proletarian revolution

The concept of a revolutionary proletariat was first put forward by the French revolutionary socialist and radical Auguste Blanqui.{{cite book |first=William James |last=Blake |author-link=William J. Blake |title=An American Looks at Karl Marx |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iPnTAAAAMAAJ |year=1939 |publisher=Cordon Company |page=622 |via=Google Books}} The Paris Commune, contemporary to Blanqui and Karl Marx, being viewed by some as the first attempt at a proletarian revolution.{{cite magazine |first=Maurice |last=Spector |author-link=Maurice Spector |title=The Paris Commune and the Proletarian Revolution |date=15 March 1934 |magazine=The Militant |volume=III |number=11 |page=3 |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/spector/1930/03/commune.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}

Marx wrote of the class conscious proletariat being the active agent of revolution, which distinguished him from Blanqui who viewed a selective revolutionary conspiracy among all the lower classes as being the driving force of a proletarian revolution.{{sfn|Blackburn|1976}} This was also in contrast to the views of the communist William Weitling and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin who viewed the lumpenproletariat as the driver of the proletarian revolution.{{sfn|Blackburn|1976}}{{sfn|Eagles|2017 |pp=23–24}} Through Marx and Friedrich Engels' work they write that if the proletariat does not make up a majority, it must at least occupy an important position among the popular mass to achieve a proletarian revolution.{{cite journal |first=Erik van |last=Ree |date=2012 |title=German Marxism and the Decline of the Permanent Revolution, 1870–1909 |journal=History of European Ideas |volume=38 |number=4 |pages=570–589 [574–575] |doi=10.1080/01916599.2011.652474|url=https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1862015/115261_GermanMarxismPeRe.pdf }} Some later Marxists, such as Georgi Plekhanov, emphasized the need for a majority of the population to be proletarianized for a proletarian revolution to occur.{{sfn|Ree|2013|p=32}}

Marxists believe proletarian revolutions can and will likely happen in all capitalist countries,{{sfn|Blackburn|1976}}{{cite book |first=Friedrich |last=Engels |author-link=Friedrich Engels |title=The Principles of Communism |date=October–November 1847 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |quote=Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.}} related to the concept of world revolution.{{cite book |first=Nikolai |last=Bukharin |author-link=Nikolai Bukharin |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1933/teaching/4.htm |chapter=Chapter 4: The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship and Scientific Communism |title=Marx's Teaching and its Historical Importance |date=1933 |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}{{cite book |first=V. I. |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm |chapter=Chapter 5: The Economic Basis for the Withering Away of the State |title=The State and Revolution |date=1918 |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} The objective of a proletarian revolution, according to Marxists, is to transform the bourgeois state into a workers' state.{{cite book |first=Alexander |last=Goichbarg |author-link=:de:Alexander Grigorjewitsch Goichbarg |title=Revolução Proletária e Direito Civil |trans-title=Proletarian Revolution and Civil Law |url=http://www.scientific-socialism.de/PECAP2.htm |language=pt}}{{sfn|Guérin|1981|p=14}} A traditional Marxist belief was that a proletarian revolution could only occur in a country where capitalism had fully developed,{{harvnb|Lane|2020a}}; {{harvnb|Filho|2007}}; {{harvnb|Ree|2013|p=35}}{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |date=1918 |chapter=How Kautsky Turned Marx Into A Common Liberal |title=The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/common_liberal.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} though this changed with Russian Revolution.

The Leninist branch of Marxism argues that a proletarian revolution must be led by a vanguard of "professional revolutionaries", men and women who are fully dedicated to the communist cause and who form the nucleus of the communist revolutionary movement. This vanguard is meant to provide leadership and organization to the working class before and during the revolution, which aims to prevent the government from successfully ending it.{{cite book |first=V. I. |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |date=1918 |chapter=Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htm |title=The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} Vladimir Lenin believed that it was imperative to arm the working class to secure their leverage over the bourgeoisie. Lenin's words were printed in an article in German on the nature of pacifism and said "In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, on wage-labour, the oppressor class is always armed."{{sfn|Dunayevskaya|2017}}{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |date=1916 |chapter=II |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/ii.htm |title=The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} It was under such conditions that the first successful proletarian revolution, the Russian Revolution, occurred.{{cite journal|url=https://newleftreview.org/issues/i43/articles/isaac-deutscher-the-unfinished-revolution-1917-67.pdf |title=The Unfinished Revolution: 1917–67 |first=Isaac |last=Deutscher |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |journal=New Left Review |date=May–June 1967 |volume=I |issue=43}}{{sfn|Dunayevskaya|2017}}{{cite book |last=Chácon |first=Justin Akers |title=Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican American Working Class |chapter=Introduction |publisher=Haymarket Books |location=Chicago, IL. |date=2018 |isbn=978-1-60846-776-1 |page=38}}

