Launched: Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online
Posted by Mike E on November 3, 2009
Kasama has learned that the new EROL has been launched – as part of the larger, respected Marxist Internet Archives. It includes a history of anti-revisionist politics and an archive of anti-revisionist documents and newspapers. Salute to Paul and his co-workers for all their effort.
Here is the new site’s own description of its focus and purpose.
Anti-Revisionism and
the Anti-Revisionist Movement
by Paul Costello
Historically, in the Communist lexicon, the term “anti-revisionism” has been used to describe opposition to attempts to revise, modify or abandon the fundamentals of revolutionary theory and practice in a manner that was perceived to represent concessions to Communism’s adversaries.
In recent times, however, the term has taken on a more specific meaning. It describes a trend that developed in the pro-Soviet (as opposed to the Trotskyist) Communist movement after World War II. The growth of this anti-revisionist trend was particularly noticeable at several critical moments in the history of the Communist movement – the shift from WW II-era collaboration between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers to the Cold War, and the crisis inaugurated by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956.
Initially, the anti-revisionists presented a critique of the official Communist Parties “from the left” for having abandoned orthodox Marxism-Leninism (becoming “revisionist,”), and for being insufficiently revolutionary. Once the official Communist Parties joined in Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, the defense of Stalin and his legacy became a hallmark of “anti-revisionism.” Later on, the anti-revisionist movement expanded and diversified to encompass those communists who rejected a pro-Soviet orientation for one aligned either with Chinese or Albanian positions.
Anti-revisionism enjoyed its moment of greatest size and influence with numerous “Marxist-Leninist” and “Maoist” parties, groups and publications springing up around the world in the period which began with the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s. Its growth was greatly accelerated by international enthusiasm for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, but it began to decline in response to controversial Chinese foreign policy decisions in the last years of Mao’s life, his death and the subsequent defeat of the Gang of Four. While some anti-revisionists soldiered on, adapting to these changes, these later events spurred other elements to argue for a non-Trotskyist “left-wing” communism, independent of allegiance to foreign authorities or models.
The goal of the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism is to document this trend.
—Paul C., 2009
Mike E said
Early posts on this EROL site include:
A Brief definition of Anti-Revisionism [by Paul Costello]
Anti-Revisionist Communism in the United States, 1945-1950 [by Paul Costello]
Statement from the Maritime Committee for a Communist Party, US
The Fight Against Revisionism in the U. S. Communist Party [by Burt Sutta]
Towards A Marxist Party – A Draft Transitional Program [From The Spark! an earlir US anti-Revisionist paper]
Towards A Marxist Party – Reactions to NCP’s Letter and Dunne’s Pamphlet [From The Spark! an earlier US anti-Revisionist paper]
An Open Letter to Comrade Stalin and the C.C. of the CPSU [From Turning Point an earlier US anti-Revisionist paper]
boris said
Noel Ignatin’s piece on the transformation of the Provisional Organizing Committee is pretty interesting in light of some of the discussions at Kasama:
“I left Philadelphia in June of 1962 for an assignment in a locality where there was no POC branch. When I returned at the beginning of 1963 I was struck by the changes which had taken place. Two of the three areas of mass work, the rank and file factory groups and the Puerto Rican work, had totally collapsed and the third area had lost its vitality. The time of the members was now occupied with refining the POC principles to a level of higher purity. . . .
“Yet, it should be noted that throughout this period of incredible sectarianism, POC managed to recruit workers in small numbers (while continuing to lose members as well). How was this possible? It was achieved largely through the efforts of the members in selling the paper door-to-door in poor neighborhoods. This had a comical side, although I must admit I didn’t see it at the time; here was this paper, whose lead article was likely to be entitled ‘Polarization on A World Scale,’ being used for outreach work. Yet, to some degree it worked. There were always a few people who would be attracted by the members’ obvious sense of purpose and dream of a better world. These recruits were of two categories: people from the lower depths of society, and moreover people who had no previous independent political activity that would make them want something more than blanket denunciations of every form of struggle around them; and whites from the left who were masochistically drawn to POC’s furious condemnation of intellectuals. I think the Jehovah’s Witnesses are able to grow on much the same basis.”
http://marxists.org/history/erol/1956-1960/ignatin01.htm
David Altman said
This is a fascinating archive, and very useful.
Paul Costello said
Thanks, Mike, for taking notice of EROL.
If there are folks out there who want to get involved in this project, please contact me. I can use the help in a whole variety of areas: tracking down documents, scanning, formatting, etc.
Right now, I am looking for early Progressive Labor materials for the period 1959-1969. I have issues of PL Magazine and Challenge, but am looking for articles, texts of speeches, resolutions and organizational materials relating to PL’s split with the CP, its early conferences and congresses, the May 2nd Movement, etc.
If anyone has these and would be willing to share copies of them or knows where they can be found, or else just wants to get involved with EROL, please get in touch with me.
