u/Green_Plant57 - originally from r/GenZhou
A good book on this subject is "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics a Guide for Foreigners" by Roland Boer, professor of Marxism at Renmin University in China. Most everything I will explain about SWCC comes from this book.
The fundamental difference between revisionism and SWCC is its class character and its purpose, as well as the specific policies implemented. If the distinction could be made in one sentence, it would be that one.
​
China adopted market reforms with the intent of developing the productive forces and establishing a solid industrial foundation to build advanced socialism and eventually communism on. The CPC holds the belief that advanced socialism can only emerge through the laws of economic development under the DotP. They established the DotP, now what they have to do is focus on economic development and advanced socialism will be established when the economy is ready to do so. The market was also implemented to integrate them into the global economy to allow trade with the capitalists.
Another thing that should be noted is Deng Xiaoping's famous quote about "black cat white cat, doesn't matter as long as it catches mice" isn't reductionist saying capitalism and socialism are both good and on equal footing. What he is referring to is the mechanisms that get used to distribute goods and services in the economy doesn't matter, what matters is the results of their distribution; what matters is that mice get caught. Under socialism this distribution should be in the interests of the proletariat. These interests themselves will change depending on the material conditions, but the economy dominantly works in their favor with anything capitalist being secondary. It doesn't matter if a socialist economy uses planing or markets as long as the end result is prosperity for the nation, dominantly establishing distribution according to work, curbing excess exploitation in the primary stage and all exploitation in advanced socialism and communism, and the pursuance of the interests of the working class.
The same is true for capitalism. It doesn't matter if it is a Laissez faire capitalist or a social democracy (black cat white cat) they both catch birds as opposed to mice. Their goals are different. They are trying to benefit the capitalist rather than the worker. What the mechanisms are trying to achieve is different, regardless of which ones they use.
SWCC is just scientific socialism; developing an economic strategy for China to liberate the working class.
​
Contrast this with revisionism, which is the betrayal of marxism. Rather than saying we should change things within the socialist system, it says we should scrap the socialist system all together, it isn't special. It is anti-materialistic analysis that ignores the truths of marxism in favor of ideas contrary to reality.
Desalinization is an example of how they gut socialism into a shell of appearance. Deng Xiaoping made principled criticisms of Mao, but said we will never do what Khrushchev did to Stalin because that is revisionist. We must material analyze the mistakes and merits of past leaders and policies. If you correctly analyze leaders like Mao and Stalin, as Deng Xiaoping said, you will come to the inevitable conclusion these were some of the best men in history. Not without faults, but still some of the best. Anti-materialism is what leads to the erroneous analysis conducted by the revisionists.
The other element of revisionism is opportunism. Some capitalists use un-dialectic arguments with the intent of weakening the socialist system to inevitably crush it. People like Boris Yeltsin are examples of this.
​
Essentially, SWCC is just a different take on socialist development taken by China while revisionism is the conscious or unconscious rejection of marxism and dialectical materialism in favor of idealistic jargon and unrealistic analysis.
Edit: destalinization not desalinization