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Centrist Marxism represents a position betweenrevolution andreformism. Within theMarxist movement,centrism thus entails a specific meaning between the left-wingrevolutionary socialism (exemplified bycommunism andorthodox Marxism) and the right-wingreformist socialist (exemplified bysocial democracy,evolutionary socialism, andMarxist revisionism).
For instance, theIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the BritishIndependent Labour Party (ILP) were both seen as centrist because they oscillated between reaching asocialist economy through reforms and advocating asocialist revolution.[1] The parties that belonged to theTwo-and-a-half International (International Working Union of Socialist Parties) andThree-and-a-half internationals (International Revolutionary Marxist Centre), who could not choose between thereformism of theSecond International and therevolutionary politics of theThird International, were also exemplary of centrism in this sense. They included the Spanish Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM),[2] theIndependent Labour Party (ILP),[3] andPoale Zion.Karl Kautsky, editor ofDie Neue Zeit, was a key thinker in this tradition, and his critique ofBolshevism was influential on democratic socialists in the United States.[4][5][6]
ForTrotskyists and other revolutionary Marxists,centrist in this sense has a pejorative association. They often describe centrism in this sense asopportunistic since it argues for a revolution at some point in the future, but urges reformist practices in the meantime. For example, theCommunist 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";[7] British Trotskyist leaderTed Grant called the ILP "typical confused centrists";[8] and theSocialist Workers Party's journal described the ILP as "a centrist organisation whose revolutionary rhetoric was at odds with its reformist practice".[9] 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'".[7]
