changed, but crises remained an inevitable component of the capitalist system ""Cartels and trusts which had concentrated production into enormous firms had, at the same time,  exacerbated  class  contradictions  to  an  unprecedented degree.

In scientific communism and socio-political ideas, revision- ism rejected the theory of the class struggle, the opposing nature of liberalism and socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, declaring that the very concept of the ultimate aim of the communist movement held no

The fundamental concepts of the revisionists were bound up with the opportunist policy of collusion with and adapta- tion to capitalism. As Lenin put it, "The movement is every- thing, the ultimate aim is catch-phrase of Bernstein's expresses the substance of revisionism better than many long disquisitions. To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the is the policy of revisionism"

Lenin revealed the organic connection between theoretical revisionism and political opportunism. Revisionism, appear- ing in the early part of the century under the banner of "freedom of criticism", meant, in Lenin's words, "freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism Lenin demonstrated that revisionism inevitably leads to opportunism and a renegade position; he showed that the followers of Bernstein had corrupted socialist consciousness, had vulgarised Marxism by preaching a theory of playing down social antagonisms, declaring absurd the idea of social revolution and proletarian dictatorship, and confining the working-class movement and the class struggle to a narrow trade union approach and to a "realistic" fight for minor, gradual

At the same time, opportunist policy drew revisionist views in its wake and required a corresponding argument for its justification. The following passage from Lenin is worth quoting in full because it reveals this connection: "Social-Democracy must change from a party of social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms. Bern- stein has surrounded this political demand with a whole battery of well-attuned arguments and reasonings. Denied was the possibility of putting socialism on a scientific basis and of demonstrating its necessity and inevitability from the point of view of the materialist conception of history. Denied was the fact of growing impoverishment, the process of proletarisation, and the intensification of capitalist contradictions; the very concept, was declared to be unsound, and the idea of the dictatorship of the pro- letariat was completely rejected. Denied was the antithesis in principle between liberalism and socialism. Denied was the theory of the class struggle, on the alleged grounds that it could not be applied to a strictly democratic society governed according to the will of the majority, etc.

"Thus, the demand for a decisive turn from revolutionary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism was ac- companied by a no less decisive turn towards bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. In view of the fact that this criticism of Marxism has long been directed from the political platform, from university chairs, in numerous pamphlets and in a series of learned treatises the trend . was transferred bodily from bourgeois to socialist

It goes without saying that the link between revisionism and bourgeois ideology is masked in every possible way. In the early part of the century, Lenin noted the trend towards an ever increasing subtle falsification of Marxism, an in- creasingly frantic attempt to pass off anti-materialist doctrines as Marxism in philosophy, economics and politics. In his analysis of revisionism, Lenin pinpointed its two basic forms: "revisionism from the right" and "revisionism from the left". The latter, it is true, had not at that time developed as much as the After the October Revolution Lenin once more returned to the generalised characterisation of these two basic forms of revisionist, petty- bourgeois vacillation, noting that each turn in history evoked a change in the form of these trends. He referred to these forms as petty-bourgeois reformism which was "servility to the bourgeoisie covered by a cloak of sentimental democratic and social-democratic phrases and fatuous  wishes and petty bourgeois revolutionising.

The same basic forms of revisionism exist today, filled with content that corresponds to the present stage of the struggle. At the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in 1969, these forms were defined as Right- wing opportunism signifying  a move towards a liquidationist position, collusion with Social-Democrats in politics and 'deology - and Left- wing opportunism which urges the masses to venturesome action and pushes the party onto a sectarian path under the guise of ultra-revolutionary phrases. In spite of their differences, both these varieties of revisionist opportunism ultimately lead to similarly harmful consequences. Objectively, they are both agreed on a policy of nationalism and anti-Sovietism. This is confirmed by the frank interest of imperialism in promoting both forms of revisionist opportunist trends.

In this connection, it is worth noting Lenin's definition of he underlined that "the fundamental class significance of opportunizm or-in other words, its social economic content-lies  in  certain  elements of  present-day democracy having gone over  (in fact,  though perhaps unconsciously) to the bourgeoisie, on a number of individual issues.

Thus, by contrast with revisionism, which revises Marxist-Leninist theory, opportunism is a policy alien to Marxism-Leninism, a policy which subordinates the interests of the working class and all working people to the interests of the bourgeoisie. In many of his works, Lenin emphasised that opportunists were, in fact, the allies and the agents of the  bourgeoisie.

It is characteristic of opportunism that it tries to conceal, gloss over its de facto assistance to the bourgeoisie. This is another feature of opportunist policy which it shares with revisionism. Revisionism covers itself with the flag of Marxism, while opportunism covers itself with demagogic hypocrisy, equivocal phrases, retreat from clarity and principled position. Lenin wrote: "When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a characteristic feature of present-day opportunism in every sphere, namely, its vagueness, amorphousness, elusiveness. An opportunist, by his very nature,    will always evade taking a clear and decisive stand, he will always seek a middle course, he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually exclusive points of view.

In the last decade of the 19th century and in the first two decades of this century ie-  at a time when Lenin wrote his works on revisionism and opportunism, the opportunists among Social-Democrats were simultaneously revisionists, in so far as they were revising Marxism while operating under the banner of Marxism.

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