Defeatism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Defeatism is acceptance of defeat without struggle. In everyday use, defeatism has negative connotation and is often linked to treason and pessimism, or even a hopeless situation such as a Catch-22. The term is commonly used in the context of war: a soldier can be a defeatist if he or she refuses to fight because he or she thinks that the fight will be lost for sure or that it is not worth fighting for some other reason. Again in connection with war, the term is used to refer to the view that defeat would be better than victory. The term can also be used in other fields, like politics, sport, psychology and philosophy.
Political defeatism
Some governments charged dissidents with "defeatism" for opposing the war or other government policies. For example:
- Luigi Fabbri (1877 – 1935), an Italian militant anarchist, was charged with defeatism during World War I.
- Elizabeth von Thadden (1890 – 1944), a teacher and an anti-Hitler activist from Morąg, was sentenced to death for defeatism and attempted treason.
- Daniil Kharms (1905 – 1942), a Russian writer, was charged with defeatism and jailed during the Siege of Leningrad. He starved to death in prison.
Revolutionary Defeatism
A concept made most prominent by Vladimir Lenin in World War I, Revolutionary Defeatism is based on the Marxist idea of class struggle. Arguing that the proletariat could not win or gain in a war, Lenin declared its true enemy is the imperialist leaders who sent their lower classes into battle. Workers would gain more from their own nations' defeats, he argued, if the war could be turned into civil war and then international revolution.
Initially rejected by all but the more radical at the socialist Zimmerwald Conference in 1915, the concept appears to have gained support from more and more socialists, especially in Russia in 1917 after it was forcefully reaffirmed in Lenin's April Theses and Russia's war losses continued.
Revolutionary defeatism can be contrasted, using Lenin's terminology, to "revolutionary defencism" and to social patriotism.
See also
- Shikata ga nai (It cannot be helped)
- Damned if you do, damned if you don't
- Estragon, a character from the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
