opportunism
English
editEtymology
editFrom French opportunisme, equivalent to opportune + -ism.
Noun
edit
opportunism (countable and uncountable, plural opportunisms)
- The practice of taking advantage of any situations or people to achieve an end, often with no regard for principles or consequences.
- (Marxism) The political line of Communist Party members who zealously support the Party, but whose trait is that they yield to the mood of the moment, they are unable to resist what is fashionable, leading to the sacrifice of the permanent and essential interests of the Party to the momentary and minor interests.
- 1917, V. I. Lenin, chapter II, in The State and Revolution[1], section 3:
- Opportunism today, as represented by its principal spokesman, the ex-Marxist Karl Kautsky, fits in completely with Marx's characterization of the bourgeois position quoted above, for this opportunism limits recognition of the class struggle to the sphere of bourgeois relations. (Within this sphere, within its framework, not a single educated liberal will refuse to recognize the class struggle "in principle"!) Opportunism does not extend recognition of the class struggle to the cardinal point, to the period of transition from capitalism to communism, of the overthrow and the complete abolition of the bourgeoisie. In reality, this period inevitably is a period of an unprecedently violent class struggle in unprecedentedly acute forms, and, consequently, during this period the state must inevitably be a state that is democratic in a new way (for the proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie).
Related terms
editTranslations
editthe taking of opportunities
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