V.I. Lenin said that revisionism is "one of the chief, if not the chief, manifestation of bourgeois influence on the proletariat and bourgeois corruption of the workers." (Lenin, Works, Vol. 20) I warmly point out that revisionism swims with the tide of bourgeois ideology. "In scientific communism and socio-political ideas, revisionism rejects the theory of the class struggle, the opposing nature of liberalism and socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat." The book Right-Wing Revisionism Today points out that "the revisionism of scientific communism lies in the renunciation of the leading role of the working class and its party in the fight for socialism, of the Leninist theory of socialist revolution, of the historical necessity of proletarian dictatorship, of the basic principles of socialist democracy and the Leninist theory of the working-class party." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers, Moscow)
Gus Hall fought revisionism. Gus Hall was a major leader of the Communist Party USA until his death in 2000.
Phillip Bonosky penned that: "Gus (Hall) was always the Communist. Wake him up out of the middle of the night and he will come up a Communist. Communism was bred in his bone." (Phillip Bonosky, ’Gus Hall: A Workers Life,’ Intro to Gus Hall’s Working Class USA.)
Gus Hall wrote of opportunists in Working Class USA: "the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is dropped, not because the words can be misused but because the concept of working class rule is objectionable to the capitalist class and those influenced by it." Gus Hall said that "a classical feature of revisionism is its rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat."(Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)
The back cover of Gus Hall’s Power of Ideology gives a brief bio of Gus Hall.
"Gus Hall was elected general secretary of the Communist Party USA in 1959, and national chairman in 1987. He has run several times as a candidate of the Communist Party for president of the United States.
"He was born on the Iron Range of Minnesota. As a young man he worked as a laborer, lumberworker and steelworker. He was a founding organizer of the United Steel Workers of America and a leader of the Little Steel Strike in 1937. During World War II he served in the Navy in the Pacific.
"In 1927, Gus Hall joined the Communist Party. During the McCarthy period, he, along with other leaders of the Communist Party, was the victim of a cold-war political prosecution under the repressive Smith Act. He served eight years in Leavenworth prison for the crime of ’thinking.’
"Hall is the author of Working Class USA; Fighting Racism; Karl Marx: Beacon for our Times; Racism, the Nation’s Most Dangerous Pollutant; Imperialism Today; Ecology: Can We Survive Under Capitalism; The Energy Rip-Off and scores of other books, pamphlets, articles and essays. Many of these works have been translated into other languages and distributed widely." (from Gus Hall’s Power of Ideology, 1989, New Outlook Publishers)
Gus Hall passed away in the year 2000. One of his important teachings is that: "A classical feature of revisionism is its rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat." (Gus Hall, Working Class USA, 1987, International Publishers)
