p The fruits of Marxism-Leninism are colossal and allconquering. Under its growing influence the goal of the working class throughout our planet—the creation of a society without exploitation—would today already be close to fulfilment but for certain factors which hamper it. Deplorable as it may be the fact must be recognised that numerous difficulties and obstacles of a subjective nature have arisen on this victorious path. And now, when the principal social forces stand clearly aligned in the world arena, one can definitely point to the danger spots which have become so prominent today in the social movement.

p In speaking of the real menace to the present-day international communist and labour movement as the leading trend of all humanity’s progressive development, we have sufficient grounds for saying that one such very grave danger is to be seen not only in anti-communism, but in revisionism. And not just revisionism in general, but the revisionism that has penetrated into the very heart of the Marxist movement, where, under the guise of defending the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, it insidiously, in an underhand manner, distorts, confuses and vulgarises its scientific and revolutionising essence. It would be futile, therefore, to attempt to combat modern revisionism nesting within the Marxist movement by invocation or exhortation of its ideologues. One has to use the knife-edge of Marxist theory and the creative practice of the masses, the instrument of scientific analysis, to lay bare this monster and render it harmless, the way Lenin and his associates did, the way true revolutionaries of the Marxist-Leninist type are now doing.

p In revealing the historical and social roots of revisionism Lenin scientifically demonstrated its baneful effects and was the first of Marx’s and Engels’s followers to make an all-out 46 assault on this dangerous ideological poison. To this day Lenin’s evaluation of revisionism remains an undying truth calling for the exposure and defeat of this most dangerous of ideological opponents. Revisionism did not come suddenly like a bolt from the blue. It grew historically on definite social soil. We shall never gain an understanding of its essential nature unless we trace it to its historical and social sources.

p Revisionism grew out of the multiform streams of pettybourgeois socialism, which took shape almost simultaneously with the revolutionary theory of the founders of scientific communism—Marx and Engels. Petty-bourgeois socialism, acting as an outside force in regard to Marxism, tried by means of theoretical struggle to challenge the doctrine of scientific communism, by offering as an alternative antiscientific theories that were absolutely alien to the proletariat. Among these trends at the time were Lassalleanism, Proudhonism and Bakuninism. All these theoretical trends and political currents were connected in one way or another with the initial stage of working-class struggle and pretended to a dominant role in the leadership of this struggle. It was not until long afterwards that Marxism secured its leading position in the labour movement and among the progressive social forces. It took years of hard and strenuous struggle by the nations’ best intellects to pave the way for this allpowerful doctrine. "No wonder," wrote Lenin, "that this doctrine has had to fight for every step forward in the course of its life.”  [46•* 

p We should like to draw special attention to these lines. Indeed, Marxism, from the very outset, had to fight every step of its way into the minds of the workers and all of society’s progressive forces. This has been put very neatly and timely. Lenin goes on to say things which make us ponder seriously over the substance and forms in which modern revisionism proclaims itself, over its historical and social roots, its methods and means of struggle. "In the first half-century of its existence (from the 1840s on) Marxism was engaged in combating theories fundamentally hostile to it," writes Lenin. "But after Marxism had ousted all the more or less integral doctrines hostile to it, the tendencies 47 expressed in those doctrines began to seek other channels. The forms and causes of the struggle changed, but the struggle continued. And the second half-century of the existence of Marxism began (in the nineties) with the struggle of a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism itself.”  [47•* 

p The spectre of scientific communism spread and deepened. The anti-scientific, petty-bourgeois theories of socialism proved a complete fiasco. Pre-Marxian socialism was exploded. This, of course, did not mean that the ideological opponent had given up the struggle. He continued it, this time not on his own ground, but on that of Marxism, as revisionism. "The dialectics of history," wrote Lenin, "were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists. Liberalism, rotten within, tried to revive itself in the form of socialist opportunism,”  [47•**  that is, in the form of outwardly Marxist phraseology. "The obsolete," Marx observed, "seeks to reestablish and maintain itself within the newly acquired forms.”  [47•*** 

p We shall not here go into a detailed analysis of all the currents and shadings of revisionism, but shall attempt merely to examine, from Lenin’s standpoint, its evolution and inner essence. We shall examine its genesis, development and operation in modern conditions from the standpoint of historical materialism. It should be emphasised here that modern revisionism is a synthesis of Right reformism and “Left” adventurism, a knot in which these two revisionist ramifications are interlocked more and more closely with the ideologues of anti-communism. These social twins, both Right and “Left”, represent a great danger to the modern labour and communist movement throughout the world.

Therefore, today as never before it is important to know the social essence of revisionism beginning from its very origins. This is a task that has been brought into high focus by life itself. Casting a retrospective glance at the whole historical path of development of the international labour and communist movement from the moment of Marxism’s emergence to our day, we are able historically and logically 48 to define four basic periods of Marxism’s ideological struggle against revisionism—that vehicle of bourgeois ideology within the labour movement.