Introduction to the First (Russian) Edition¶
Core Argument¶
The theory of the permanent revolution, formulated by Leon Trotsky in the crucible of the 1905 Russian Revolution, directly confronted the central strategic question facing Russian Social Democracy: the character and leadership of the impending bourgeois revolution. The Mensheviks, following Plekhanov, assigned the liberal bourgeoisie the leading role, relegating the proletariat to a supporting left wing. Lenin, by contrast, argued for a ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’, premised on a radical agrarian revolution that would pit a worker-peasant alliance against the liberal bourgeoisie. Trotsky accepted Lenin’s insistence on this class alliance but rejected his formula as strategically ambiguous, leaving unresolved which class would ultimately concentrate revolutionary power.
Trotsky’s analysis proceeded from the material conditions of the peasantry, which he argued could neither form an independent political party nor exercise state power on its own. The peasantry could only support the proletariat in taking power. Once in power, however, the proletariat would be compelled by the logic of class struggle to move beyond democratic tasks toward socialist measures. Trotsky did not hold that Russia was internally ripe for socialism, but insisted that the world economy as a whole was. The dictatorship of the proletariat in a backward country could therefore lead to socialism only in conjunction with the fate of European and world capitalism. The theory thus contained three inseparable aspects: the uninterrupted transition from democratic to socialist revolution; the permanent, self-transforming character of the socialist revolution itself; and its fundamentally international character, since any national revolution is but a link in the international chain.
The epigones—Stalin, Zinoviev, and Bukharin—attacked all three aspects, mechanically counterposing democratic and socialist dictatorships and national revolution to international revolution. This theoretical struggle was no mere historical reminiscence. It reflected the conservative social needs of the Soviet bureaucracy, which recognised the connection between its material privileges and the theory of national socialism. Even as Stalin’s government veered left tactically, it retained a national-reformist strategic foundation. The alternative of permanent revolution versus socialism in one country now encompassed all the fundamental problems of the revolutionary world outlook.
Trotsky restores the theory as formulated in 1905, demonstrating where his position differed from Lenin’s and where it coincided in every decisive situation. The epigones’ accusations—that he ignored the distinction between bourgeois and socialist revolution, forgot the agrarian question, underestimated the Russian proletariat, and placed all hopes on international revolution—are shown to rest on ignorance and dishonesty. Trotsky proceeded precisely from the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution and concluded that the agrarian crisis could raise the proletariat of backward Russia to power.
The catastrophic consequences of this theoretical revision are examined through the Comintern’s Chinese policy under Stalin and Bukharin: the subordination of the Communist Party to the Kuomintang, the prohibition of soviets, the suppression of the agrarian movement, and the subsequent adventurist turn to armed insurrection. The Sixth Congress approved this strategy while advancing the slogan ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ and simultaneously condemning democratic slogans, thereby disarming the Chinese Communist Party. This constituted organised sabotage of the Chinese Revolution, accomplished under the flag of struggle against permanent revolution.