Marxism and revisionism in the world today

Abstract

Lenin said, ‘We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life’. Marx himself believed in the principle of ‘ruthless criticism’ of everything existing. Critiquing and revising certain ideas to strengthen an approach to society is a constructive act. But the legitimate act of revision becomes revision-ism, when the fundamental tenets of Marxism are revised in order to attack – negate – its very explanatory or scientific foundation and to justify political reformism. Indeed, since Lenin’s time, scientific socialism has been under attack from not only the ruling class and its ideologues, but also those who associate themselves with Marxism itself, including in academia. The latter are revisionist Marxists. For them, Marxism has some usefulness. But they deny the superiority of Marxism as a way of critically and scientifically interpreting the world and transforming that world in the interest of the exploited and oppressed masses in a revolutionary socialist manner. This denial of Marxism’s superiority takes the form of the denial of Marxism’s central concepts: class and capitalism. The article discusses, and critiques, various forms of revisionist Marxism (e.g. Analytical Marxism, Polanyian Marxism, Post-Modernist Marxism, and Geographical Marxism). Revisionism does respond to some recent developments in the world (e.g. the defeat of class-based movements; the complexity of class structure), but it seeks to explain these not on the basis of Marxist foundations but on the basis of scientifically inadequate ideas and in a manner that is politically reformist.