And V.I. Lenin, anti-revisionist to the core, taught that "by educating a workers' party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new order, of being the teacher, guide and leader of all the toiling and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie." (Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917)
The Soviet book Right-Wing Revisionism Today rightly says: "The leading role of the communist party in socialist revolution comes naturally from the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary process, as scientifically established by Marxism-Leninism."
Stalin rightly said of a Communist Party in Foundations of Leninism: "The Party is the vanguard of the working class." He continued: "The Party is the advanced organized detachment of the working class. The Party is the highest form of class organization of the proletariat. The Party is the political leader of the working class." The Party is "an instrument in the hands of the proletariat for achieving the dictatorship (of the proletariat)" and for "consolidating and expanding the dictatorship (of the proletariat" once socialism is won.(Stalin, Foundations Of Leninism, 1924)
"To deny it (the Marxist-Leninist Party) the leading role," the Soviet book "Right-Wing Revisionism Today" says, "is to decapitate the socialist revolution."
But revisionism within the revolutionary Communist party of the working class ultimately means the liquidation of the party.
"By revisionism," a Soviet book points out, "Lenin understood an opportunist trend alien to Marxism and socialism that existed within the revolutionary party of the working class." Under the guise of "creative non dogmatic Marxism", revisionism rejects the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist theory, replacing the basic principles with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers)
Otto Kuusinen wrote in Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism that revisionism aims to liquidate the Party or transform it into a reformist organization. He said that Lenin's teachings on the Party was one of the revisionist's chief targets. And, whether it's openly stated or concealed, "the theoretical and practical efforts of the revisionists are in the final analysis always subordinated to their attempt to liquidate the Party or to transform it into a reformist organization."
The Soviet book smashes through the web of revisionism: "The surrender of a class and scientific (Marxist-Leninist) position in the activity of a Communist Party invariably leads to that Party's liquidation." (Right-Wing Revisionism Today, 1976, Progress Publishers)
Gus Hall, Marxist-Leninist former leader of the Communist Party of the United States, lived through the Earl Browder debacle and wrote often about liquidationism. Gus Hall once stated, "The most dangerous liquidationist trend is not disbanding the Party structure, but eliminating the Communist essence in our mass work." (Gus Hall, "Opportunism--the Destructive Germ," Political Affairs, May 1979)
