Revisionism

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The term revisionism ( Latin revidēre "look again") stands for attempts to re-examine, question, reassess or reinterpret a generally recognized historical, political or scientific knowledge and position ( consensus ). The term is used by both proponents and opponents of such revisions .

overview

The term is historically rooted in the “revisionism debate” (1896 ff.) Of German social democracy . There he describes a fundamental deviation from the original theoretical Marxism : Contrary to its assumptions, capitalism cannot be overcome by a social revolution , but can only be gradually improved through reforms ( reformism ). In this sense, certain directions of communism later also referred to Stalinism , and its supporters in turn designated attempts at de-Stalinization as revisionism .

, In science and in science of history is often without certain political connotation of revision speaking, when it comes to examine or change a hitherto prevailing view of history. This critical attitude and openness to new sources is one of the tasks of every scientist and every historian. The philosophy of science of critical rationalism makes z. B. the constant review of existing knowledge with existing new investigations on the essential principle of scientific work. A distinction must be made between the right-wing extremist "revisionists" who have been active since 1945 . The aim of this revisionism is to ascribe itself a "scientific status and to present itself as a scientific pioneer of newer discoveries". Under this revisionism label, a pseudoscientific , methodically based on ignoring proven facts and inventing alleged facts based distortion and falsification of history is operated with the aim of a renewal of nationalism .

A special form of this historical revisionism , which is linked to political goals, is treaty revisionism, which works towards the revision of certain international treaties, for example in order to regain territories lost through a war defeat by legal political means. Since 1918, this form has also mostly been associated with right-wing politics in Germany .

States that sought to reverse a distribution of power that were unfavorable to them were also referred to as “revisionist”. This is how the German Reich was called in international relations after the signing of the Versailles Treaty , and the British economist Robert Skidelsky characterized post-Soviet Russia as a “revisionist power”.

As a self-designation, "revisionism" also appeared in the social-historical science of the 1970s and 1980s, which researched Stalinism and tried to revise the totalitarianism thesis.

Social democracy

As revisionism, leading theorists and politicians of the SPD from 1899 onwards described positions of their internal party opponents who deviated from their previously agreed goals and gave up their implementation. The main representative of this direction was Eduard Bernstein , who wrote the practical part of the SPD's Erfurt program of 1891. He now came forward with the thesis that the previous focus on class struggle and the abolition of capitalism was overtaken by reality. This had proven to be crisis-proof and adaptable, so that the SPD could only achieve improvements for the workers and a gradual adjustment of the standard of living within the framework of the existing mode of production through social reforms (the way is everything to me, the goal is nothing to me) . The Socialist Monthly Issues , edited by Joseph Bloch , were considered the most important publication organ of social democratic revisionism . Bloch felt connected to the SPD, but the magazine was independent of the party.

The reformist position was rejected by the party majority. Like the party left (including Rosa Luxemburg ) and the Marxist “center” (especially Karl Kautsky ), the party leadership under August Bebel declared revisionism as a departure from the SPD program of the revolutionary abolition of class society . These opposing positions to revisionism were also summarized as " orthodox Marxism ". In everyday practice, however, the majority of the SPD followed a course that is now known as Realpolitik : It tried to find recognition among the elites of the empire by compromising with the monarchy . In August 1914, she gave up her rejection of war, which had been vehemently advocated, within a few days and supported the Reichstag's war decision in the form of approval of the war credits almost entirely and for the entire duration of the First World War .

The system opposition was actually "revised" here, even if it was still retained in theory and in the program. Deviating from the original course was accepted by the majority as a “moderate”, pragmatic and realistic approach, so that sticking to the original course appeared as an “extreme”, “radical”, unrealistic and unfashionable minority opinion. The left minority understood this abandonment of the pre-war course as a “betrayal” of the party's goals, which, however, initially only very few fought in practice. The wing dispute in the party only increased again during the war when high war casualties, the Russian February Revolution , mass strikes and the USA's entry into the war had changed the domestic political situation. In 1917 the party split into the USPD and MSPD . In the course of the November Revolution, the left split again when the KPD was founded. This claimed not to be “revisionist” as the only political force in the German labor movement .

The communists then used the term to ideologically differentiate themselves from the policies of the SPD government under Philipp Scheidemann and Friedrich Ebert . In the Weimar Republic, revisionism meant brutal violence for them since Defense Minister Gustav Noske had revolutionary workers' uprisings and strikes put down with the help of the Freikorps .

The CPSU used the term since 1923 to differentiate it from all parties of the failed Second International . Since about 1925 it was used synonymously with " social fascism " by Stalin's propaganda .

For the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in the GDR , which was founded in 1949, and its subordinate Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED , the Socialist Monthly Issues were regarded as the "journalistic center of international revisionism".

The accusation that the SPD was distancing itself from its core values ​​was again raised by the left wing of the SPD when the party passed the Godesberg program on November 15, 1959 . With this revision of its goals the party recognized by the death of her first postwar chairman Kurt Schumacher , the social market economy and took the step from a clientele -party the workers to People's Party , who wanted to be selected for the middle classes.

