A permanent point of controversy
B A The theory of Permanent Revolution is much more than just a theory. It is a bedrock of the marxist programme and strategy for revolution in most of the underdeveloped countries today. It began as Trotsky's attempt to develop beyond the carly writings of Mars and Engels, and come to terms with the changes brought about by the rise of imperialism. A few of the key ideas clashed with traditional orthodox marxism', and were only confirmed in the heat of the Russian Revolution of
The theory remained highly controversial, as Trotsky continued to develop it in the light of experiences of the Chinese revolutionary struggles of the 1920s and 1930s. Even today it remains a flashpoint of political conflict between trotskyism and stalinist currents in the living revolutionary struggles of Central America. Africa and Asia.
Treesky'stheory was based on the law of combined and uneven devclopment". Orthodox marxism held that all countries. would undergo the same pattern of development as the advanced ones. Trotsky challenged this notion.
Economically hackward" countrics. he argued, were not only uncqual, but developing in a combined way alongside more advanced economies. This meant hey could appropriate, or have imposed on them, advanced forms of lechnology and economic production without the in termediate stages of development which the first capitalist countries had gone through. Backwardness and the most advanced productive technology would be combined in a variety of new social fonnations. Early twentieth century Czarist Russia was a classic case. Huge factories and advanced industry imposed by European finance capital (under whose control they remained) coexisted with a fcudal state apparatus and agriculture
He then went on to assess what this "combined and uneven development meant for the prospects for revolution.
As impenalism spread, it pulled country after country into the workd capitalist marketcountries which had not undergone the type of bourgeois revolutions that had swept away old feaudal regimes and opened the door to capitalist development as had happened in
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Britain, Holland and France. Trotsky recognised that even if the underdeveloped countries were ls have bourgeois revolutions it was impossile for them to enter the market as oqual competitors. Their small, weak national capitalist classes were totally subordinate to the hankers, politicians and military forces of the impenalist powers. They could mercly struggle for a slightly larger slice of the cake, and this only through alliances with their peasant masses and the tising working classes. The
'backward" countries were developing capitalist economies, but the lasks of the bourgoois revolution still had to be carried out. "This was precisely the idea that was expressed by the very designation of the revolution as
'permanent, that is an uninterrupted one, a revolution passing over directly from the bourgeois stage into the socialist. To express the same idea Lenin later used the excellent expression of the bourgeois revolution growing over into the socialist." Leon Trotsky, Introduction to Permanent
Revolution Bourgeois revolution is a process of throwing off feudal restrictions which involves the key lasks of national liberation, democracy and agrarian reform. In practice this means wanified national market. with national sovercignty over imperialist controlled industrics: a national assembly elected by universal sulTrage, allowing political pluralism with the right to form iniependent parties and trades unions, und the breaking up of the huge estates of the big land owners, distributing land to the peasailry, and enahling the unfettered capitalist development
While the bourgoois revolution clears the way for capitalist development, it also creates
Important openings for the working class to organise itself to press its own independent cs demands. But the question remained - who should carry out these tasks and to what end?
Some, like the Russian Mensheviks, arguod that if the revolution was to be a bourgeois one then naturally the bourgeoiste should Icad it. The workers should at best play & supporting role until such time in the indefinite future when capitalism had expanded the tanks of the workung class and created conditions for the next "stage" in the revolution - the fight lor socialism, The Bolsheviks, and alongside them Trotsky, maintained that the inability of the rationul bourgcoisic to free itself from imperialism and Carism made this impossible.
Instead, the workers would have to ally themselves with the peasantry to make this bourgenis revolution. In a country like Russia the peasants had the most to gain by throwing off the chains of feudalism. But the question about who would lead this bourgeois revolution The Bolsheviks led by Lenin still ar gued right up to April 1917 that the purpose of such a (bourgeois) revolution was to brcak froc of imperialist domination and to herald the unrestrained development of capitalism. especially in the field of agriculture. They weren't sure which class - the workers or the pcasants - would play the leading role and have the governmental majority. Therefore. they Icit thoir governmental slogan deliberately vague on this question. Trotsky's novel idea was as follows. First, Trotsky recognised that unfettered capitalist development could only come about if the economically back ward countries had access to world markets as coual competitors. But, as stated earlier, the advent of imporialism had closed the age of market capitalism on a world scale and made this impossible. The imperialist powers were locked in a struggle for cconomic territory which ended in the carnage of two world wars. They would not allow a non-imperialist country to assume an imporialist role. The capitalism that had been violently imposed on the rest of the world was to be a subordinate onc. Limits on this fundamental condition for the bourgcois revolution. then, in the develop ing countries: had already been set.
