After the victory of the October Revolution, revolutionary socialist parties and groups all over the world tried to follow in their organisation structure the so called "Leninist party model". The author of the discussion paper argues that this special Leninist party model never existed – the Bolshevik Party followed especially organisation standards of western social democratic parties. What subsequent revolutionary movements regarded as the ideal model was in fact the simplified version of the Bolshevik Party's structure, which developed after the party had taken the power and which was infected with bureaucratic distortions. Insisting on this wrong organisational model has greatly contributed to the defeat of revolutionary socialism in the 20^th Century.

Table of contents

1. Harsányi Iván : Popular front – looking back over 70 years
2. Farkas Miklós : When World War II began? The military coup against the Second Spanish Republic broke out 70 years ago
3. Mezei Bálint : Soviet officers in the Spanish Civil War
4. Konok Péter : Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? The failure of the Spanish popular front in May 1937
5. Zolcsák Attila : Anarchist federalism and Spanish regionalism
6. Ana Bazac : Present-day popular fronts
7. Bánki Éva : Europe − for cartoon heroes On Aleš Debeljak: Europe without Europeans
8. Joaquín Bustelo : Critical remarks to the idea of „democratic centrism”
9. Michael A. Lebowitz : The politics of assumption, the assumption of politics
10. Krausz Tamás : Lenin and the „organisation question” – historical reconstruction

In his Capital, Marx throughout maintained the simplifying theoretical precondition that the value of labour is fixed and constant. However by this he mostly closed out discussing problems concerning class struggle and the organisational level of the working class from the analysis of capitalism in Capital. The connection, that increasing productivity results in proportionally higher profit only if the working class remains disorganised or its segmentation increases, receives little attention. Nevertheless, the capital immanently and necessarily aims not only increasing productivity but also deepening divisions among workers.

The new political thinking and practice, on which the idea and practice of the popular front was built, essentially opposed the general political thinking of its time. The Seventh World Congress of Comintern did not discuss ready-made thought-blocks and distilled ideas – it had to face the failure of the final-target oriented policy of communist parties in the political and social situation had developed by the 1930's. The antifascist popular front was both necessary political practice and a result of theoretical considerations.

The comprehensive study thoroughly analyses the history of the Spanish Civil War, circumstances of its outbreak and its political and social structure. The author gives special attention to military history considerations and connections to global politics.