Interesting little diversion via Wiki, ta: hadn't realised 'Bolsheviks' came originally from disagreement between Lenin and Martov. Martov's supporters were minority and called "Mensheviks" from меньшинство (men'shinstvo, "minority"), whereas Lenin's were known as "Bolsheviks", from bol'shinstvo ("majority").
You wouldn't call SWP a Menshevik party then
Yes I know you all know this. I'm posting it for my benefit.
It's one of those good old "irony of history" things we all love so much that although all revolutionery socialists today automatically spit in the metaphorical political contempt spittoon whenever the name "Menshevik" is mentioned, if we look at what actually happened in Russia since 1917, an objective assessment could be argued to conclude that Lenin and Trotsky pinning all their hopes on the rescue of the "historically premature" worker and peasant revolution in economically and socially backward Russia by the expected German socialist revolution, turned out to be a tad optimistic. The consequence of the failure of the wider German and European revolutionery wave from 1917 until the early 1920's (and the eventual emergeance of fascism as a counterweight to socialist revolution), of course produced Stalinism in the USSR, and all the consequent death and oppression , and later Stalinist-model dictatorships across the world. Ending up of course in the eventual full capitalist restoration in the USSR and eastern Bloc, and China well on that path too.
The Menshevik argument was that the Russian Czarist empire was simply not ready to sustain a working- class-led socialist revolution, and that the most that could be expected was a bourgeois democratic end to Czarist autocracy. They predicted that to carry out a premature socialist revolution on the social and economic base of Czarist Russia could only end in a need to rule by "Jacobin Terror" by a tiny working class and its political party. So who turned out right ? The optimistic, "let's wing it and hope for rescue by the German socialist revolution before the shit hits the fan" Bolsheviks, or the cautious, much more formally "orthodox Marxist" Mensheviks ? I have extreme doubt that there actually was a "bourgeois democratic" option available as a counterpose to a continuation of Czarist autocracy ,as Bourgeois critics of the Bolshevik revolution or "coup" usually suggest. Nevertheless, given the colossal human disaster that was Stalinism, The fact today of a complete bourgeois capitalist restoration in Russia and the Eastern bloc countroes, after all that blood spilt, and the negative impact on the perception of Socialism that Stalinism still represents on a world historical scale, and perhaps a little more nuanced understanding of the "Menshevik" position by radical Lefties might be in order nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I would have sided with the Bolshevik position in 1917 too - hoping for the Germans to hurry up and carry out their "historical destiny". But then, I like Lenin, would have been harbouring serious, fatal, illusions in the German Social Democracy of the time. The revolutionery Left today seems to be so stuck in the ideological dogma built up since 1917 that it is generally incapable of grasping that the Bolshevik high risk strategy actually resoundingly FAILED. The October 1917 workers and peasants revolution wasn't the END of the process, and a conclusiove refutation of the Menshevik positition....it was only the beginning - and the final outcome was TOTAL DISASTER and eventual full capitalist restoration ! Trotsky remained friendly with the Menshevik leader , Martov, a sign perhaps that he didn't view the Mensheviks as the dastardly villains that later Stalinist historical revision chooses to paint them.
I'm not suggesting any contemporary historical resonance of the Menshevik/Bolshevik debate in today's world capitalist crisis, as the world generally, and the West particularly is completely economically and socially "mature" for a genuine working-class socialist revolution, and has been for a long, long time. The point, though,is to analyse each historical opportunity anew, in the light of current knowledge, not to be trapped in the semi religious, 1917 Revolution obsessed, dogmas which still dominate the thinking of most of the "marxist" radical Left today.