Revolutionary spontaneity
Belief that social revolution should occur spontaneously from the working class
This article
needs additional citations for
verification
.
Please help
improve this article
by
adding citations to reliable sources
. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Revolutionary spontaneity" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( March 2023 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message ) |
Part of a series on |
Libertarian socialism |
---|
Revolutionary spontaneity , also known as spontaneism , is a revolutionary socialist tendency that believes the social revolution can and should occur spontaneously from below by the working class itself, without the aid or guidance of a vanguard party and that it cannot and should not be brought about by the actions of individuals such as professional revolutionaries or political parties who might attempt to foment such a revolution.
In his work What Is to Be Done? (1902), Vladimir Lenin argued fiercely against revolutionary spontaneity as a dangerous revisionist concept that strips away the disciplined nature of Marxist political thought and leaves it arbitrary and ineffective. [1] Rosa Luxemburg , who defended spontaneity on Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy , and the Spartacist League which had attempted to overturn capitalism during the 1919 German Revolution would become main targets of Lenin's attacks after World War I . [2]
Mao-Spontex
The term Mao-Spontex refers to a political movement in the Marxist and libertarian movements in Western Europe from 1968 to 1971. [3] [4] Mao-Spontex came to represent an ideology promoting the ideas of Maoism , along with some ideas from Marxism and Leninism , but rejecting the total idea of Marxism–Leninism . Lenin's work What Is to Be Done? especially is criticized as dated and Lenin's critique of spontaneity is rejected. Lenin's idea of democratic centralism is supported as a way to organize a party, but a party must also have constant conflict inside of it to remain revolutionary. The revolutionary party discussed must also always be from a mass worker's movement. [4]
See also
References
- ↑ Lenin, Vladimir (1901). "The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social Democrats" . What Is to Be Done? . Retrieved 30 April 2019 – via Marxists Internet Archive .
- ↑ Kurasje Council Communism. "Spontaneity and Organisation" . Retrieved 30 April 2019 – via Marxists Internet Archive .
-
↑
Bourg, Julian (2017).
From Revolution to Ethics, Second Edition: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought
. MQUP. p.
86.
ISBN
978-0-7735-5247-0
–
via
Google Books
.
It did not take long for the GP-ists to become known as "Mao-spontex," or Maoist-spontaneists. The name was originally an insult—Spontex was the brand name of a cleaning sponge—intended to belittle the group's embrace of antiauthoritarianism as an element of revolutionary contestation. The marxisant tradition had long criticized spontaneism as an anarchistic error.
- 1 2 Lévy, Benny (1971). "Investigation into the Maoists in France" . Retrieved 30 April 2019 – via Marxists Internet Archive .