What is a permanent revolution? Who wrote about her? We will answer these and other questions in the article. It is believed that this term was introduced by Leon Trotsky. But in Russian, this expression appeared thanks to G.V. Plekhanov, who wrote about the “permanent coup” in the 12th issue of the Diary of the Social Democrat (June 1910). It was this man who founded the Social Democratic movement in Russia. In his writings, he used the term Karl Marx (1918-1883) - die Revolution in Permanenz (continuous revolution), which he coined.
Appearance
How did the phrase “permanent revolution” appear? First, Trotsky in 1905 wrote about the “revolutionary continuum” and “continuous coup” (the newspaper “Beginning”, November 8). He began to use the phrase “permanent revolution” after February 1917, when in the brochure “What Next?” published the slogan "Permanent coup against a permanent slaughter!". In 1932, his book was published on this phenomenon, and the new term began to be associated only with the name of Trotsky.
Like sarcasm, this phrase means a protracted process of reform, change, and so on.
Theory
What is the theory of permanent revolution? This is the doctrine of the formation of a rebellious process in underdeveloped and peripheral countries. It was first proposed by Engels and Marx, later developed by Leo Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Ernest Mendel and other Marxist ideologists (including such Trotskyist authors as Joseph Hansen, Michael Levy, Livio Maitan).
Wording
How was the permanent revolution interpreted by the founders of Marxism? The very image of this phenomenon was described by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx as far back as 1840 in the "Communist Party Manifesto" and "Message from the Central Committee to the Union of Communists." The creators of Marxism believed that in the implementation of the democratic bourgeois revolution, the workers would not stop at achieving only simple goals.
The bourgeoisie is known to strive to end the rebellion as soon as possible. And the proletariat is obliged to make this process continuous until the propertied classes are removed from government, until the workers conquer state power. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx insisted on the harmony of the revolutionary movement of the peasants and the proletarian coup.
Lenin's position
The term "permanent revolution" arose interest in Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich argued that in a Russian situation, a democratic-bourgeois revolution could develop into a socialist rebellion. This nuance is possible in view of the specific conditions for the development of capitalism in the country — the presence of a dual type of disagreement between this formation, both between developing capitalism and the remnants of serfdom, and within the system itself.
In such a situation, not the bourgeoisie, but the proletariat, led by the revolutionary party, is the forefront of the coup. The peasantry, who wants to achieve their goals through rebellion, in the first place, to destroy the landowner tenure, is an ally of the workers.
Lenin's point of view is rather unusual. He believed that the essence of the development of a democratic-bourgeois coup into a socialist one was the modification of the structure of forces around the working class towards the end of the democratic-bourgeois revolution. He argued that if the proletariat implements the democratic bourgeois revolt in alliance with all the grain growers, then the workers should immediately proceed to the socialist coup with the rural poor and other poor, oppressed elements. The democratic revolutionary dictatorship of the workers and peasants is obliged to take the form of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.
The concept of turning a democratic-bourgeois rebellion into a socialist revolt was created in 1905 by Lenin in his works Democratic Revolutionary Dictatorship of Workers and Peasants, Two Maneuvers of Social Democracy in a Democratic Revolt, and others. Lenin regarded the socialist and democratic bourgeois revolutions as two parts of the same chain. Moreover, these two rebellions are interpreted by him as a single current.
The prospect of a world riot
The theory of permanent revolution is a very interesting doctrine. It is known that Lenin contemplated the formation of a rebellious movement in the context of an interethnic revolutionary perspective. He saw the complete construction of socialism precisely through the worldwide anti-imperialist movement.
In each of his work, Vladimir Ulyanov writes the October Revolution into a revolutionary global context. Although, like Trotsky, in a number of works he writes about the Soviet Republic as the bulwark of a world coup.
The view of the Social Democrats
The idea of permanent revolution was also of interest to the Russian Mensheviks and Western Social Democrats. Their view reflects the idea that the working class, in the course of the socialist rebellion, is resisting all non-proletarian classes, including the opposition peasantry.
In view of this, for the triumph of the socialist revolt, mainly in Russia, after the democratic-bourgeois coup has been completed, a lot of time must pass before the majority of the population turns into proletarians and the workers become a majority in the state. If there are not enough workers, any permanent revolt is doomed to defeat.
