[PRWC Party Documents] Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, January 15, 1992

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

Revisionism is the systematic revision of and deviation from Marxism, the basic revolutionary principles of the proletariat laid down by Marx and Engels and further developed by the series of thinkers and leaders in socialist revolution and construction. The revisionists call themselves Marxists, even claim to make an updated and creative application of it but they do so essentially to sugarcoat the bourgeois antiproletarian and anti-Marxist ideas that they propagate.

The classical revisionists who dominated the Second International in 1912 were in social-democratic parties that acted as tails to bourgeois regimes and supported the war budgets of the capitalist countries in Europe. They denied the revolutionary essence of Marxism and the necessity of proletarian dictatorship, engaged in bourgeois reformism and social pacifism and supported colonialism and modern imperialism. Lenin stood firmly against the classical revisionists, defended Marxism and led the Bolsheviks in establishing the first socialist state in 1917.

The modern revisionists were in the ruling communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They systematically revised the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism by denying the continuing existence of exploiting classes and class struggle and the proletarian character of the party and the state in socialist society. And they proceeded to destroy the proletarian party and the socialist state from within. They masqueraded as communists even as they gave up Marxist-Leninist principles. They attacked Stalin in order to replace the principles of Lenin with the discredited fallacies of his social democratic opponents and claimed to make a "creative application" of Marxism-Leninism.

The total collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, has made it so much easier than before for Marxist-Leninists to sum up the emergence and development of socialism and the peaceful evolution of socialism into capitalism through modern revisionism. It is necessary to trace the entire historical trajectory and draw the correct lessons in the face of the ceaseless efforts of the detractors of Marxism-Leninism to sow ideological and political confusion within the ranks of the revolutionary movement.

Among the most common lines of attack are the following: "genuine" socialism never came into existence; if socialism ever existed, it was afflicted with or distorted by the "curse" of "Stalinism", which could never be exorcised by his anti-Stalin successors and therefore Stalin was responsible even for the anti-Stalin regimes after his death; and socialism existed up to 1989 or 1991 and was never overpowered by modern revisionism before then or that modern revisionism never existed and it was an irremediably "flawed" socialism that fell in 1989-1991.

There are, of course, continuities as well as discontinuities from the Stalin to the post-Stalin periods. But social science demands that a leader be held responsible mainly for the period of his leadership. The main responsibility of Gorbachov for his own period of leadership should not be shifted to Stalin just as that of Marcos, for example, cannot be shifted to Quezon.

It is necessary to trace the continuities between the Stalin and the post-Stalin regimes. And it is also necessary to recognize the discontinuities, especially because the post-Stalin regimes were anti-Stalin in character. In the face of the efforts of the imperialists, the revisionists and the unremoulded petty bourgeois to explain everything in anti-Stalin terms and to condemn the essential principles and the entire lot of Marxism-Leninism, there is a strong reason and necessity to recognize the sharp differences between the Stalin and post-Stalin regimes. The phenomenon of modern revisionism deserves attention, if we are to explain the blatant restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship in 1989-91.

After his death, the positive achievements of Stalin (such as the socialist construction, the defense of the Soviet Union, the high rate of growth of the Soviet economy, the social guarantees, etc.) continued for a considerable while. So were his errors continued and exaggerated by his successors up to the point of discontinuing socialism. We refer to the denial of the existence and the resurgence of the exploiting classes and class struggle in Soviet society; and the unhindered propagation of the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking and the growth of the bureaucratism of the monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie in command of the great mass of petty-bourgeois bureaucrats.

From the Khrushchov period through the long Brezhnev period to the Gorbachov period, the dominant revisionist idea was that the working class had achieved its historic tasks and that it was time for the Soviet leaders and experts in the state and ruling party to depart from the proletarian stand. The ghost of Stalin was blamed for bureaucratism and other ills. But in fact, the modern revisionists promoted these on their own account and in the interest of a growing bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The general run of new intelligentsia and bureaucrats was petty bourgeois-minded and provided the social base for the monopoly bureaucrat bourgeoisie.

In the face of the collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes, there is in fact cause for the Party to celebrate the vindication of its Marxist-Leninist, antirevisionist line. The correctness of this line is confirmed by the total bankruptcy and collapse of the revisionist ruling parties, especially the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the chief disseminator of modern revisionism on a world scale since 1956. It is clearly proven that the modern revisionist line means the disguised restoration of capitalism over a long period of time and ultimately leads to the undisguised restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship. The supraclass sloganeering of the petty bourgeoisie has been the sugarcoating for the antiproletarian ideas of the big bourgeoisie in the Soviet state and party.

In the Philippines, the political group that is most embarrassed, discredited and orphaned by the collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes is that of the Lavas and their successors. It is certainly not the Communist Party of the Philippines, reestablished in 1968. But the imperialists, the bourgeois mass media and certain other quarters wish to confuse the situation and try to mock at and shame the Party for the disintegration of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes. They are barking at the wrong tree.

There are elements who have been hoodwinked by such catchphrases of Gorbachovite propaganda as "socialist renewal", "perestroika", "glasnost" and "new thinking" and who have refused to recognize the facts and the truth about the Gorbachovite swindle even after 1989, the year that modern revisionism started to give way to the open and blatant restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship. There are a handful of elements within the Party who continue to follow the already proven anticommunist, antisocialist and pseudodemocratic example of Gorbachov and who question and attack the vanguard role of the working class through the Party, democratic centralism, the essentials of the revolutionary movement, and the socialist future of the Philippine revolutionary movement. Their line is aimed at nothing less than the negation of the basic principles of the Party and therefore the liquidation of the Party.