“Just Yell At Existing Revisionists Harder”
Introduction
Within communist movements, & particularly Leninist ones, a consistent problem keeps rearing its head: revisionists. Those who are said to misdirect the direction of the party & subvert socialist rhetoric for aims other than communism & socialism. For Leninists the solution is always simple: yell at them, exile them from your movements, disassociate with them, re-educate them, etc. This solution has been used time & time again; Stalinists on Trotskyists, Trotskyists on Stalinists & each other, Maoists on Dengists, & Hoxhaists on everyone would be the notable examples, & one would not struggle to find similar examples in other leftist organizations & spheres.
Obviously this is the right thing to do, no? Why would you not do that to people trying to subvert your movement. & yes but look at it this way: has anyone stopped to consider where they keep coming from? Why are there so many sects & individuals willing to subvert your movements?
You can call them opportunists all you want but at some point you have to address why are they being given those opportunities?
the Root of the Problem
It’s the centralist authoritarian nature of Leninist vanguards that gives these people opportunities. The more power is concentrated the worse things one can do with it.
For a more detailed explanation, the way the singular party rules the country often causes them to form a class, a ruling class, at which point they have pretty similar interests to past & future ruling monarchist & capitalist classes. My father likes to say especially about the USSR that they call it a revolution cos the whole thing revolves around & the people on the bottom end up on the top & vice versa.
Near the end of the Soviet Union, many powerful men owned large tracts of land which they kept partially or entirely in the “oddly” peaceful transition to a proper capitalist society. This is to say nothing of the power kept by much of the ruling elite party (for example being Russia’s current president being an ex-KGB spy). In China they have outlawed unions, except of course for the state run unions with the bosses being appointed party members, which, to socialism at least, is a recipe for disaster if not already revisionist.
How to Stop This Revisionism
Don’t do Leninism.
It was created as a way to attempt socialism outside of capitalist environments by retaining the structure of the feudalism they were working off of. It had a good few shots, it did develop the societies it affected. But ultimately it failed at creating & maintaining socialism in those environments & certainly will not succeed in any others.
Luckily, the world, even in many rural areas, is coming to resemble capitalism far stronger than feudalism & Leninism will not even need be considered.
