Centrism (marxism)

This article deals with the concept of centrism in Marxism. For the term for a position in the middle of the political spectrum, see Political Center .

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Centrism describes a left-wing socialist current within the Marxist labor movement that sought to mediate between revolutionary and reformist politics. The term originally referred to the “Marxist center” in the SPD around Karl Kautsky and August Bebel and is used disparagingly in Leninist and related terminology.

Marxism

The supporters of the group formed around the social democratic party theorist Kautsky and the party leadership of the SPD were originally considered centrists . Her position was attacked by the party left around Rosa Luxemburg and the emerging communists . The main points of criticism were in particular the growing parliamentarism and the institutionalization of the party. In the second mass strike debate in 1909/10 there was a break between the radical left and the Marxist center when Kautsky and the party executive refused to overthrow the three-class suffrage in Prussia through mass actions. As the “ Third Way ”, the “Center” was a reference point for Austromarxism around Otto Bauer .

The declaration of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International of 1928, The General Line for the Defense of Marxism-Leninism against Trotskyism and centrism, against schism and reconciliation , called centrism an “ideology of adaptation, an ideology of subordinating proletarian interests to interests of the petty bourgeoisie ”. Leon Trotsky, in turn, defined centrism as "all those currents in the proletariat and on its periphery [...] that spread between reformism and Marxism and mostly represent different stages of development on the way from reformism to Marxism and vice versa". Lenin wrote of the centrists in 1917:

“All supporters of the 'center' assert sacredly that they are Marxists, internationalists […]. The crux of the matter is that the 'center' is not convinced of the necessity of the revolution against its own governments, it does not propagate that it invents the most outspoken - and arch-'Marxist' sounding - excuses against it. [...] The 'center' - these are the people of the routine, eaten up by lazy legality, corrupted by the atmosphere of parliamentarism, etc., civil servants, used to warm mail and “quiet” work. Historically and economically, they do not represent a particular class, they are merely a phenomenon of the transition from the period behind us from 1871 to 1914 - a period that created much valuable, especially in the art of slow, persistent, systematic organizational work on a broad and broad basis. "

The term was subsequently applied not only to Kautsky, but to other competing communist directions and organizations. Trotsky, for example, called Stalinist party rule "bureaucratic centrism"; The supporters of Lenin and Soviet communism also regarded the International Working Group of Socialist Parties , the POUM and the SAP as centrists . In the political discourse of demarcation between left and radical left groups, the term still appears today in its negative and polemical connotation.

See also

• Democratic socialism

supporting documents

1. ↑ Leon Trotsky: What now? , 1932, quoted from [1]
2. ↑ Quoted from: Lenin: Against Reconciliation and Centrism in the Communist World Movement. In: Werke, Volume 24. pp. 61–63 , accessed on August 13, 2018 (reproduced on the website ciml.250x.com of the “Communist International (Stalinist-Hoxhaists)”).