Here, you will ask: Is there any difference at all between the modern revisionists and the social democrats? The revisionists have in fact fundamentally passed over to the positions of the reformists.
As the general crisis of capitalism deepens, the social basis of reformism is shrinking.
On the other hand, the sharpening of the class struggle has increasingly exposed the true colours of reformism. The workers have seen for themselves that reformism has brought them nothing but frustration and betrayal. That is why ever more important sections of them are turning away from social democratic reformism.
The modern revisionists camouflaged as Communists are trying to win the sympathy of these workers for whom the name of Communist Party means a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, vanguard party.
It is precisely here that there lies the grave danger of the working class in Western Europe being dragged into a neo-reformism while believing that they have found the revolutionary road.
That is why it is all the more urgent for the working people of the vanguard to hold high the banner of Marxism-Leninism and foil these tricks which so effectively serve the plans of the bourgeoisie.
In Western Europe, the revisionist leaders are openly working in the direction of seeking unity with social democracy, including organizational unity, on the basis of reformist positions.
But the realization of this unity is not necessarily a simple process.
In reality, although modern revisionism, like classical reformism, implies class collaboration, there is still the problem of what the form of collaboration should be and with which bourgeoisie it should collaborate.
During World War I, the social democrat reformists took their stand on the side of the bourgeoisie of their own countries. As a result, there were complete contradictions between the various reformist parties of the Second International.
Between World War I and World War II, some reformist leaders became collaborators of foreign imperialist finance capital, while others were still zealously serving the bourgeoisie of their own countries.
For instance, before 1940 Henri De Man, President of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, was a real representative of the interests of German imperialism, while Paul Henri Spaak was, at this time, the representative of British imperialism. Today the self-same Spaak, former Secretary-General of NATO, has become a creature of U.S. imperialism.
Nowadays, the pro-U.S. tendency predominates in the social democratic leadership in Western Europe.
Contradictions among the imperialists still exist and are becoming more acute. In spite of the fact that the policy of the Khrushchov clique actually consists in collaborating with U.S. imperialism, contradictions also exist, and with all the more reason, between the Soviet Union and the capitalist countries including the United States.
The changes in relations between the revisionist and reformist leaders should also be studied in the light of these facts.
Likewise, we can also note a deepening of contradictions between the revisionist leaders of various countries.
For instance, those revisionist leaders who follow the baton of Khrushchov and are completely subordinated to him are opposed to a certain extent to those revisionist leaders who, though taking the same neo-reformist position, are more inclined to collaborate directly with this or that bourgeoisie.
While furthering the development of the adverse current of revisionism, its ringleader Khrushchov has at the same time created the conditions for the growth of centrifugal tendencies in the relations between those parties which are under revisionist leadership. This is the reason for differences of view in the positions of various revisionist parties, especially those in Western Europe.