In left-wing discourse, 'Blanquism' refers to a conception of revolution generally attributed to Louis Auguste Blanqui

Louis Auguste Blanqui

Louis Auguste Blanqui was a French political activist, notable for the revolutionary theory of Blanquism, attributed to him....

 which holds that socialist revolution should be carried out by a relatively small group of highly organised and secretive conspirators. Having taken power, the revolutionaries would then use the power of the state to introduce socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 or communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

. It is considered a particular sort of 'putschism' - that is, the view that political revolution should take the form of a putsch or coup d'état

Coup d'état

A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

.

Pejorative use

It is rare for anyone to adopt 'Blanquism' as an appropriate description of their own beliefs. The term has most often been used polemically, to accuse some revolutionary of failing to sufficiently meld their praxis with the mass working class

Working class

Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

. Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

 and Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...

 were keen to distinguish their conception of revolution from Blanquism. As Engels put it in a short fragment, The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune:

Lenin

Some critics of Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

 maintain that his conception of revolution was elitist and essentially 'Blanquist'. Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...

, for instance, as part of a longer section on Blanquism in her "Leninism or Marxism?", writes:
It is worth noting that by 'social democracy' Luxemburg has in mind the original use of the term derived from Marx and synonymous with 'socialism'. The influence of revisionism

Reformism

Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...

 notwithstanding, she conceived of the social democratic party as a mass based organisation of working class struggle. Lenin, however, dismissed as meaningless rhetoric the conflation of Blanquism with Bolshevism: