Anti-Revisionist
In the
Marxist-Leninist Communist movement, an
anti-revisionist is a
Communist who favors a stricter interpretation of the ideology in accordance with the teachings of
Marx,
Engels,
Lenin, and
Stalin. The term is generally seen as positive, not
pejorative, and used in self-description by the "anti-revisionists" themselves.
Beyond these four, the anti-revisionist movement is split as to whether or not to include
Mao in the "principal theoreticians" of Marxism-Leninism.
Maoists and similar groups typically include Mao, whereas
Hoxhaist or pro-
Albania groups do not.
To most anti-revisionists, the
People's War core of
Maoism and the
anti-fascism of
Stalin's policies are seen as fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism that cannot be abandoned lest the principles of
communism as a whole be abandoned along with them. Anti-revisionism is seen by its followers as a healthy, solid,
scientific ideological road, devoid of both the alleged
corruption and
elitism of
Trotskyism, and the perceived
idealism of
Left Communism.
The opposite term,
revisionism, is most often used
pejoratively. In its original sense, "anti-revisionism" was used at the beginning of the twentieth century during the split between
Leninist groups and
Social Democracy. The Leninists called themselves "anti-revisionists" because they
opposed the revisionists; that is, opposed the Social Democrats who believed that
Marx's ideas should be
revised to allow for the possibility of socialistic progress without
revolution.
Self-proclaimed anti-revisionists firmly oppose the self-proclaimed
socialist market economy reforms initiated in
Communist countries by leaders like
Nikita Khrushchev in the
Soviet Union and
Deng Xiaoping in
China. They generally refer to such reforms and states as
state capitalist and
social-imperialist.
The term
anti-revisionist â€" while a positively-connotated term denoting an opposition to
Trotskyism,
reformism,
left communist currents, and
revisionism from the point of view of what adherents claim is a more truthfully revolutionary sector of the
Radical Left â€" is nevertheless usually controversial among those who claim to adhere to it. Groups will sometimes fight over which of them is really the "true" anti-revisionist.
During the
Sino-Soviet split, the governments of the
People's Republic of China under
Mao Zedong and
Albania under
Hoxha proclaimed themselves taking an anti-revisionist line and denounced Khrushchev's policies. In the
United States, those who supported China or Albania at the time were expelled from the
United States Communist Party under orders from Moscow, and in
1961 they formed the
Progressive Labor Movement. Anti-revisionist groups were further divided by the
Sino-Albanian split, with those following Albania being loosely described as
Hoxhaist.
Several small
Stalinist or
Maoist Communist parties in the
United States still see themselves as anti-revisionist. Not every contemporary Communist party adhering to elements of anti-revisionism necessarily adopts the label "anti-revisionist"; these organizations may call themselves
Maoist, Marxist-Leninist or even just simply "revolutionary communist".
The
Workers Party of Korea still claims an anti-revisionist political line. However, this may not be an accurate label either in self-description or description by others, because of the official 'supersedence' of Marxist-Leninist thought in
North Korea by the ideology of
Juche.
A few anti-revisionists still positively regard the teachings of
Enver Hoxha and/or
Kim Il-Sung, but this is rare.
Critics point out that anti-revisionists, like the Communist leaders that preceded them, have an inclination towards the
cult of personality, and that an indispensable principle of the
scientific method is actually the desirability of revision. Critics also argue against the elevation of a doctrine to the status of unquestionable truth, which they say anti-revisionists do, and that therefore, while anti-revisionism may be ideologically pure, it would be far from scientific. Some critics of anti-revisionism call it a
dogma and would even liken it to treating Marxist political theory as a type of religious faith.
Anti-revisionists counter that these criticisms amount to mischaracterization and
slander; that there is a difference between development of a
party line to arrive at different conclusions, and the attempt of
revisionism to, in their view, revise Marxist fundamentals; and that critics' characterization of anti-revisionists, even taken alone, does not correspond to what anti-revisionists do in practice from day to day.
Those at a
state level claiming an anti-revisionist orientation actually vary very widely in their ideological perspectives from within
communism. An amalgamated list of the more famous self-proclaimed Anti-revisionist leaders:
*
Enver Hoxha*
Mao Tse-Tung*
Hardial Bains*
Bill Bland*
Harry Haywood*
Bob Avakian*
Prachanda (of
Prachanda Path)
*
Kim Jong-il*
Jiang Qing*
Gang of Four*
Ludo Martens*
Jose Maria Sison*
Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)*
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)*
Communist Party of the Philippines*
Freedom Road Socialist Organization*
Maoist Internationalist Movement*
Communist Party of India (Maoist)*
Ray O. Light Group*
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA*
List of Anti-Revisionist Parties/Groups**
Communist Party of India(Maoist) 
