centrist Marxism

{{Short description|Marxist position between reformism and revolution}}

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{{Marxism|expanded=variants}}

Centrist Marxism represents a position between revolution and reformism. Within the Marxist movement, centrism thus entails a specific meaning between the left-wing revolutionary socialism (exemplified by communism and orthodox Marxism) and the right-wing reformist socialist (exemplified by democratic socialism, social democracy, and Marxist revisionism).

For instance, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the British Independent Labour Party (ILP) were both seen as centrist because they oscillated between advocating reaching a socialist economy through reforms and advocating a socialist revolution.{{cite journal | last=Høgsbjerg | first=Christian | title=The Failure of a Dream: The Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II | journal=Critique | volume=39 | issue=1 | date=2011 | issn=0301-7605 | doi=10.1080/03017605.2011.537460 | doi-access=free | pages=175–176 | url=https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/91140/2/Gidon%20Cohen1.pdf | access-date=6 April 2025}} The parties that belonged to the Two-and-a-half (International Working Union of Socialist Parties) and Three-and-a-half (International Revolutionary Marxist Centre) Internationals, who could not choose between the reformism of the Second International and the revolutionary politics of the Third International, were also exemplary of centrism in this sense. They included the Spanish Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM),{{cite book | last=Stutje | first=Jan Willem | title=Ernest Mandel | publisher=Verso Books | date=2020-05-05 | isbn=978-1-78960-453-5 | page=1934}} the Independent Labour Party (ILP),{{cite journal | last=Houssart | first=Mark | title=The Spanish Earth (1937): The circumstances of its production, the film and its reception in the United States and United Kingdom | journal=Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies | volume=8 | issue=1 | date=1 April 2016 | issn=1757-1898 | doi=10.1386/cjcs.8.1.113_1 | doi-access=free | pages=113–125 | url=https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/20215/1/MarkHoussart_completed_Catalan_article_final.pdf | access-date=6 April 2025}} and Poale Zion. Karl Kautsky, editor of Die Neue Zeit, was a key thinker in this tradition, and his critique of Bolshevism was influential on democratic socialists in the United States.{{cite journal | last=Ruotsila | first=Markku | last2=Ruotsila | first2=Markku Mikael | title=Neoconservatism Prefigured: The Social Democratic League of America and the Anticommunists of the Anglo-American Right, 1917-21 | journal=Journal of American Studies | publisher=[Cambridge University Press, British Association for American Studies] | volume=40 | issue=2 | year=2006 | issn=00218758 | jstor=27557795 | pages=327–345 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/27557795 | access-date=6 April 2025}}{{cite journal | last=Nolan | first=Mary | title= Review of Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Founding of the German Social Democratic Party by Raymond H. Dominick III | journal=The Journal of Modern History | publisher=University of Chicago Press | volume=58 | issue=1 | year=1986 | issn=00222801 | jstor=1881624 | pages=355–358 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881624 | access-date=6 April 2025}}{{cite journal | last=Ostrowski | first=Marius S | title=‘Reform or revolution’, redux : Eduard Bernstein on the 1918–19 German Revolution | journal=Historical Research | volume=95 | issue=268 | date=12 May 2022 | issn=0950-3471 | doi=10.1093/hisres/htab043 | pages=213–239}}

For Trotskyists and other revolutionary Marxists, centrist in this sense has a pejorative association. They often describe centrism in this sense as opportunistic since it argues for a revolution at some point in the future, but urges reformist practices in the meantime. For example, the Communist League described the ILP as a centrist organisation and therefore "politically shapeless and lacking any clear political position on the problems confronting the revolutionary movement"; British Trotskyist leader Ted Grant called the ILP "typical confused centrists";{{cite book | last=Grant | first=Ted | title=History of British Trotskyism | publisher=Wellred | location=London | year=2002 | isbn=978-1-900007-10-8 | oclc=49692212 | page=}} and the Socialist Workers Party's journal described the ILP as "a centrist organisation whose revolutionary rhetoric was at odds with its reformist practice".{{cite web | last=Donnelly | first=Richard | title=Revolutionary syndicalism and The Miners' Next Step | website=International Socialism | date=2021-07-26 | url=http://isj.org.uk/miners-next-step/ | access-date=30 October 2021}} According to a Trotskyist perspective, "the I. L. P. continues to be understood by such authors in terms of Trotsky's own characterisation of the I. L. P., as a centrist party, a party which attempts to stand between 'Marxism and Reformism'".{{cite thesis | last=Cohen|first=Gidon |title=The Independent Labour Party 1932–1939|type=PhD |publisher=University of York | website=White Rose eTheses Online | date=4 November 2015 | url=https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9803/ | access-date=30 October 2021}}