Left-Wing Deviations And Other Terms

Socialists and communists have engaged in many struggles in many places and times. They have evolved their own terminology. I present some specialized terms here. Many of these are pejorative, terms of abuse often thrown at others.

• Economism: A strategy of focusing on labor organizing, better pay, shorter hours, and better working conditions, to the exclusion of also agitating for broader social change. From Lenin's What is to be Done?.
• Electionism: A strategy of focusing on getting members of your tendency elected and on debates in Parliament or Congress, to the exclusion of also organizing outside of voting and election cycles.
• Entryism: A political strategy in which a political movement trys to alter a larger movement by taking it over, often by attending and outlasting others in caucuses and party meeting. Militant in the United Kingdom and the Democratic Socialists of America are examples.
• Maximalism: A passive political strategy premised on a view that history is deterministic and will automatically replace capitalism with socialism. Therefore socialists do not need to organize for day-to-day activitism.
• Productivism: An aspiration that socialism will bring about greater material productivity, to the exclusion of non-material improvements in the quality of life. The view expressed by Nikita Khrushchev when pounding with his shoe on his desk at the Union Nations and "Shouting we will bury you."
• Reformism: A political strategy that de-emphasizes revolutions and seeks to bring about socialism gradually. Associated with criticism and rejection of many tenets of Marxism. First used for Eduard Bernstein's The Preconditions of Socialism.
• Vanguardism: A belief that even the advanced part of the working class needs professional revolutionaries to guide them. From Lenin's What is to be Done?.
• Voluntarism: A belief that a revolution can be brought about with sufficient will, whatever the material conditions.

Doubtless this list could be expanded. I made up the above definitions. I played the Game of Dictionary in my youth.