"Anti-Dogmatism" is not "Pro-Revisionism", "Anti-Revisionism" is not "Pro-dogmatism": Neither Dogmatism Nor Revisionism!
Marx and Engels did not present Marxism as a frozen doctrine; they treated it as a materialist method that develops with concrete historical conditions. So not every theoretical development or strategic adaptation is “revisionism.” At the same time, this does not mean every departure from revolutionary politics can be defended as “non-dogmatic flexibility.” In the Marxist–Leninist sense, revisionism refers to revisions that liquidate the revolutionary and class basis of Marxism under the banner of adaptation.
So both errors should be rejected:
>using “revisionist” as an empty factional insult against any disagreement or development;
AND
>using “anti-dogmatism” to justify abandoning class struggle, proletarian power, or communism itself.
Historical Examples
<Vladimir Lenin adapting Marxist strategy to the conditions of the Russian Revolution. Some argued Russia was “too backward” for revolution; Lenin rejected mechanical stageism while still maintaining revolutionary politics. This was presented as anti-dogmatic without abandoning Marxism.
<Mao Zedong developing the strategy of a peasant-based revolution during the Chinese Communist Revolution. He criticized copying Soviet models mechanically (“book worship”) while also attacking what he saw as right-opportunist capitulation to bourgeois forces.
<Ho Chi Minh combining national liberation and socialism in Vietnam. Vietnamese communists adapted Marxism to anti-colonial conditions instead of treating European industrial conditions as universal templates.
<Thomas Sankara rejecting both strict imitation of foreign socialist models and accommodation to neocolonial capitalism in Burkina Faso. His government emphasized local conditions, self-reliance, and mass participation.
<Within communist movements, critiques of both “left” and “right” deviations were common. For example, during debates around the Sino-Soviet Split, many parties argued that mechanically copying either Soviet Union or China without regard to local realities was itself dogmatism.
The common thread in these examples is:
>dogmatism = mechanically repeating formulas regardless of conditions;
>revisionism = abandoning revolutionary class politics in the name of “practicality” or adaptation;
>Marxist method = concrete analysis of concrete conditions.