War and revolution
Subtitle: Lenin and the myth of revolutionary defeatism
By: Hal Draper ; edited by E. Haberkern.
Contributors: Haberkern, E.
Series: Revolutionary studies
Publisher: Humanities Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Atlantic Highlands, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 159
Subjects: Lenin, Vladimir Ilʹich,; War and socialism.; Revolutions and socialism.
Description: A great debate took place following the collapse of the socialist movement in the crisis of 1914. "Revolutionary defeatism" was the phrase used to define Lenin's antiwar position and to distinguish it, so it is claimed, from that of the other antiwar socialists including Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky. But what did "revolutionary defeatism" mean? It is generally with this question that discussion dissolves into vague generalities.

Hal Draper demonstrates that the slogan coined by Lenin in 1914 was based on a myth - widely accepted in social democratic circles - that Marx and Engels would support a war against tsarist Russia, even one waged by a bourgeois government.

In a critique of Lenin's polemics, Draper goes on to show that the phrase reflected the confusion throughout the Second International over the issues of war and revolution leading up to World War I and points out the deleterious effects of this slogan, which, despite Lenin, became a slogan for the communist movement and the Left in general.

Finally, Draper contrasts revolutionary defeatism with the "Third Camp" views of Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, which, he suggests, offered a more defensible, lucid, and no less militant argument for the antiwar position.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 146-151) and index.
Revision of an essay published in 1953-1954.