Chapter 4 - Trotsky and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
In Chapter 4, Trotsky and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution, the core argument is that Trotsky’s theory emerged from his analysis of Russia’s unique social formation during the 1905 revolution. Russia’s late, state-directed industrialisation, financed by foreign capital, had created a large, concentrated urban proletariat before a significant bourgeois class had developed. Trotsky argued that this proletariat, not the liberal bourgeoisie, would lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Once in power, however, the working class would be compelled by class conflict to exceed democratic limits and make inroads into bourgeois property relations, thereby giving the revolution an uninterrupted, socialist character. The theory was systematised in Results and Prospects (1906), though the phrase ‘permanent revolution’ was coined by Martynov; Trotsky originally used ‘uninterrupted revolution’.
Trotsky argued that the proletariat could come to power in a backward country like Russia before the advanced capitalist nations. The timing of a workers’ seizure of power depended not on the level of productive forces but on class relations, the international situation, and subjective factors like the workers’ readiness to fight. He drew on Kautsky’s authority to support this, quoting Kautsky’s claim that the Russian proletariat’s political importance contradicted only a caricature of the materialist conception of history. Trotsky concluded that the proletariat in power would inevitably move towards collectivist measures, because once it held state power it would not surrender it without armed force.
The Theory of Permanent Revolution (ToPR) represented a radical departure from the Second International’s dominant ideas. Trotsky proposed that revolution must be viewed as a world-historic process, not a progression of national events. Four characteristics defined his contribution. First, he addressed the transition from democratic to socialist revolution by studying Russian capitalism’s reality, finding that large-scale industry had made the working class relatively stronger than the bourgeoisie in any previous bourgeois revolution. Second, he concluded that revolutionary agrarian reforms could only be carried through under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Third, he rejected the economist view that the dictatorship of the proletariat depended automatically on a country’s technical development. Fourth, he grasped the world economy’s impact on Russia and posed the revolution’s character in terms of the worldwide capitalist system.
What separated Lenin and Trotsky was not the degree of peasant support needed but the class nature of the state immediately following revolution. Lenin argued the proletariat would implement bourgeois-democratic tasks, establish a Constituent Assembly, then hand power to bourgeois parties. Trotsky argued the proletariat would inevitably carry out collectivist measures in its own interest. Trotsky concluded that the working class would lead the revolution, take power, and immediately confront the need for socialist measures, but that socialism was unattainable within a single, backward, peasant country. The workers’ government would therefore have to unite with the socialist proletariat of Western Europe. Trotsky foresaw a counter-revolutionary upsurge by the liberal bourgeoisie and richer peasants, with the proletariat fighting to retain socialist gains.