Really existing socialism

As a result of the XX. At the CPSU party congress in 1956, CPSU leader Khrushchev promised a de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union . This led to a break with the People's Republic of China . Its leader Mao Zedong described the Soviet state ideology as "modern revisionism", which turned away from the original goals of Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , Lenin and Stalin. So he turned the previously valid borderline to all social democratic and reformist approaches against the Soviet power center itself.

However, the latter understood their partial turning away from Stalin as a return to the “true” communist goals of Lenin, who had promised democratization after the successful socialization of the relations of production in Russia . However, this democratization did not take place at the time; this became evident with the invasion of Hungary by the Red Army in the same year. Subsequently, parts of the German New Left adopted the Chinese language regime. Rudi Dutschke, for example, always referred to state socialism as “revisionism”, in turn including the Chinese system in this criticism. For him these “ really existing ” systems were neither socialism nor communism nor on the way there or a later “degeneration”, but they structurally prevented this for him just like western late capitalism and imperialism .

History revisionism

Attempts to revise certain historical facts and related views of one's own history in order to dispute and change a scientifically recognized view of history exist in many countries. They are often closely linked to political goals.

In Germany, history revisionists refer primarily to events related to both world wars . You doubt, qualify or deny, among other things:

The common goal is the gradual rehabilitation or relief of National Socialism in order to renew and strengthen German nationalism. Historical revisionism related to German history is therefore a central and unifying component of right-wing extremism and the New Right .

The Holocaust denial is considered the heart of this historical revisionist reinterpretation. Holocaust deniers often refer to themselves as "revisionists" in order to give their publications the appearance of an unbiased "revision" of historical facts. That is why recognized historians summarize the relativization and denial of the National Socialist genocide in the term “revisionism”.

Most historians reject publications by Holocaust deniers as misleading history, falsifying history and propaganda and avoiding them as much as possible in the scientific discourse. Ernst Nolte's attempt to relativize the Holocaust by declaring it as a reaction to the crimes of Stalinism, however, was discussed intensively in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany from 1986 onwards . The core issue of this historians' dispute was not the factuality, but the singularity of the Shoah , which was confirmed by most of the historians involved in the dispute.

literature

Social democratic revisionism debate

Fonts from that time

Later writings

  • Erika König: From Revisionism to Democratic Socialism , Akademie-Verlag, 1964.
  • Leopold Labedz, Erika Langen, Armin Dross: The Revisionism , Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1965.
  • Sven Papcke: The revisionism dispute and the political theory of reform. Questions and Comparisons , Kohlhammer, 1979, ISBN 3-17-004719-1 .
  • Helga Grebing : Revisionism. From Bernstein to the Prague Spring , C. H. Beck Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-406-06995-9 .
  • Bo Gustafsson: Marxism and Revisionism , European Publishing House , 1972, ISBN 3-434-30136-4 .
  • Rainer Eckert, Bernd Faulenbach (ed.): Half-hearted revisionism. On the post-communist image of history , Olzog-Aktuell GmbH, 1996, ISBN 3-7892-9360-1 .
  • Werner Billing, Kai Stahl: Der 'Revisionismus' , Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005, ISBN 3-531-13459-0 .

Leninism versus Social Democracy

Historical writings

  • Vladimir I. Lenin: Against Revisionism (essays 1914–1924), Dietz, Berlin-Ost 1959.
  • Dzangir A. Kerimov, Hans Gerisch: Staatslehre und Revisionismus , VEB Deutscher Zentralverlag 1959.
  • Albrecht Heinze, Horst Richter: Lenin's fight against revisionism , VEB Verlag 1960.
  • Accused: 30 years of betrayal of socialism. Documentation of the International Tribunal against Social-Imperialism and Modern Revisionism on March 15, 1986 in Hamburg , ISBN 3-88021-148-5 .

Stalinism or Maoism versus de-Stalinization

  • Nikita S. Chruscev: The proletarian revolution and the revisionism of Khrushchev , Verlag für Fremdsprachige Literatur, 1964.
  • Kurt Marko, Reports of the Federal Institute for Eastern Studies and International Studies: Against Anti-Communism and Right and Left Revisionism and Opportunism , 1970.
  • Communist Party of China: Documents of the CPC's Struggle against Modern Revisionism. Part III: 1963 to 1966 , publisher of communist and anti-fascist writings VKS, ISBN 3-932636-46-5 .
  • Hans Koch (ed.): Georg Lukács and revisionism. A collection of essays , ISBN 3-921810-01-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uwe Backes and a .: Yearbook Extremism and Democracy Vol. 8, Nomos, Baden-Baden 1996, ISBN 3-7890-4526-8 , pp. 75f.
  2. ↑ cit. based on: Stephen Sestanovich: What Has Moscow Done? Rebuilding US-Russian Relations ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Foreign Affairs , November / December 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.foreignaffairs.org
  3. ↑ As a result , the friendship between Bernstein and Kautsky, which had lasted for years, suffered, and it was only with the opposition to the First World War that the two became closer again. See Horst Klein: Testimony to a lifelong friendship and spiritual community: The correspondence between Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky 1891 to 1932, in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume III / 2013.
  4. ^ Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED : History of the German Workers' Movement. Volume 1: From the beginnings of the German labor movement to the end of the 19th century. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1966, p. 473 f.
  5. ^ Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia: Revisionism