Revisionism, the unscientific revision of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. It dates back to the late 19th century, when pre-monopoly capitalism grew into imperialism, and emerged in the SocialDemocratic parties of the Second International. It provided the theoretical justification for opportunism and the reformist, social-chauvinist, nationalist policy and tactics of the right-wing leaders of these parties. The founder of revisionism was E. Bernstein. In the early 20th century, revisionism was widespread in the Social- Democratic movement in Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and other countries (R Hilferding, O. Bauer, E. Vandervelde, Ph. Scheidemann, L.Trotsky, etc.). Attaching an absolute value to and misinterpreting certain phenomena such as parliamentarism, reforms, the growth and strengthening of trade unions, increasing scale of cooperatives, expansion of the rights of municipal councils, the growth of production and the formation of companies, the revisionists, under the guise of creatively developing Marxism, denied the necessity of a socialist revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the expropriation of the means of production from the bourgeoisie. They called for a “correction” of Marx’s theory of value, 314 opposed the Marxist theory of surplus value and said that small-scale production has advantages and is ousted very slowly, if at all, by large-scale production, that economic crises can be eliminated, etc. The theory of imperialism and ultraimperialism (see Theory of Ultraimperialism) of K. Kautsky during World War I, and Hilferding’s theory of "organised capitalism" substituted schemes isolated from reality which they had invented for specific historical analysis. These theories overlooked the important features and processes of monopoly capitalism and spread the illusion that capitalism could evolve into socialism. The revisionists of the Second International did not recognise the world-historic importance of the Great October Socialist Revolution. They claimed that Russia was not prepared for socialism, denied the socialist nature of the USSR’s development, and took an antiSoviet and anti-communist position. Revisionism was thoroughly criticised by G. V. Plekhanov, R. Luxemburg, F. Mehring, P. Lafargue, A. Labriola, D. Blagoev, and others. The revisionism of the Second International leaders was made spurious by V. I. Lenin who updated Marxism in conformity with the conditions of the new historical era, and led the struggle against revisionism to an organisational split with its advocates and to the formation of the party of a new type. Following the collapse of the Second International in 1914, the working-class movement split into the right-wing social-reformist current and the left-wing, revolutionary current which developed into the world communist movement. In the communist movement, modern revisionism feeds on the complexities of dealing with the problems brought to the fore in the practice of building socialism in various countries, the formation of a world socialist system, the revolution in science and technology, the deepening world revolutionary process, and development of state-monopoly capitalism. Being a petty-bourgeois ideology, revisionism strives to discredit the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and real socialism in the eyes of the working people, and to split the world socialist system and the international communist movement from inside. Modern revisionism has gone through three stages of development associated with the basic stages in the general crisis of capitalism. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Communist International fought against anti-Leninist trends represented by Trotsky, Zinoviev, Preobrazhensky, and Bukharin in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( Bolsheviks), Maslov, Ruth Fischer, and Brandler in the Communist Party of Germany, the revisionist groups in the Communist Parties of Czechoslovakia (Bubnik), Italy (Bordiga), France (Souvarine), China (Li Lixiang), etc., over key questions such as the possibility and ways of building socialism in one country—the Soviet Union—the dictatorship of the proletariat, the New Economic Policy (NEP), the nature of capitalist stabilisation in the 1920s, and the colonial and other issues. Following World War II the communist movement had to overcome two worldwide waves of revisionist activities in ihe 1950s and 1960s. The revisionist groups were criticised and organisationally defeated in the Communist Parties of Hungary (I. Nagy, G. Losonczi), USA (J. Gates), Canada (J. Salsberg, S. Smith), Italy (G. Giolitti), Denmark (A. Larsen), France (H. Lefebvre, P. Herve), and Poland (R. Zimand, L. Kolakowski). The revisionist views widespread in the Communist League of Yugoslavia (M. Djilas and others) were comprehensively criticised, as were subsequently the positions of the right-wingers in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (O. Sik, I. Svitak and others), people like R. Garaudy in France, E. Fischer and F. Marek in Austria, the Manifesto group in Italy, etc. The basic ideological and theoretical premise of modern revisionism is the pluralism of " models of socialism”. This conception denies common features (including economic) of the proletarian revolution and the building of socialism and communism. Attempts to economically justify any revisionist "model of socialism" invariably boil down to petty-bourgeois nihilism and the vulgarisation of political economy in the spirit of market socialism (see 315 Theory of Market Socialism). State- monopoly capitalism is regarded by revisionists in the spirit of social reformism (see Reformism). Formerly, revisionism denied the very possibility and necessity of a political economy of socialism (Hilferding); political economy was supposed to treat only the relations of production of the capitalist commodity economy where economic laws are uncontrollable and fetishism of commodities is prevalent. The modern revisionism replaces MarxistLeninist analysis of the economic structure of socialist society by petty-bourgeois conceptions and treats nihilistically the political economy of socialism, a science that has come into existence and is developing. Revisionists deny the decisive role of the theoretical heritage of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in development of the political economy of socialism; ignore the experience of millions of people who have built socialist society; do not recognise common features and laws in development of the communist mode of production in different countries. Revisionism of bygone days obtained sustenance from the vulgar bourgeois political economy of the second half of the 19th century; today’s brand obtains sustenance from vulgar bourgeois political economy of this century. Revisionism distorts the essence of state property under socialism, does not recognise its public nature, and equates state-monopoly and socialist state property. Right-wing revisionists denigrate the effectiveness of the incentives to work inherent in socialism, and call for "socialist competition”. In their view, socialist society cannot directly manage expanded reproduction or impose its amounts and proportions in a planned and systematic way. They regard socialist production as a variety of commodity, market economy, and believe that profit is the basic objective of the enterprise. “ Leftwing” revisionists ignore the objective causes of commodity-money relations in the socialist economy and their new content, and do not understand the significance of utilising these to further the building of communism. Right-wing revisionist conceptions deny the principle of equal pay for equal labour. “Left”-wing revisionists underestimate personal material incentives and advocate the same pay for any kind of work. The economic policies and system of managing social production advocated by revisionists conflict with the interests of the working class and the needs of developing the productive forces and socialist production relations. Although different in form, right- and “left”-wing revisionist conceptions are essentially identical. As the socialist economic mechanism evolves, they see only misunderstood historical (in particular, national) features in the development of their countries rather than the essential characteristics of the new mode of production. Attempts to implement right- and “left”-wing revisionist conceptions fail, and the countries inevitably face the choice between the restoration of capitalism and the implementation of Leninist principles of running the socialist economy. All revisionist conceptions oppose international unity and cooperation among the socialist countries and communist parties. Ideologically they result in the spread among the working people of non-proletarian, petty-bourgeois views, the revival and consolidation of private property, middle class, and local interests, and nationalist and great-power chauvinist aspirations. Marxist-Leninist economic theory has been developing in an irreconcilable struggle with economic revisionism. The CPSU and fraternal parties resolutely oppose both right- and “left”-wing revisionism which tries to push the international revolutionary working-class and communist movement into taking opportunist positions and implant in it the ideology of reformist or anarchist, adventurous views.