Revolutionary defeatism is a concept made most prominent by

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. It is based on the

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

idea of

class struggle Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The form ...

. Arguing that the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

could not win or gain in a capitalist war, Lenin declared its true enemy is the imperialist leaders who sent their lower classes into battle. Workers would gain more from their own nations' defeats, he argued, if the war could be turned into civil war and then international revolution. Initially rejected by all but the more radical at the

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

Zimmerwald Conference The Zimmerwald Conference was held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, from September 5 to 8, 1915. It was the first of three international socialist conferences convened by anti-militarist socialist parties from countries that were originally neutral ...

in 1915, the concept appears to have gained support from more and more socialists, especially in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

in 1917 after it was forcefully reaffirmed in Lenin's "

April Theses The April Theses (russian: апрельские тезисы, transliteration: ') were a series of ten directives issued by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin upon his April 1917 return to Petrograd from his exile in Switzerland via Germa ...

" as Russia's war losses continued, even after the

February Revolution The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and some ...

as the

Provisional Government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or ...

kept them in the conflict. Revolutionary defeatism was also a policy of the

International Communist Party The International Communist Party (ICP) is a left communist international political party which is often described as Bordigist due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga, although the adherents of the party don't define themsel ...

under

Amadeo Bordiga Amadeo Bordiga (13 June 1889 – 25 July 1970) was an Italian Marxist theorist, revolutionary socialist, founder of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI), member of the Communist International (Comintern) and later a leading figure of the Interna ...

, which saw

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

as a reactionary war between two opposing empires, in contrast to the propaganda of the Allied Bourgeoisie, which treated the war as a progressive fight for freedom and liberation from the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

regime. During World War I in the United Kingdom, the British socialist movement included a small minority of revolutionary defeatists such as John Maclean.{{Citation , last=Thorpe , first=Andrew , title=The Surge to Second-Party Status, 1914–22 , date=1997 , url=http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-1-349-25305-0_3 , work=A History of the British Labour Party , pages=35 , place=London , publisher=Macmillan Education UK , language=en , doi=10.1007/978-1-349-25305-0_3 , isbn=978-0-333-56081-5 , access-date=2022-06-16 Using Lenin's terminology, revolutionary defeatism can be contrasted to revolutionary defencism and to social patriotism or

social chauvinism Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

References

Communist terminology Russian Revolution

See also

References