Other Marxists, such as Luxemburgists{{cite web |last=Várnagy |first=Tomás |date=19 April 2021 |title=A Central European Revolutionary |url=https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/44139/a-central-european-revolutionary |website=Rosa Luxemburg Foundation |access-date=22 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231010101156/https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/44139/a-central-european-revolutionary |archive-date=10 October 2023}}{{cite magazine |last=D'Amato |first=Paul |date=2014 |title=Marx, Lenin, and Luxemburg |url=https://isreview.org/issue/92/marx-lenin-and-luxemburg/index.html |magazine=International Socialist Review |access-date=22 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230604190242/https://isreview.org/issue/92/marx-lenin-and-luxemburg/index.html |archive-date=4 June 2023}} and left communists,{{cite magazine |last=Mattick |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Mattick |date=August 1938 |title=The Masses & The Vanguard |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1938/mass-vanguard.htm |magazine=Living Marxism |volume=4 |number=4 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231215224312/https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1938/mass-vanguard.htm |archive-date=15 December 2023}}{{cite magazine |last=Pannekoek |first=Anton |author-link=Anton Pannekoek |date=1941 |title=The Party and Class |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/party-class.htm |magazine=Modern Socialism |volume=2 |pages=7–10 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231217012600/https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/party-class.htm |archive-date=17 December 2023}}{{cite interview |url=http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20130312.htm |title=Noam Chomsky on Revolutionary Violence, Communism and the American Left |first=Noam |last=Chomsky |author-link=Noam Chomsky |interviewer=Christopher Helali |work=Pax Marxista |date=12 March 2013 |via=chomsky.info |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150729214117/http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20130312.htm |archive-date=29 July 2015}} disagree with the Leninist idea of a vanguard and insist that the entire working class—or at least a large part of it—must be deeply involved and equally committed to the socialist or communist cause for a proletarian revolution to be successful. To this end, they seek to build mass working class movements with a very large membership. The Situationists' view is that as well as the standard proletariat being a driving force for revolution, other oppressed classes would also act as drivers.{{sfn|Eagles|2017|pp=24, 27}}

Finally, there are socialist anarchists and libertarian socialists. Their view is that the revolution must be a bottom-up social revolution which seeks to transform all aspects of society and the individuals which make up the society (see Revolutionary Catalonia). The anarchist view also holds that the proletarian revolution must abolish all aspects of the state, and that a "workers' state" should not be formed.{{sfn|Guérin|1981|p=14}} Alexander Berkman said "there are revolutions and revolutions. Some revolutions change only the governmental form by putting a new set of rulers in place of the old. These are political revolutions, and as such they often meet with little resistance. But a revolution that aims to abolish the entire system of wage slavery must also do away with the power of one class to oppress another. That is, it is not any more a mere change of rulers, of government, not a political revolution, but one that seeks to alter the whole character of society. That would be a social revolution."{{cite book |first=Alexander |last=Berkman |author-link=Alexander Berkman |date=1929 |title=Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism |chapter=25}}

• Paris Commune (1871)
• October Revolution (1917)
• Finnish Civil War (1918)
• German Revolution (1918–1919)
• September Uprising (1923)
• Indonesian Communist Party uprising (1926)
• Canton Uprising (1927)
• Nghệ-Tĩnh Revolt (1930–1931)
• Austrian Civil War (1934)
• Spanish Revolution (1936)
• August Revolution (1945)
• Telegana Rebellion (1946)
• March Intifada (1965)
• May 68 (1968)
• Nepalese Civil War (1996–2006)

{{Wikiquote}}

• Bourgeois revolution
• Communist revolution
• Free association of producers, the ultimate goal of communist and anarchist revolutions
• Labour revolt
• October Revolution
• Asturian miners' strike of 1934
• List of peasant revolts
• Revolution of 1934
• Proletarian Revolutionary Organisation, Nepal
• Social revolution
• World revolution

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite journal |last=Blackburn |first=Robin |author-link=Robin Blackburn |date=May–June 1976 |title=Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution |url=https://www.newleftreview.org/issues/i97/articles/robin-blackburn-marxism-theory-of-proletarian-revolution |journal=New Left Review |volume=I |issue=97}}
• {{cite book |last=Dunayevskaya |first=Raya |author-link=Raya Dunayevskaya |date=5 June 2017 |chapter=Lenin on Self-determination of Nations and on Organization After His Philosophic Notebooks |chapter-url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004347618_005 |title=Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution |editor-first1=Eugene |editor-last1=Gogol |editor-first2=Franklin |editor-last2=Dmitryev |pages=125–141 |publisher=Brill |access-date=21 April 2022 |doi=10.1163/9789004347618_005 |isbn=978-90-04-34761-8}}
• {{cite journal |last=Eagles |first=Julian |date=2017 |title=Marxism, Anarchism and the Situationists' Theory of Revolution |journal=Critical Sociology |publisher=SAGE Publications |volume=43 |number=1 |pages=13–36 |doi=10.1177/0896920514547826}}
• {{cite web |last=Filho |first=Almir Cezar |date=5 April 2007 |url=http://www.pstu.org.br/teoria_materia.asp?id=6448&ida=0 |title=Moreno e os 80 anos do debate sobre a Revolução Permanente |language=pt |trans-title=Moreno and the 80 years of the debate on the Permanent Revolution |access-date=20 January 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071216032718/http://www.pstu.org.br/teoria_materia.asp?id=6448&ida=0 |archive-date=16 December 2007 |url-status=dead}}
• {{cite book |last=Guérin |first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Guérin |date=1981 |title=Anarchism and Marxism |url=https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-7755}}
• {{cite web |last=Lane |first=David |date=22 April 2020a |title=Revisiting Lenin's theory of socialist revolution on the 150th anniversary of his birth |url=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2020/04/22/revisiting-lenins-theory-of-socialist-revolution-on-the-150th-anniversary-of-his-birth/ |website=European Politics and Policy |publisher=London School of Economics |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ihqNL |archive-date=26 February 2024}}
• {{cite journal |last=Ree |first=Erik van |date=2013 |title=Georgii Plekhanov and the Communist Manifesto: The Proletarian Revolution Revisited |journal=Revolutionary Russia |volume=26 |number=1 |pages=32–51 |doi=10.1080/09546545.2013.787807|url=https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1792773/125561_PlekhComMan.pdf }}

{{refend}}

{{Revolutionary socialism}}

{{Marxist & Communist phraseology}}

Category:Marxist terminology

Category:Revolution terminology

Category:Revolutions by type

Category:Socialism

Category:Working-class culture

Category:Proletariat