Can a Counter-Revolution or a Revolution Be Made on Schedule?¶
Core Argument¶
Trotsky opens this 1923 article with a blunt dismissal of the question posed in its title: of course a revolution or counter-revolution cannot be made on schedule, “only trains travel on schedule, and even they don’t always arrive on time.” Yet the piece is not a concession to fatalism but a polemical clarification of revolutionary strategy, aimed at clearing away the “encrusted fat” of vague, liberal-bourgeois thinking that has infected even some revolutionists. Trotsky’s central argument is that while counter-revolutions are routinely carried out according to fixed, publicly known timetables—citing Mussolini’s march on Rome, the Bulgarian fascist coup of summer 1923, and Primo de Rivera’s Spanish coup of September 1923—this is possible only because a favourable political situation already exists, created by mass disillusion and apathy. The bourgeoisie, when it made revolutions historically, did not schedule them; it waited for the elemental mass movement to overthrow the old order and then seized power. But this “natural” law of liberal professors, Trotsky insists, is a platitude from the standpoint of a revolutionary party that must lead, not merely spectate.
The key theoretical move is to distinguish between the liberal-bourgeois and the proletarian revolutionary traditions. The Jacobins, as the plebeian-democratic left of the French Revolution, did fix dates and organise conspiracies, because they lacked the wealth, education, and state connections of the liberal bourgeoisie. The Communist Party, Trotsky argues, is in an analogous position: it cannot wait passively for the revolution to unfold but must exercise direct political, organisational, and military-technical leadership. To adopt a waiting attitude is to fall into Menshevism, which brakes the revolution when it advances and exploits its successes only to prevent its completion.
Trotsky then grounds this argument in the concrete experience of the October Revolution. Once the Bolsheviks had won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, the party faced the “stark necessity” of fixing a calendar date for the uprising. The Central Committee set 15 October as the deadline, though it was postponed ten days to synchronise with the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets, ensuring that the seizure of power would be understood by the working class as an act of the Soviets, not merely of a secret party organisation. Trotsky uses this to illustrate a general method: the party must set a schedule for each stage—winning the majority, forming Soviets, convening the congress, preparing the military blow—but must retain flexibility, advancing or delaying each stage based on actual results. Miscalculations are possible, as in any war, but systematic planning maximises the chances of victory. The polemic is directed against fatalists, bystanders, and those who mistake the liberal-bourgeois “law” that revolutions happen but are not made for a guide to proletarian strategy. Revolution, Trotsky concludes, “possesses a mighty power of improvisation, but it never improvises anything good for fatalists, bystanders, and fools.”