The Permanent Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
In the epoch of imperialism, the theory of permanent revolution, forged by Leon Trotsky and Alexander Parvus from 1904, offered a decisive break with the stagist orthodoxies of the Second International. Its core argument held that in backward Russia, the national bourgeoisie—fatally compromised by its links to feudalism and imperialist capital—was incapable of leading a bourgeois-democratic revolution. Fearful of the proletariat, it was inherently counter-revolutionary. Marx and Engels had already diagnosed this rottenness in the German bourgeoisie of 1848, and even the classic bourgeois revolutions of France and England had been driven forward against the bourgeoisie by plebeian masses. Trotsky concluded that the Russian proletariat could and must take power, completing the unfinished bourgeois tasks—land reform, national unification—and then proceeding directly to socialist measures. The revolution was thus permanent in two senses: it flowed uninterruptedly from bourgeois-democratic to socialist tasks, and it could not be confined to a single nation, triggering world revolution.
Until February 1917, Lenin held a different position. He agreed the bourgeoisie was counter-revolutionary and that the proletariat, in alliance with the poor peasantry, must lead the democratic revolution. However, he insisted the revolution would remain bourgeois-democratic, unable to touch the foundations of capitalism without a series of intermediary stages. Socialist revolution would occur first in Western Europe; only with European workers’ help could the Russian workers transform their democratic revolution into a socialist one. Lenin explicitly ruled out the possibility of the Russian workers establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat before the socialist revolution in the West. Trotsky considered Lenin’s position progressive compared to the Mensheviks’ two-stage theory, but warned its shortcomings could become a serious threat in the event of victory. That threat was avoided when Lenin abandoned the slogan of the ‘Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry’ in spring 1917, adopting a position identical to the permanent revolution.
The final test of all theory is practice. In 1917, the line separating Trotsky from Lenin dissolved completely; Lenin’s Letters From Afar and April Theses were indistinguishable from Trotsky’s articles in Novy Mir. As Trotsky had warned in 1909, the counter-revolutionary side of the democratic dictatorship theory became evident when Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Stalin used it to justify support for the bourgeois Provisional Government. The October Revolution demonstrated the correctness of the permanent revolution: the Russian working class took power before Western workers, carried out the bourgeois-democratic tasks, nationalised industry, and began socialist transformation. The bourgeoisie played a counter-revolutionary role but was defeated by workers and poor peasants. Lenin knew the revolution could not survive isolated without victory in advanced countries, which subsequent events proved correct. Today, the national bourgeoisie in colonial countries enters history too late, subordinated to imperialism, and forms a reactionary bloc with landowners. Only the proletariat, allied with poor peasants and urban poor, can solve society’s problems by taking power and beginning socialist transformation. The Stalinist bureaucracy’s theory of socialism in one country reflected its conservative outlook and desire to protect privileges, abandoning world revolution. Stalinism proposed alliance with the ‘national progressive bourgeoisie’ for a two-stage revolution, representing a return to Menshevism and a break with Leninism.