Thanks,
Paul C. redlistmanager@gmail.com
David_D said
Interesting articles. The POC played an important role, as did the various small groupings of CPUSA expellees. The new communist movement, for the most part, seems to stand in distinction to these groups though, in having drawing a clear line that the CPUSA was never really a revolutionary party. I have a special respect for those who stood against the CPUSA from a revolutionary position prior to 1956, when the “socialist community” was still fully intact. The critiques are very telling.
Mike E said
David_D writes:
Brief factual note: I don’t think this captures the position of the NCM (new communist movement). However diverse the various forces were, they generally held that the CPUSA had been revolutionary — and then often disagreed from there.
In fact, there was a bit of a trend to pick a favorite early period of the CPUSA to emulate. (The October League and the RU generally embraced the 1930s CP — which was itself sharply divided into an early 30s period and a late 30s CIO period.) The Communist League (today LRNA) echoed back to the late forties left turn (the anti-browder days) as did Harry Haywood. PLP made the Flint Sitdown famous with Walter Linders widely read history of that CP-led unionization action.
In fact, my thought is that this approach to the CPUSA (which was overly imitative, not blanketly dismissive) was part of the problem: You couldn’t solve the real and mounting probllems of the 60s upsurge by going back to 1930s politics — both because the CP’s politics in those periods was not that great, and also because the solutions were not to be found through fidelity to an old event.
I also think there has to be a distinction between seeing the CP as “revolutionary” and seeing it as a model communist party with a correct strategy. The forces closest to the Panthers in the NCM (including Avakian) were often the least infatuated with the early CP, and the forces who had their own roots within the CP (Leibel Bergman, Mickey Jarvis, Michael Klonsky, Nelson Perry) were most mechanical in their “return to my favorite CP” reflexes.
It was one thing to say that the CP had a revolutionary period (which it did, especially before 1934), and to say it was a model to be imitated.
I wrote the main historical piece the RCP produced on the CP of the 1930s (posted here on Kasama as “Slipping Into Darkness: The Last Revolutionary Years of the Communist Party (1929-35)“). The very name “Slipping into Darkness” implies a periodization — i.e. the earlier revolutionary period, and the rising patriotism and social democracy of the post 1934 Browder/Dimitrov Popular Front years.
Caleb T. Maupin said
I am supportive of “Anti-Revisionism” for the most part. Parties like the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and the United States Marxist-Leninist Organization all represent this movement fairly well.
I like Anti-Revisionism and its loud rejection of the “Three Peacefuls” doctrine, consolidation with Imperialism, and reformist politics in the Soviet loyal parties of the world.
Very few “Anti-Revisionist” sects accept “Soviet Social Imperialism” or “Restoration of Capitalism” theory. The RCP certainly does. The Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) does. (Not the Harpal Brar group, the other one with ‘revolutionary’ in the name that Cornelius Cardew wrote music for…)
MIM did, of course.
Mao preached it, as did Hoxha. Hoxha was not as vociferious about it, and “Imperialism and Revolution” loudly denounces any alliance with Imperialism in its name. Most of Hoxha’s supporters don’t seem to follow it, I have noticed.
I largely agree with China’s disagreements with the USSR. I agree with Lin Biao that the Khruschevites were “betrayers of people’s war.” I don’t however, think they were imperialists akin to the U.S.
The “Social Imperialism” doctrine translated on China’s part to opposing the MPLA, supporting Pinochet, welcoming Nixon as a hero, good relations with various Pro-U.S. dictatorship throughout the world, and opposition to the various liberation struggles that were led by Pro-Soviet factions.
A more complicated analysis of Soviet politics is needed, I think. In my view, I think there was a significant shift to the left in Soviet foreign policy briefly under Breznev, though it swung back even further with Gorbachev, and was in no way a swing back to the Stalin era.
Regardless, Khruschev’s 1956 “Secret Speech” was a mixture of truth and falsehood about Stalin, used not to move toward a more Socialistic USSR, but to begin to deconstruct Socialism. Khruschev’s “peaceful co-existance” with Imperialism, his destruction of the then sucessful collective farms, his “economic reforms” which were disasterous, all were moves RIGHT-WARD.
The so-called “Trotskyists”, in particular the Michael Pablo factions that hailed the “secret speech” were delusional. James P. Cannon and countless others didn’t know exactly how to understand Khruschev’s reforms.
The “Secret Speech” is a good example of “replacing bad with worse.” I’m no fan of Stalin. However, Khruschev didn’t denounce Stalin for what he did wrong. Khruschev denounced Stalin in order to move FURTHER TO THE RIGHT.
The Secret Speech did so much horrific damage internationally as well. The CPUSA was already suffering so badly with Mccarthyism, and then they got a punch in the teeth from their own team, so to speak.
The Progressive Labor Movement, Hammer & Steel, were all progressive moves in response. Most of the folks that left the CPUSA in 1956 left to the right and embraced even more extreme reformism than Khruschev’s.