The opinion of Trotsky
In his turn, Trotsky set forth his own view of the prospect of permanent rebellion, preparing in 1905 a new interpretation of it. One of the most important details of the concept of this revolution is the theory of combined development. Until 1905, Marxists analyzed the way in which socialist rebellion was carried out in developed bourgeois countries.
According to Trotsky, in more or less progressive states, such as Russia, in which the process of development of the proletariat and industrialization arose quite recently, it was possible to carry out a socialist coup in view of the historical impotence of the bourgeoisie to fulfill democratic-bourgeois demands.
In his writings, Leon Trotsky wrote that the political incompetence of the bourgeoisie was directly determined by the image of its relations with the peasantry and the proletariat. He argued that the belatedness of the Russian rebellion was not only a problem of chronology, but also a dilemma of the social structure of the nation.
So, we have already found out that Trotsky is a supporter of the theory of permanent revolution. Very rapidly, he began to develop it after the October riot of 1917. Trotsky denied the complete socialist character of this rebellion, regarding it only as the first phase on the road to socialist rebellion in the West and around the globe. He said that socialism can triumph in Soviet Russia only when the socialist rebellion becomes permanent, that is, it penetrates the most important countries of Europe, when the proletariat-winner of the West helps the Russian workers cope in the struggle against the opposing classes, and then it will be possible to build communism and socialism on a global scale. He saw such an outcome of the rebellion due to the small number of the Russian proletariat and the existence in Russia of a huge mass of philistines by nature grain growers.
The role of rural residents
Often the theory of Trotsky’s permanent coup is criticized for the fact that the author allegedly underestimates the role of the peasantry. In fact, he writes a lot in his works that the workers will not be able to carry out a socialist rebellion without securing the support of the peasants. Trotsky argues that, being only a smaller part of Russian society, the working class can lead the riot to the emancipation of the peasantry and thereby obtain the approval of the farmers as part of the revolution, on whose support it will rely.
At the same time, in the name of personal interests and improvement of their conditions, the proletariat will strive to carry out such revolutionary transformations that will not only fulfill the functions of a bourgeois revolution, but will also lead to the formation of a working power.
At the same time, Trotsky asserts that the proletariat will be forced to introduce class opposition into the village, as a result of which the community of interests that indisputably all farmers have, but within relatively narrow limits, will be violated. The workers, in the initial period of their reign, will have to seek support in the confrontation of the rural poor to the rural rich, and the agrarian proletariat, the tillage bourgeoisie.
Condemnation of the theory in the USSR
So, you already know that the author of the theory of permanent revolution in Russia is Trotsky. In the Soviet Union, his teaching was condemned at the plenums of the Central Control Commission of the RCP (b) and the Central Committee in a resolution on Trotsky’s speech, which was adopted in 1925, January 17, as well as in the Theses on the Tasks of the RCP (B) and the Comintern, adopted on 14- RCP (b) session “On the Frontder Bloc in the CPSU (b)”. Similar decisions were made in all the semi-official communist parties that were part of the Comintern.
The policy of this organization in China was a direct occasion for Trotsky's classified presentation of the doctrine of a permanent coup and criticism of the Stalinist interpretation of the "stages of the revolutionary movement." It was in this country that the Chinese Communist Party, by order of Moscow, tried to create an alliance with the popular bourgeoisie - first with the Kuomintang leadership (the head of Chiang Kai-shek), and after the Shanghai massacre of 1927, which occurred through his fault, with Wang Jingwei (the "left Kuomintang").
Prospects of the USSR
How could the permanent revolution influence the development of the USSR? The definition of this process makes many think. Proponents of the permanent revolt considered the building of socialism in a single Russia to be “people's one-sidedness”, a departure from the fundamental views of proletarian solidarity.
The Trotskyists said that if in the near future after the October mutiny in the West the revolution of the working class did not triumph, then the "reconstruction of capitalism" would begin in the USSR.
Trotsky argued that the Soviet Union emerged from the October coup as a working power. The reprivatization of the means of production is a prerequisite for socialist development. It was she who opened the possibility of the rapid growth of productive forces. The apparatus of the working country, meanwhile, turned into an instrument of bureaucratic violence against the working class, and then - into an instrument of sabotage of the economy. The seizure of an isolated and backward working country and the transformation of the bureaucracy into a privileged omnipotent caste is the most logical practical challenge of socialism in a separate state.
