Two-stage theory

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Two-stage theory" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Part of a series on
Marxism–Leninism
Concepts Administrative-command system Anti-imperialism Anti-revisionism Central planning Soviet-type economic planning Collective farming Collective leadership Commanding heights of the economy Democratic centralism Dialectical logic Dialectical materialism Foco Intensification of the class struggle under socialism Labor aristocracy Marxist–Leninist atheism New Soviet man One-party state Partiinost' People's democracy Popular front Proletarian internationalism Protracted people's war Self-criticism Social fascism Socialism in one country Socialist patriotism Soviet Yugoslav State Socialist Theory of the productive forces Third Period Vanguardism Wars of national liberation Unified power
Variants Castroism Guevarism Ho Chi Minh Thought Hoxhaism Husakism Kádárism Khrushchevism Maoism Socialism with Chinese characteristics Stalinism Titoism
People Vladimir Lenin Joseph Stalin Mao Zedong Ernst Thälmann Khorloogiin Choibalsan Ehmetjan Qasim José Díaz Maurice Thorez Palmiro Togliatti Ho Chi Minh Võ Nguyên Giáp Earl Browder Nikita Khrushchev Walter Ulbricht Josip Broz Tito Mátyás Rákosi Lazar Kaganovich Georgi Dimitrov Bolesław Bierut Valko Chervenkov Klement Gottwald Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej Enver Hoxha Kaysone Phomvihane Khalid Bakdash Leonid Brezhnev Deng Xiaoping Pol Pot Nikos Zachariadis Che Guevara Fidel Castro Agostinho Neto Lúcio Lara Mengistu Haile Mariam Kim Il Sung Chin Peng Hardial Bains Sanzō Nosaka Nicolae Ceaușescu Gustáv Husák János Kádár Erich Honecker Władysław Gomułka Samora Machel Thomas Sankara Mathieu Kérékou Siad Barre Nur Muhammad Taraki Alfonso Cano Rohana Wijeweera Gus Hall Harry Pollitt Harpal Brar Gennady Zyuganov Xi Jinping Wojciech Jaruzelski Todor Zhivkov
Theoretical works Foundations of Leninism Dialectical and Historical Materialism The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR A Critique of Soviet Economics Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism Guerrilla Warfare Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung President Ho Chi Minh's Testament The Governance of China
History Soviet Union 1927–1953 1953–1964 1964–1982 1982–1991 Great Break Collectivization in the Soviet Union Industrialization in the Soviet Union Great Purge Spanish Civil War World War II Great Patriotic War Greek Civil War Cold War Eastern Bloc Chinese Revolution China 1949–1976 1976–1989 1989–2002 2002–present Korean War Consolidation of the Cuban Revolution De-Stalinization Warsaw Pact Non-Aligned Movement Vietnam War Sino-Soviet split Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Great Leap Forward Portuguese Colonial War Black power movement Nicaraguan Revolution Cultural Revolution Prague Spring Naxalite insurgency Revolutions of 1989 Nepalese Civil War
By country Afghanistan Albania Angola Benin Bulgaria Cambodia 1975–79 1979–92 China Congo Cuba Czechoslovakia Czechia Slovakia East Germany Ethiopia Grenada Hungary Laos Mongolia Mozambique North Korea Poland Romania Somalia South Yemen Soviet Union Armenia Azerbaijan Byelarus Estonia Georgia Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lithuania Moldova Russia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Ukraine Uzbekistan Vietnam Yugoslavia Bosnia and Herzegovina Croatia Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Slovenia
Organizations Comecon Comintern Chinese Communist Party Communist Party of Cuba Communist Party of India Communist Party of Kampuchea Communist Party of the Russian Federation Communist Party of the Soviet Union Communist Party of Vietnam French Communist Party Indochinese Communist Party Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party Lao People's Revolutionary Party Nepal Communist Party Party of Labour of Albania Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Sandinista National Liberation Front Workers' Party of Korea
Related topics Bolshevism All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Anti-communism Mass killings Crimes against humanity under communist regimes Mass killings Criticism of communist party rule Cult of personality Leninism Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Marxist schools of thought National Bolshevism New class Post-communism Red fascism Red Scare Second Second World State capitalism State socialism Trotskyism State ideology of China State ideology of the Soviet Union Third-Worldism Totalitarianism
Communism portal Politics portal Socialism portal
v t e

