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

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

IV. Certain Lessons from the Collapse of Modern Revisionism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

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

January 15, 1992

It is of crucial importance to make a precise description of the ruling parties and regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the crisis that conspicuously beset them since the early 1980s and their collapse from 1989 to 1991. These ruling parties and regimes were revisionist. Their crisis and collapse are not those of socialism but of modern revisionism or capitalist restoration masquerading as socialism. The blatant restoration of capitalism and the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie are the indubitable proof. The unraveling of the revisionist systems and the unfolding of the truth in the few years before the collapse occurred right before our eyes.

There is ideological and political confusion if the crisis and collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes are described as those of socialism or Stalinism rather than of modern revisionism. Such a description would continue to pass off modern revisionism as socialism. All Marxist-Leninists must firmly recognize the fact that modern revisionism had undermined and prevailed over socialism long before the former itself plunged into a crisis and led to the collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes from 1989 to 1991.

One may speak of a crisis of socialism only in the thinking of some of those who presume modern revisionism to be socialism and observe the crisis and collapse of the ruling revisionist parties and regimes. The imperialists, the revisionists themselves and the bourgeois intelligentsia simplistically call the crisis and collapse of these anti-Stalin parties and regimes as the "crisis of Stalinism" or the "Stalinist model of socialism". Stalin has been dead for 38 years and a process of "de-Stalinization" has been going on for the last 35 years.

It is preposterous that long after his death Stalin is still being blamed for what his detractors have done or not done all these years in order to promote modern revisionism and restore capitalism. This is pure obscurantism and personality cult in reverse! The merits and demerits of any leader must be considered only within his period of responsibility, unless the objective is not to make a historical assessment but to demonize a leader and use psywar to attack Marxism-Leninism and socialism in a bourgeois personalistic manner. The modern revisionists should not be allowed to cover up their responsibility within their own period of rule. As a matter of fact, Stalin's great achievements in socialist construction and defense of the Soviet Union are diametrically opposed to the restoration of capitalism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union by the modern revisionists.

We must draw the correct lessons from the betrayal and sabotage of socialism by the modern revisionists from Khrushchov through Brezhnev to Gorbachov. We must combat those forces and elements that wish to destroy the Party and the revolutionary movement from within by aping Gorbachov and the like and opposing the basic revolutionary principles of the Party.