Second. he argued that the working class would have to play the leading roie in the worker-peasant alliance and the revolutionary
monopoly on foreign trade and seizing control | Ing the living standards of the working class and
Trotsky's conclusions were based on the view that the coming of capitalism had brought with if the final domination of the town over the countryside. peasantry was incapuhle of pursuing an independent political course, unless to take human development backwards. Socicties in which events on the land dominated social life were a thing of the past. The working class would have to take the leadership of the worker-peasant alliance because ofits decisive social and political weight, regardless of 1ts size compared to the peasantry.
But after agreeing with Lenin that only such a government would genuinely carry through the bourgeois revolttion, he took a crucial step turther.
The very act of implementing the tasksof the bourgeois revolution would fatally undenmine the bourgeoisie itselt. Not only would amperialism be aftected, but also the national bourgeoisic would be threatened too, especially if their land holdings were broken up and distributed to the peasants, The hourgeoisie would then be forced to resist its own revolution with all its power. (To this day. there is not a bourgcois regime in the whole of the Third World that heads a country where all three major tasks of the bourgenes revolution - етостису, ntimal liberation and land reform heen genuinely carried out.)
If the working class were to pursuc its class inverests it would have to embark on the course of socialist revolution by hreaking the cconomic power of the bourgeoisie. The completion of the tasks of the bourgenis revolution would therefore take place simultancously with the begin socialist revolution. would he no gap between fixed stages? instead the revolution, ke be successfol. had to he an unhroken, anterrupied one. permanent' in the sense of permancot session, and culminating in a revolutionaty worker government. the dictatorship nEthe proletariai
Trotsky also therefore rejected the innplied notion in the Bolshevik strategy that al sonic point the new revolutsonary govemment woukt either have 10 give up Els power or repress the working class The bourgeoisic would oppose even those measures heneficial to the working class which arc achievable under capitalism - an cight hour working day, wage rises, frocdom to organise. When the workers responded with sirikes, ocupations and even expropriations, whatshould a revolutionary workers und pcasants" government do? Should it remain faithful to "marxist orthodoxy on the need for capitalism first. socialism later? Or should it promote and support such working class action and make inroads into bourgeois coonomic power expropriating the factorics, Imposing a state
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Marching against the contras - Managua 1987 of the financial institutions?
which Trotsky identified.
revolutions are not constrained within national have far-reoching effects right across the world;
organise on an international scale and fight to mobilise solidarity with struggles in countries other than their own.
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Posed in this way the answer is obvious. But such measures are nothing less than the start of the socialist revolution. Carrying out the bourgools revolution successfully in this context means carrying out a socialist revolution and
There: was another important dimension to
"The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against reaction from without;
that is, a revolution whose every successive stage is rooted in the preceding one, and which can end only in the complete liquidation of class society."
Leon Trotsky, Introduction to Permanent
Revolution resisted.
the successtul socialist, permanent rovolution
He insisted that revolutions and counter boundaries, The class struggle, he argued, can thus reinforcing the need for revolutionaries to
Individual couniries can make important steps along the road to a classless society - indeed, to survive, any revolution must march forwand But it is highly unlikely, to say the Icast, that any single country -cken onc as highly developed as the United States - has enough resources to bring aboul on its own a classiess: society. After all the im peralist countrics are so ad vanced precisely because of their relation to and domination of the world market. The conquest of proletarian power in any single country must be seen as the start of a revolution in that country. The absence of a favourahle international climate canor be used as an excuse for delaying progress in many areas - raispeasantry (iF one exists), taking measures to combat racial and sexual oppression, and so on. The Nicaraguan revolution cloarly shows the tremendous problems faced by a small underdevcloped country faced with the might of imporialism. International solidarity can help provide a crucial breathing space for such a revolution. But in the end the only guarantee of survival is an extension of the revolution. to other countries: The theory of Permanent Revolution is clcarly based on analysis of the objective forces that shape revolutionary struggles: but there is no guarantee that any given revolution will evolve naturally along the path of Permanent Revolution Within any given struggle there will be other political currents with very different airs, policies and methods. If tbeir in fuence predominates. revolutionary: op: portunities can be missed. or mass strug. gles led scriously astray, as has happened so ofien since World War Two. All of this points to one fundamental conclusion above all others for revoluhonary sirategy in backward" countries: the necessitv for the complete political independence of the working chess and its purties. Many different alhances with all sorts of forces will he possible and necessary for the revolution to succeed - hut the temptation Tor a working class revolufionary party to subsume itself or its independent identity into a national, anti-imperialist mass movement must be lostead, the tight must be to build a political leadership which will combatthe cross-class Alliances and "stages" theories proposed by stalinist and reformist currents, and struggle Tor a strategy and a lactical programme based upon the theory of Permanent Revolution. In every such movement there is an ongoing struggle to decide whether the leadership will be bourgeois or proletarian. It is on the outcome of this struggle that the future success of the revolution depends.
Richard Rozanski
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 Page 27