I can’t wait to see what documents are posted. This issue is of great interest to me.
Caleb T. Maupin said
I recall when I left Maoism and embraced Marcyism, learning for the first time that the “Popular Front” policies of the CPUSA were not simply because Browder was flawed. I learned that Khruschev didn’t invent “Peaceful Co-existance” but in fact, the “People’s Front” politics of the modern CPUSA were common from 1935-1939 in the CPUSA.
I recall being shocked. When I had studied the CPUSA’s history with the RCP folks, I had simply been informed that Earl Browder was flawed. I read Foster’s “Marxism-Leninism v. Revisionism” and came to the same conclusion.
However, soon I discovered that Foster was preaching similiar stuff during that period, and the Browder preached “Third Period” stuff until 1935.
Was Stalin a “revisionist” for four years from 1934-39 during the popular front? I just simply pose this question provocatively, because it seems to point to an inconsistancy in the “Anti-Revisionism” Thesis, as correct as the critiques of Soviet Policy are.
Stalin’s “popular front” was loaded with alliance with the Democrats, cosolidation of the left around liberal capitalists etc. Stalin even called for “Peaceful Co-existance” and “Peaceful Transition”, I think.
Caleb T. Maupin said
On the topic of Anti-Revision:
I have been trying to study the Socialist experience of Albania for a long time. Asside from Hoxha’s personal writings, and Albanian texts, I can find very little about the historical experience of the Albanian revolution.
I’d like to learn more about the Albanian experience. I hope others point me toward more information.
I’ve read Hoxha’s “Imperialism and Revolution” and also “History of the Party of Labor of Albania.”
I’ve also read some of Hoxha’s later speeches. I’d like to read some Edgar Snow or Anna Louise Strong type material on Albania but it seems to be hard to find.
I glanced through “Education for Communism” a book on Albanian literacy programs once, but that is all. It is hard to learn about Albania. It seems there is a story to be told there. I’d like to learn it.
Mike E said
Caleb writes:
I cant sum up your discussion with “RCP folks” — but the fact is that the RCP has had a developed analysis of the CP and the popular front (which obviously was not to blame it on browder). Avakian calls the Popular Front “rightist errors of a fundamental kind” — and draws out in his writings (in some detail) the great departure from marxism and leninism involved in those strategies (on the nature of the state, on bourgeois democracy, on the nature of the imperialists in democratic countries etc.)
Basically the RCP’s position (which i’m telegraphing, obviously) is that the CPUSA (and most communist parties in Europe) became revisionist in the thirties — and had (overall) never solved the key problems of making revolution in imperialist countries. And that the comintern was a somewhat different contadiction (i.e. that these revisionist policies had been promoted in Europe, while the approach in, say, china was rahter more revolutionary, and while the Soviet Union itself was socialist). How this worked out is a larger discussion (having to do with the ocntradiction between soviet state interest and the larger interests of proletarian revolution in the world).
But I mention this, because you might want to look into their approach more deeply — since it is so very different from what you thought it was.
I wrote the RCP’s main document on the Communist Party history (and it is posted on this site). And as you can see, it describes the years from 1929-1935 (i.e. the pre-browder years) as the period of “slipping into darkness.”
To state the obvious, Browder’s line was not “his” alone (or “his flaws”) — he was carrying out the line of the comintern for Europe and the U.S. (i.e. the Dimitrov line)… and it was a rather crudely patriotic, bourgeois democratic and non-revolutionary line (to put it mildly).
heiss93 said
Caleb,
Some very interesting analysis on your part. I’m very intrigued by the theories of Sam Marcy and WWP and PSL, and find myself agreeing with much of their stances. Particularly the vigorous defense of deformed worker’s states and anti-imperialism. I come out of the anti-revisionist tradition in which Trotsky is used as short-hand for the devil, so initially had a hard time accepting the marriage of anti-revisionism and Trotsky. But some of the analysis by the pre-1956 anti-revisionists goes as far as to attack Stalin and the international movement for reformist tendencies. And was thus attacked as a trot. To what extent is their an affinity between Trotsky and pre-1956 anti-revisionists? Even Hoxha himself argued that the roots of revisionism led in the growth of bureaucracy that took place under Stalin’s own leadership.
The possibility of an anti-revisionist rehabilitation of Trotsky, is improbable but not impossible. We’ve seen some possible signs from Nepal. The Chinese considered rehabilitation in the late 1970s, but decided it would open up too many old wounds. But they did end up restoring Bukharnin, who had previously been just as hated in Maoist literature.
The problem I have is that Trotsky, especially in the late 1930s did not behave as a loyal opposition of Communists outside the Party, the way the pre-mature anti-revisionists did. Instead he made some pretty strong attacks on Stalin, and openly called for his overthrow.
I ask all this with profound admiration for the work WWP and PSL have done on the ground, but with the belief that there can be no correct practice without correct theory.