Dialectics
In 1871, this short-lived socialist government took power in Paris, influencing Marx’s theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
What is the Paris Commune?
Trotsky founded this military force, which was crucial in the Bolsheviks’ victory during the Civil War.
What is the Red Army?
This revolution in February 1917 led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.
What is the February Revolution?
According to dialectical materialism, this is the primary driver of historical development.
What is class struggle?
This international revolutionary organization was founded by Marxists in 1919 to spread communism worldwide.
What is the Comintern (Communist International)?
Trotsky advocated for this theory, asserting that socialist revolution could begin in one country but must spread globally.
What is Permanent Revolution?
This soviet body shared power with the Provisional Government in a situation known as “dual power.”
What is the Petrograd Soviet?
Marx described this as the exploitation of workers, where capitalists profit from unpaid labor.
What is surplus value?
The constant interplay of forces within a system that leads to qualitative transformation describes this Marxist concept.
What is the law of transformation of quantity into quality?
The failure of this 1919 revolutionary attempt in Germany led to the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
What is the Spartacist uprising?
Trotsky broke with this faction in 1903 but later reconciled before joining the Bolsheviks in 1917.
What is the Mensheviks?
This key Bolshevik slogan captured the demands of workers, peasants, and soldiers.
What is “Peace, Land, and Bread”?
The “law of value,” according to Marx, operates through this exchange mechanism under capitalism.
What is the market (or commodity exchange)?
This treaty, signed in March 1918, ended Russia’s involvement in WWI but ceded large territories to Germany.
What is the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk?
At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, this dispute over the party statutes led to the famous Bolshevik-Menshevik split.
What is the criteria for party membership?
After falling out with Stalin, Trotsky was exiled and eventually assassinated in this country in 1940.
What is Mexico?
This document, issued by Lenin on his return to Petrograd, called for "All power to the soviets."
What are the April Theses?
In this country, the Sandinistas overthrew a U.S.-backed dictatorship in 1979 and attempted to establish socialism.
What is Nicaragua?
Trotsky used this term, borrowed from Russian historiography, to describe Stalinism as a political regime that represented neither a new ruling class nor workers’ power, but rather a parasitic caste atop a degenerated workers' state.
What is Bonapartism?
This concept from Volume II of Capital breaks capitalist production into three interdependent departments: I (means of production), II (means of consumption), and III (luxury goods).
What is reproduction schemas?