Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution

Alex Callinicos, Trotskyism
Christopher Z. Hobson and Ronald D. Tabor, Trotskyism and the Dilemma of Socialism

Originally applied in the Russian context, after 1917 this became generalized into a theory of revolution in underdeveloped countries. It rejects the general thesis that the bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped countries was able to play a revolutionary role. It also rejects a “two-stage” approach to revolution: where the first, “national-democratic” revolution expels foreign exploiters, followed by a second, proletarian-socialist revolution that brings to power the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is anti-Popular Front and anti-Menshevik/Stalinist strategy of bloc-ing with the nationalist wing of the bourgeoisie.

Trotsky’s emphasis was that while a particular country may be underdeveloped, it must be considered in the context of global capitalism. So the higher development of capitalism elsewhere mitigates the relative underdevelopment of another place. Russia, for instance, while undergoing intense, rapid industrialization, was able to import straightaway some of the highest technology and organization available at the turn of the 20th century, to the extent that it had some of the most impressive factories in the world by 1905. This combined and uneven development, the “drawing together of the different stages of the journey [toward socialism], a combining of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic and more contemporary forms” (Callinicos) of production, meant that the Russian proletariat, while a minority of the population, yielded a power and significance above and beyond its small size. Thus, according to Trotsky, it, and not the bourgeoisie, played the central role in the struggle against tsarism.

Trotsky believed the peasantry could only act as a national force under the leadership of an urban class. The peasant parties represented the hegemony of the urban bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie over the rural masses. Trotsky was isolated in this position until February 1917 when Lenin and the Bolsheviks adapted his theory of permanent revolution. In October 1917, he was won over to some of Lenin’s prescriptions for the necessity and type of revolutionary organization.

To clarify the differences with Stalin’s (and the Mensheviks’) two stage approach: this was founded on the belief that capitalism was a necessary historical stage that developed the means of production that would eventually provide the material basis for socialism. In countries that were underdeveloped, comparatively speaking, the two-stage approach assumed that the country must first develop along capitalist lines before the relations and means of production would be sufficiently mature. To do this meant to remove the fetters upon capitalism (old feudal relations, landed oligarchies, church, etc.) and establish a strong bourgeoisie in power.

Hence, in the underdeveloped countries, this approach argued, first there would have to be a bourgeois national revolution in which the national bourgeoisie would fight for power, throw out the imperialists, achieve national independence, and overthrow the feudal landowners. This would rely on the “bloc of four classes” where workers, peasants, intellectuals, and the national bourgeoisie would be allies. The task of the revolutionary (vanguard) party was to help the bourgeois nationalist parties take power.

Though Stalin would claim this approach was taken from Lenin, in fact Lenin argued that the national bourgeoisie was weak and cowardly and would ally with the tsar/ancien regime rather than face the power of the workers’ movement. Thus, Lenin said, the workers and peasants would have to carry out the bourgeois revolution against the bourgeoisie (Hobson and Tabor, 39). The tasks of the revolutionary party, in this setting, were to combat the bourgeoisie’s political influence over the workers and peasants.

Trotsky was not entirely in disagreement with other Russian Marxists on the question of revolution, in that he did believe that Russia was too underdeveloped to establish a socialist society. The revolution was to be permanent in two senses, then: it had to proceed without interruption beyond the bourgeois democratic stage; and it could not be limited to Russia alone, but had to occur in other countries (a counter-argument to Stalin’s “socialism in one country”) (Hobson and Tabor, 37).