Stagist approach / stagism

[boxinghefner]

would anyone be able to suggest any particular works of relevance to a historical understanding of a stagist approach. I presume this is going to most strongly apply to the role of Stalinised communist parties and the approach to popular frontism - but i'd love to read some stuff on how we might understand stagism in a broader approach.

Any info you can give me would be grand

cheers

[Severian]

One place to start is "Two Tactics of the Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution" by Lenin. It's largely a polemic against the "stagist" views of the Mensheviks: that is, against the view that in the next period of history the "constitutionalist" bourgeoisie should take the lead and that the role of the working class was to support them.

Reading some of the Mensheviks' stuff on this might also be interesting though I'm not sure what titles there.

Here's a short article by Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/nov/20.htm) where he briefly sums up his view as opposed to the Mensheviks on one hand and Trotsky on the other.

Then there's the question: how did the "stagist" approach get adopted by the Communist International? It largely unfolded in relation to the class struggle in China in the late 1920s.

One place Stalin lays out his version of "stages" (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1927/05/09.htm)

Another: 1927 Theses on the Chinese Revolution (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/QCR27.html)

Trotsky's response to those theses (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1927/pcr/01.htm)

Trotsky's book "The Third International After Lenin" is probably the most in-depth look at these questions from the time.

One thing to keep in mind while reading the stuff from the '20s is that Trotsky's approach was not exactly the same as Lenin's, and Lenin's approach is not really represented in that debate.

[boxinghefner]

thanks for that - very helpful