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Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. Lenin's ideological contributions to the Marxist ideology relate to his theories on the party, imperialism, the state, and revolution. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism.
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which Stalinism deemed the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev Thaw, a period of de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin's ideology to begin to wane in the USSR.
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Marx, Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg.
The Fourth International (FI) was established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
The Great Purge or the Great Terror, also known as the Year of '37 and the Yezhovshina, was Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin's campaign to solidify his power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the state by eliminating his rivals by drastic use of imprisonment and execution. In particular, the purges were designed to remove the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky. They occurred from August 1936 to March 1938, with the most prominent feature being show trials of leading Bolshevik party members. However, a considerable proportion of the country's population was affected as well.
The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification was a Spanish communist party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War. It was formed by the fusion of the Trotskyist Communist Left of Spain and the Workers and Peasants' Bloc against the will of Leon Trotsky, with whom the former broke.
Shachtmanism is the form of Marxism associated with Max Shachtman (1904–1972). It has two major components: a bureaucratic collectivist analysis of the Soviet Union and a third camp approach to world politics. Shachtmanites believe that the Stalinist rulers of proclaimed socialist countries are a new ruling class distinct from the workers and reject Trotsky's description of Stalinist Russia as a "degenerated workers' state".
Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.
Maurice Spector was a Canadian politician who served as the chairman of the Communist Party of Canada and the editor of its newspaper, The Worker, for much of the 1920s. He was an early follower of Leon Trotsky after Trotsky's split from the Communist International.
The Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) was a Trotskyist group in the United States established in 1973 and disbanded in 1989.
The International Revolutionary Marxist Centre was an international association of left-socialist parties. The member-parties rejected both mainstream social democracy and the Third International.
The Revolutionary Socialist Party was a Dutch socialist political party, that has been variously characterized as Trotskyite and syndicalist. In 1935 it merged with the Independent Socialist Party (OSP) to form the Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party, but most of the former OSP members left the united party the same year. Henk Sneevliet was the RSP/RSAP's undisputed leader throughout its existence, as well as its only Representative.
The Fieldites were a small leftist sect that split from the Communist League of America in 1934 and known officially as the Organization Committee for a Revolutionary Workers Party and then the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party. The name comes from the name of its leader B. J. Field.
The third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism that aims to oppose both capitalism and Stalinism by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp".
The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At the time the three Moscow trials were given extravagant titles:
- The "Case of the Trotskyite–Zinovievite Terrorist Center" ;
- The "Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" ; and
- The "Case of the Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites'".
The Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) was a radical left group in the United States, lasting from 1935 through 1946. It was led by Hugo Oehler and published The Fighting Worker newspaper.
James Patrick Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.
In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class' democratic control over the state has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed and in other works.
The anti-Stalinist left is a term that refers to various kinds of Marxist political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin, Stalinism, Neo-Stalinism and the system of governance that Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953. This term also refers to the high ranking political figures and governmental programs that opposed Joseph Stalin and his form of communism, such as Leon Trotsky and other traditional Marxists within the Left Opposition.
The Bloc of Oppositions, also known as Trotsky's bloc and called by the Soviet press the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites, was a political alliance created by oppositionists in the USSR and Leon Trotsky by the end of 1932. Trotsky defined it as a conspiratorial bloc in order to fight Stalinist repression in the Soviet Union.
References
- 1 2 International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: a documented analysis of the movement By Robert Jackson Alexander p.833
- 1 2 "Footnote for Historians" by Max Shachtman in New International, Vol.4 No.12, December 1938, pp.377-379,
- ↑ Bubis, Mordecai Donald (1985). "The First Debate (1937-1938)". The Soviet Union and Stalinism in the Ideological debates of American Trotskyism (1937-1951) (Ph.D.). London School of Economics and Political Science. pp. 72–73.
- ↑ Burnett, James Thomas (1968). "American Trotskyism, 1928-1939". American Trotskyism and the Russian Question (Ph.D.). University of California, Berkeley. p. 105.
- ↑ Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 179–180.
- ↑ Goldwater, Walter Radical periodicals in America 1890-1950 New Haven, Yale University Library 1964 p.35