Part of a series on
Political revolution
By class Bourgeois Communist Counter-revolutionary Democratic Proletarian
By other characteristic Colour From above Nonviolent Passive Permanent Social Wave
Methods Boycott Civil disorder Civil war Class conflict Contentious politics Coup d'état Demonstration Human chain Direct action Guerrilla warfare Insurgency Mass mobilization Mutiny Protest Rebellion Resistance Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Riot Samizdat Strike action Tax resistance Terror
Examples English Atlantic American Brabant Liège French Haitian Spanish American Serbian Greek 1820 1830 July Belgian Texas 1848 Italian states February German Hungarian Eureka Bulgarian unification Philippine Iranian First Second Young Turk Mexican Chinese Xinhai Communist Cultural 1917–1923 Russian German Siamese Spanish August Guatemalan Hungarian (1956) Cuban Rwandan Nicaraguan Argentine Carnation Saur People Power 1989 Yogurt Velvet Romanian Singing Bolivarian Bulldozer Rose Orange Tulip Kyrgyz Arab Spring Tunisian Egyptian Yemeni Euromaidan Second Arab Spring Sudanese
Politics portal
v t e

The two-stage theory, or stagism, is a Marxist–Leninist political theory which argues that underdeveloped countries such as Tsarist Russia must first pass through a stage of capitalism via a bourgeois revolution before moving to a socialist stage.^[1]

Stagism was applied to countries worldwide that had not passed through the capitalist stage. In the Soviet Union, the two-stage theory was opposed by the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution.

While the discussion on stagism focuses on the Russian Revolution, Maoist theories such as New Democracy tend to apply a two-stage theory to struggles elsewhere.

In Marxist–Leninist theory under Joseph Stalin, the theory of two stages gained a revival. More recently, the South African Communist Party and the Socialist Alliance have re-elaborated the two-stage theory, although the Socialist Alliance differentiates their position from the Stalinist one.^[2]

The two-stage theory is often attributed to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but critics such as David McLellan^[3] and others dispute that they envisaged the strict application of this theory outside of the actually existing Western development of capitalism.^{[citation needed]}

Although all agree that Marx and Engels argue that Western capitalism provides the technological advances necessary for socialism and the "grave diggers" of the capitalist class in the form of the working class, critics of the two-stage theory, including most trends of Trotskyism, counter that Marx and Engels denied that they had laid down a formula to be applied to all countries in all circumstances. McLellan and others cite Marx's Reply to Mikhailovsky:

[Mikhailovsky] feels he absolutely must metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophic theory of the general path every people is fated to tread, whatever the historical circumstances in which it finds itself [...] but I beg his pardon. (He is both honoring and shaming me too much.)

— Karl Marx, Reply to Mikhailovsky^[4]

In the preface to the Russian edition of The Communist Manifesto of 1882, Marx and Engels specifically outline an alternative path to socialism for Russia.^[5]

In Russia, the Mensheviks believed the two-stage theory applied to Tsarist Russia. They were criticized by Leon Trotsky in what became the theory of permanent revolution in 1905. Later when the two-stage theory re-appeared in the Soviet Union after the death of Vladimir Lenin, the theory of permanent revolution was supported by the Left Opposition. The permanent revolution theory argues that the tasks allotted in the two-stage theory to the capitalist class can only be carried out by the working class with the support of the poor peasantry and that the working class will then pass on to the socialist tasks and expropriate the capitalist class. However, the revolution cannot pause here and must remain permanent in the sense that it must seek worldwide revolution to avoid isolation and move towards international socialism.^{[citation needed]}

• Historical materialism
• Impossibilism
• Menshevik
• Rojava