Stage theory
The term stage theory is used, especially in Trotskyism, to denote the “popular front line”, which has become the basic strategy of the communist ( Stalinist ) parties since the VII World Congress of the Comintern .
In this conception, the proletarian revolution was temporally separated from a bourgeois-democratic phase of the struggle.
In the DDR
The designation " German Democratic Republic " (and not "Socialist Republic") for the state founded in East Germany in 1949 under the control of the Soviet Union is a consequence of the stage theory, which assumes an "anti-fascist-democratic phase" as necessary precedes the socialist transformation and this Strictly separating stages / phases. (In contrast to the theory of permanent revolution .)
Stage theory and alliance politics
Although both terms were often used synonymously in the following by the Stalinist CPs, they are different conceptions of alliance politics and different objectives:
While the united front conception means the common struggle of all workers 'organizations - according to the principle of "class against class" for the social goals of the proletariat, the program of the popular front (which is by its nature an alliance of workers' parties with bourgeois parties) remains within the framework of a bourgeois-democratic one Program. Some non-Stalinist communists (especially Trotskyists ) reject the popular front method and stick to the III. and IV. Comintern World Congress.