APPENDIX 2 : MORE ON REVISIONISM
As we said earlier, revisionism strips communism of its revolutionary working class content, and in doing so corrodes the struggle for reforms, corrupts the class spirit of these struggles, surrounds every reform fight in a hazy, suffocating web of intrigue, of behind-the-scenes "understandings" with "good" imperialists, wheeling and dealing the people's strength in exchange for dubious favors. A revisionist party goes down hill fast.
This has happened before. In the late 19th century and at the start of the 20th, various European socialist parties made tremendous contributions. For the first time a mass socialist movement was built in several countries. This great effort was rooted in the brilliant theoretical work and practical leadership of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels -- and of course, in the heroic struggles of working people throughout the middle and late 19th and early twentieth centuries, battles from which we can still learn a good deal -- like the Paris Commune of 1871 where, for the first time, the working class seized state power, although only for a short time. But by the time World War I broke out, the socialist parties in Europe had become so thoroughly revisionist that they supported "their" (!) governments and urged German workers to kill their French class brothers, etc. But at the same time as this old revolutionary movement was disintegrating, a new movement, led by V.I. Lenin and the Russian Communist Party was coming into existence. The left-wing of the socialist parties broke away and joined this movement. Learning from the great strengths and also the mistakes and betrayals of the old socialist parties, the Russian Bolsheviks were the first revolutionaries to seize -- and hold -- state power.
Thus a new communist movement was born, on a higher level and with deeper roots than the one before. And this new movement for the first time took hold in the vast colonial lands, the European colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as in the "established" "socialist areas" -- Europe and the U.S.
Since World War II, revisionism has once again become dominant in the revolutionary communist movement. This new revisionism is very much related to errors in dealing with nationalism, as well as liberal view of the state (that it can be reformed into a "good guy" and revolution is therefore unnecessary). This is, of course, not a good thing. But at the same time, a new revolutionary communist movement is developing -- including, in the Americas', the Puerto Rican Socialist League, the Canadian Party of Labor and the Progressive Labor Party (in the U.S.). This new movement is still young and small, but it is very much alive, fighting hard and growing. We are trying to learn from the great working class struggles and great revolutionaries that have come before us, while at the same time avoiding the errors that allowed revisionism to become dominant in the past.
How, then, does revisionism develop?
From the time we're born, all of us are bombarded with capitalist ideas, the ruling ideas in all capitalist countries. We are taught nationalism, liberal-reformism, pacifism, fear of change, racist nightmare-lies, scorn for working people. And we are taught that "dog-eats-dog; every man better stick up for himself first and the devil takes the softest so sharpen your teeth and come out swinging. That's life. Who can blame a man for grabbing all he can? You only go around once, don't you?"
These ideas serve as a profound justification for capitalist rule. Unless the working class is basically freed of their influence, it can't win.
But communists don't live in some other world or in a hot-house. They're right out there with everyone else in the capitalist air. We bring all the capitalist garbage into the movement with us. These ideas and practices don't just disappear either. In fact, unless they're actively fought -- through political struggle and base building to make our outlook one of serving working people -- they will grow within the movement itself. (See PL's pamphlet Build a Base in the Working Class.) Manifested at first in small corruptions, fed by ten million influences in the society, reinforced by their unchallenged growth in other reds, these self-serving, anti-worker ideas can take over quietly, without a fuss. External difficulties bring them out sharper, and lack of ties to the people make possible a complete victory for enemy ideas. The ruling class, which is not a bunch of fools, knows this and therefore dangles bribes as well as threats and punishments. "Don't fight us so hard," is the message, "and we'll go easy on you." Given isolation and a growing contempt for the people, the one-time revolutionary begins to "come to terms" with imperialism. He learns to "distinguish between madmen like Goldwater and doves like LBJ." (Believe it or not, this was the fake-radical "Communist" Party USA's line in the 1964 elections!) Liberalism replaces real communist work. Manipulation, opportunism, organizing around anti-worker ideas (like nationalism) and Madison Avenue techniques replace learning from the people and working class struggle. Wheeling and dealing, the one-time reds become the harmless loyal opposition.
But after reds lead a socialist revolution there are even greater revisionist dangers.
For one thing, the new, working-class-run society does not appear full-blown. It steps forth very shaky, experimenting, but still covered head to foot with bourgeois traces. For the habits of servility ("we workers need experts, we're dumb") to pro-ruler ideas like racism and male chauvinism -- many rotten habits and ideas accumulated over thousands of years of class society remain. Millions of small businessmen, professionals, middle officials remain -- people with the outlook of very small capitalists. And of course the rulers themselves and their hangers-on -- army officers, upper managers, pay-for-hire intellectuals, corporate lawyers -- they remain too. And they know how to rule as exploiters. They know all the tricks: how to fool and divide, to lie and cheat and make a profit.
Thus, even after a socialist revolution, the old rulers can rely on rotten ideas plus their own experience and "connections" and skills to organize, foment jealously among the workers, attacks the most militant, and, perhaps even while calling themselves revolutionaries (!) recapture state power.
