Professional revolutionary

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In the inner- Marxist discussion, professional revolutionary refers to a follower of a communist movement - not necessarily highly qualified in Marxist theory - who devotes his life to preparing for the proletarian revolution in one country or the whole world. He is required to subordinate all his other goals and commitments to this goal, to change his place of work on the orders of the party, etc. Chernyshevsky's novel “ What to do?” , After which Lenin named his program of the same name , and the nihilistic “ Revolutionary Catechism ” by Sergei Gennadijewitsch Netschajew. The latter typeface experienced a renaissance in the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Leninist application of the term

The term is essentially based on Lenin's theory of revolution , as he developed it in 1902 in his program “ What to do? Burning questions of our movement ”. Lenin developed the approach that even in countries in which the proletarian revolution had not yet 'matured' (e.g. because these countries had not even gone through a “bourgeois [capitalist] revolution”), this revolution of the proletariat by a cadre party could be carried out successfully by professional revolutionaries. He had the Russian Empire in mind . ( See also Leninism .)

In 1930, Bertolt Brecht took a professional revolutionary who had failed in his task as a hero in his play " Die Measure ".

Other uses of the term

From the non-Marxist side the term is used differently:

  • stating in political science , to designate revolutionaries who then have made or are making other (peasant, bourgeois, national) revolutions than those of the proletariat their purpose in life,
  • often derogatory in political polemics, mostly emphasizing the narrow-mindedness or the apparent inability of a “professional revolutionary” to earn a living in any other activity.

source

  • marxists.org - Chapter: Who are the professional revolutionists?
See also

Web links