Word.ws English Dictionary

insurrectionalism

insurrectionalism noun: the belief that insurrection is the best way to achieve a communist or socialist revolution.

Noun

insurrectionalism (uncountable)

  1. The belief that insurrection is the best way to achieve a communist or socialist revolution.
    • For a short time, insurrectionalism stood on the pedestal previously occupied in Latin America by the foquismo of Che, the people's war of Mao, and the electoral road of Allende.1986, United States. Dept. of the Air Force, Air University review - Volume 37, Issue 5, page 83
    • Those already wary of the party's electoral maneuvers in 1919 further resented the Socialists' calls, after the May 1920 strike failure, to abandon revolutionary insurrectionalism and place all hopes in "le bulletin rouge".1986, Kathryn Ellen Amdur, Syndicalist Legacy
  2. A branch within the anarchist movement that eschews formal organizations such as political parties or labor unions and emphasizes insurrection.
    • Some saw in the Malatesta-Monatte clash nothing but the re-emergence of traditional insurrectionalism over the general strike.2009, Maurizio Antonioli, Nestor McNab, The International Anarchist Congress: Amsterdam 1907, page 19
    • Consciously or not, most local anarchists embraced the Bakuninist view, which had an innate affinity to the revolutionary urgency and insurrectionalism so pervasive in the movement.2010, Juan Suriano, Paradoxes of Utopia, →ISBN

Examples of insurrectionalism in a sentence

  • In these situations and others, class-based insurrectionalism, led by vanguard political parties, has been shunned.1987, Our Generation - Volumes 16-18, page 6:
  • Thus, the tactics of insurrectionalism had reached their limits.2014, Bart van der Steen, The City Is Ours, →ISBN:
  • Again, I would insist that this is not to explain that insurrectionalism as a mere “expression” of theory, or as derivative from theory, but rather to suggest a convergence in conceptual structure.2015, Federico Luisetti, John Pickles, Wilson Kaiser, The Anomie of the Earth, →ISBN:

Origin of insurrectionalism

From insurrectional + -ism.

Questions about insurrectionalism

What does insurrectionalism mean?
Insurrectionalism means the belief that insurrection is the best way to achieve a communist or socialist revolution.
How do you use insurrectionalism in a sentence?
In these situations and others, class-based insurrectionalism, led by vanguard political parties, has been shunned.
What part of speech is insurrectionalism?
Insurrectionalism is a noun.

Words near insurrectionalism in the dictionary

  1. insurrecter
  2. insurrecters
  3. insurrecting
  4. insurrection
  5. insurrectional
  6. insurrectionalism
  7. insurrectionalist
  8. insurrectionalists
  9. insurrectionally
  10. insurrectionaries
  11. insurrectionary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: insurrectionalism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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