So it's no easy problem. To make things tougher, the very workings of imperfect socialist society produces new groups of exploiters! How? Because socialist society is not "classless." Some are better educated; city dwellers live better than rural workers; men still oppress women to some extent; technical problems must be solved, yet most workers are not trained to solve them; leaders need special conditions to lead effectively, but this allows them to become petty (and, then, not so petty) exploiters.
So new privileged groups can emerge, and the logic of privilege is to protect and justify itself, to fight for more. There are a million excuses.
A good example of a fight over this question was the "red v. expert" struggle in China that developed before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. Revisionists in China maintained that only experts could solve day-to-day problems in the factories; workers didn't know enough, they said. This meant putting real power in the hands of highly trained experts, who usually lived better. It meant teaching workers servility. The left-wingers answered that expertise was not the main thing. The test had to be political. There had to be a left-wing approach. Millions of workers themselves had to take the lead in solving every problem. The working class itself had to exercise leadership in everything!
This left-wing line was raise in a massive way by literally hundreds of millions of students, workers and peasants during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. How will a problem be solved? By relying on what is new and up-coming, on the workers, on liberating the revolutionary understanding and vast reservoir of information possessed by millions of workers and peasants -- while, at the same time, abolishing privilege. or would the approach be to do things the "easy" way, rely on an "efficient method" -- i.e., call in a few smart-guy experts, keep delicate problems out of the rough hands of the people, and reward the all-important elite with more and more privileges, increasing instead of narrowing the gap.
That was the question.
It takes different forms, but that is in some sense always the essential question: a left-wing, mass-based revolutionary pro-worker approach? Or a rightist, fundamentally pro-capitalist, revisionist approach?
What is the guarantee against revisionism? There are no easy answers or quick cures. The key is to develop firm, revolutionary roots among the vast masses of workers. They must grasp communist ideas as their own property. The masses, steeled in struggles they must wage and having grasped red ideas -- they are the best guarantee against revisionism. Second, the fight against revisionism must be open and sharp. It must be fought tooth-and-nail and above all in a mass way -- we mean that literally, the masses themselves must take part, must become the flesh and blood of the struggle. In that way, revisionism cannot reverse the revolutionary struggle.
Let us return to the Vietnamese leaders. We can detect the tremendous hold of revisionism several ways.
FIRST -- The clearest evidence of the strength of revisionism is that, as we have seen, revisionist theory and practice is pushed hard by the Vietnamese leaders. They have dropped revolutionary socialist goals while pushing nationalism, all-class-unity, peaceful coexistence with the same imperialists who are attacking working people everywhere, including invasions in various parts of Southeast Asia, and praising U.S. "dove" politicians. That's pretty revisionist. They have pursued a negotiations strategy that has -- for the time being -- reversed People's War. They are squandering the people, dropping once non-negotiable demands (like the demand for immediate and unconditional U.S. withdrawal) and proposing that post-war south Vietnam be capitalist -- after all the fighting!
SECOND -- Beside pushing this revisionist stuff in Vietnam, the Vietnamese leaders also support revisionist forces around the world. Thus we've seen how they laud the Russian super-revisionist skunks. They also support the U.S. "Communist" Party -- which is (or would like to be) completely allied with the "dove" imperialists like Lindsay and Kennedy. They say you can tell a man -- and it goes for governments too -- by the company he keeps. The Vietnamese "red" leaders don't only keep company with the worst scum -- constantly playing host to U.S. revisionists, for instance. They go even further -- they praise these traitors to the skies. They even backed the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. (So did Cuba, by the way.)
THIRD -- After saying this much, it may seem like an anti-climax to say that another indication that revisionism holds power in the Vietnamese movement is that the leaders make no effort to fight revisionism. But this is really an important point. Since it is inevitable that revisionism will develop and since revisionism will win unless it is fought very sharply and in a mass way, and since no such struggle is being waged by Vietnamese leaders (obviously -- indeed they praise revisionists all over!) -- this fact in itself -- even without making the first two points which of course provide rock-solid evidence -- this lack of a fight against revisionism itself shows that revisionism has the upper hand.
This is not a pretty picture. Concretely, it means that imperialism will live a little longer, and workers' lives will be that much harder. For revolutionaries and others interested in fighting back against this system, it is crucial to turn this setback around. We can do this by learning the two great lessons of Vietnam: 1) that when it is seriously pursued, People's War is absolutely unbeatable, that a People's War is one small country can bring about a years-long world upsurge is revolutionary struggle, and 2) that no matter how great and heroic the struggle may have been, rotten politics can turn it around.
The sellout will not be permanent in Vietnam. There is a real left-wing in that embattled land; it can be found among the rank and file communists and NLF members. It is there, more or less developed, as a vast resource among the millions of working people. The contradictions are very sharp in Vietnam and the sellout is gross. The right-wing, the revisionists, are in full control of the "communist" organizations and the NLF. But that only means it will become very clear who caused the sellout.
No amount of imperialist forces has been able to crush the Vietnamese. Revisionism is a tougher enemy. Vietnamese workers and peasants will beat this one too!
SUPPORT THE VIETNAMESE -- DRIVE U.S. IMPERIALISM OUT OF VIETNAM!
END OF PAMPHLET
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