Revolutionary socialism

[1] Revolutionary socialists believe such a state of affairs is a precondition for establishing socialism and orthodox Marxists believe it is inevitable but not predetermined.

[4]Twenty-four years after The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1848, Marx and Engels admitted that in developed countries, "labour may attain its goal by peaceful means".

[5][6] Marxist scholar Adam Schaff argued that Marx, Engels, and Lenin had expressed such views "on many occasions".

[citation needed] In 1900, Rosa Luxemburg wrote Social Reform or Revolution?, a polemic against Bernstein's position.

Marxists such as Trotskyists argue that Lenin did not advocate seizing power until he felt that the majority of the population, represented in the soviets, demanded revolutionary change and no longer supported the reformist government of Alexander Kerensky established in the earlier revolution of February 1917.

In the Lessons of October, Leon Trotsky wrote: Lenin, after the experience of the reconnoiter, withdrew the slogan of the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government.

But he did not withdraw it for any set period of time, for so many weeks or months, but strictly in dependence upon how quickly the revolt of the masses against the conciliationists would grow.

[12][non-primary source needed]For these Marxists, the fact that the Bolsheviks won a majority (in alliance with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries) in the second all-Russian congress of Soviets—democratically elected bodies—which convened at the time of the October revolution, shows that they had the popular support of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, the vast majority of Russian society.

[14][non-primary source needed] Trotsky mobilized the Military Revolutionary Committee to seize power on the advent of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which began on 25 October 1917.

[citation needed] Emerging from the Communist International but critical of the post-1924 Soviet Union, the Trotskyist tradition in Western Europe and elsewhere uses the term "revolutionary socialism".

In 1932, the first issue of the first Canadian Trotskyist newspaper, The Vanguard, published an editorial entitled "Revolutionary Socialism vs Reformism".

[16][non-primary source needed] In "The Case for Revolutionary Socialism", Alex Callinicos from the Socialist Workers Party in Britain argues in favour of it.