War and Revolution: Lenin and the Myth of Revolutionary Defeatism (Revolutionary Studies S.) - Hardcover

Draper, Hal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039103930X ISBN 13: 9780391039308

Publisher: Humanities Press International Inc, 1996

Synopsis

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 that Marx and Engels would have supported a war against tsarist Russia, even one waged by a bourgeois government. 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.

About this title

Synopsis

This work asks what "revolutionary defeatism" means and follows on with the further question, was this belief really more militantly anti-war than that of others, such as Rosa Luxemburg or Leon Trotsky? The book offers a radical reconstruction of Lenin's anti-war arguments of 1914-18.

Edition details

• Publisher: Humanities Press International Inc
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039103930X
• ISBN 13: 9780391039308
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Haberkern E.