Trotsky declared that the regime of the USSR thus consists of terrifying contradictions. But he continues to be a regime of a degenerated working country. This is the social conclusion. The political scenario has a multivariate character: either the bureaucracy will throw the country back to capitalism, overturning new types of property, or the proletariat will destroy the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.
Doctrine evolution
How did the theory develop after the Second World War? This doctrine continued to be developed by many leftist Marxist theorists in the countries of Southeast Asia, Western Europe, South and North America, where Trotskyist formations existed. In the middle of the XX century there was an anti-colonial rise. At this stage, the Fourth International investigated the evolution of revolutionary trends in developing countries, especially in the Cuban and Algerian revolutions.
At one of the congresses of the Fourth International in 1963, a resolution was adopted “The Dynamics of the World Coup Today”. Its authors were Ernest Mandel (leader of the Belgian bloc) and Joseph Hansen (member of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States).
The resolution stated that the three dominant forces of the world coup — political rebellion in distorted working powers, colonial rebellion and proletarian rebellion in capstranas — form a dialectical alliance. Each of these forces acts on the others and in response receives a powerful impulse for its future inhibition or development. The delay of the proletarian rebellion in the bourgeois powers, of course, prevented the colonial coup from embarking on the socialist path as consciously and quickly as possible under the pressure of the triumph of the workers in developed countries or the revolutionary victorious rebellion. This delay also impedes the development of a political uprising in the USSR, including because the Soviet workers do not see before them an example of a multivariate way of creating socialism.
Bukharin
Bukharin was also interested in the term “permanent revolution”. In a pamphlet on the October Revolution in early 1918, he wrote that the fall of the imperialist regime was organized by the entire previous revolutionary history. He argued that this fall and the triumph of the working class, supported by the rural poor, the victory, which immediately opened up boundless horizons on the entire planet, was not the beginning of the organic era. The task of an international coup is posed before the Russian proletariat as sharply as ever. The whole complex of relations that arose in Europe leads to this inevitable end. Thus, a permanent coup in Russia is turning into the European revolution of the proletariat.
He believed that the torch of the Russian socialist rebellion was thrown into the powder magazine of the bloodied old Europe. He is not dead. He is prospering. It is expanding. And he will inevitably merge with the great triumphal rebellion of the world proletariat.
In fact, Bukharin was far from the system of socialism in a sovereign country. Everyone knows that he was the main theoretician of the campaign against Trotskyism, generalized in the battle against the concept of a permanent coup. But earlier, when the magma of the revolutionary rebellion had not yet had time to cool down, Bukharin, it turns out, did not find another formula for evaluating the coup, except for the one against which he had to fight fiercely several years later.
Bukharin's brochure was produced by the Central Committee of the Surf Party. No one declared it heretical. On the contrary, everyone saw in it the indisputable and official expression of the convictions of the Party Central Council. The brochure in this form was reprinted many times over the coming years, and together with another booklet dedicated to the February rebellion, under the general title "From the collapse of the autocracy to the fall of the bourgeoisie", it was translated into French, German, English and other languages.
In the years 1923-1924, many began to argue against Trotskyism. These disputes destroyed much of what was built by the October Revolution, leaked to reading rooms, libraries, newspapers and buried countless documents dating back to the greatest era in the development of the revolution and the party. Today, these documents have to be restored in parts in order to recall past times.
Practice
So, you already understood that the prospect of a world revolution is very tempting. In practice, the doctrine of permanent coup looked peculiar. Criticizing Trotsky’s theory, Radek (Soviet political figure) also adds to it “tactics arising from it.” This is a very important addition. The vivid discussion of “Trotskyism” in this matter was prudently limited to doctrine. But Radek is not enough. He is fighting against the Bolshevik diplomatic line in China. He seeks to blur this course with the theory of permanent rebellion, and for this it is necessary to prove that the wrong tactical line followed from this doctrine in the past.
Radek is misleading to his readers here. Perhaps he himself does not know the history of the revolution, in which he never participated personally. But he, apparently, did not bother to check the question on the documents.
History does not go straight. Sometimes she gets into various dead ends.