Leon Trotsky's ideas on 'Permanent Revolution'

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• revolution and E. Europe 12 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1990 In 1930, Leon Trotsky, in an introduction to his defense of the theory of permanent revolution, summarized Marx's conception of "the revolution in permanence" in one sentence:

"The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to the conception, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against the reaction from without, that is, a revolution whose every next stage is anchored in the preceding one and which can only end in the complete liquidation of all class society."

This succinct but profound statement also reveals the essence of Marx's dialectical method to which Trotsky remained faithful to the end.

The theory of permanent revolution was developed further by Trotsky. He first applied it in 1906 to an analysis of revolutionary strategy for Czarist Russia, and later to all underdeveloped countries. Trotsky explained that capitalists and landlords were no longer purely distinct classes with fundamentally opposed interests. The economic interests of these two classes had intertwined; and in many cases landlords were also stockholders, and capitalists were also landowners.

He concluded that capitalists could no longer carry out the democratic revolution; that is, the thoroughgoing overthrow of pre-capitalist forms of exploitation and the abolition of landed property. For the capitalists to do this would be to deal a fatal blow at their own social and political power.

Combined revolution

Lenin and Trotsky had long been in agreement that the capitalists of Russia could no longer carry through the tasks of the democratic revolution. But Trotsky went further. He predicted that only the workers, with peasant support, could carry through these tasks.

That meant a combined revolution. Only by establishing the rule of the working class could the capitalist class be held immobilized while the peasants expropriated the land from the landlord. This, Trotsky explained, was what Marx and Engels meant by the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the peasant war-that is, the democratic rule of the working class supported by their natural allies, the poor peasants.

Trotsky argued that only the Communetype state could carry the democratic revolution through to the end. Furthermore, following Marx's lead, he predicted that the proletariat in power would not stop until the means of production were wrenched out of the hands of the capitalist class and a nationalized, planned economy was put in its place-not only in Russia, but on a world scale.

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factions among them go, the more of these demands will they make their own, and those few who see their own program in what has been outlined above might believe that thereby they have put forward the utmost that can be demanded from the revolution.

"But these demands can in nowise suffice for the party of the proletariat.

While the democratic petty bourgeoisie wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and with the achievement, at most, of the above [democratic] demands, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians.

"For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only SOCIALIST Leon Trotsky This outlook became the theoretical foundation for Bolshevik strategy. It was introduced by Lenin and adopted by the Bolshevik Party in April 1917.1 This resulted in the overthrow by the Russian working class of both semi-feudal and capitalist rule in October 1917 and the establishment of a workers' state, "under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies."

The April Theses also called for changing the party's name and for the foundation of the Third (Communist) International as the world party of socialist revolution. 2 Marx's transitional method But while "permanent revolution" is most identified with revolutionary strategy in the colonial and semi-colonial world, it underlies Trotsky's world outlook and runs like a red thread throughout his analyses of revoits annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one....

"At the present moment when the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach in general unity and reconciliation to the proletariat, they offer it their hand and strive for the establishment of a large opposition party which will embrace all shades of opinion in the democratic party, that is, they strive to entangle the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases predominate, behind which their special interests are concealed and in which the particular demands of the proletariat may not be brought forward for the sake of beloved peace.

"Such a union would turn out solely to their advantage and altogether to the disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose its whole independent, laboriously achieved position and once more sink down to being an appendage of official bourgeois democracy.

"This union must, therefore, be decisively rejected. Instead of once again MARCH lutionary problems and their solutionin all countries.

This conception is at the heart of the "Transitional Program," which Trotsky wrote in 1938 as the basic programmatic foundation for the Fourth International. This new international was made necessary after Stalin had transformed the Third International from the world party of socialist revolution into an instrument of the counterrevolutionary Soviet bureaucracy. 3 The "Transitional Program" addresses the problem of revolution in a world which, at that time, was divided into countries of four basic types:

• The imperialist countries, in which capitalists rule in their own name through bourgeois-democratic political institutions.

• The imperialist countries ruled by a fascist political dictatorship.

• The colonial and semi-colonial countries, stooping to serve as the applauding chorus of the bourgeois democrats, the workers, and above all the [Communist] League, must exert themselves to establish an independent, secret and public organization of the workers' party alongside of the official democrats and make each section the central point and nucleus of workers' societies in which the attitude and interests of the proletariat will be discussed independently of bourgeois influences.

"In the case of a struggle against a common adversary no special union is required. As soon as such an adversary has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties, for the moment, coincide, and, as previously, so also in the future, this connection, calculated to last only for the moment, will arise of itself."

Political and social revolution A false picture of the forces at work in the upheavals sweeping through the Stalinist world can easily be drawn from the superficial and slanted interpretations we get from most reports presented in the mass media.

These reports are not all conscious distortions of events by capitalists and Stalinists eager to manufacture self-serving "public opinion." They also reflect their own adaptation to transient moods and wishful thinking. Serious revolutionists cannot which are ruled by "comprador" capitalist classes; that is, by dependent capitalists who function as "junior partners" and agents of imperialism. The political forms of capitalist rule in these countries then, as now, ranged from left bourgeois democratic governments to military-police dictatorships.

• The workers' state, ruled by the Stalinist political dictatorship. (At that time the Soviet Union was the only one in this category.)

The peculiarities of each type of state and political regime were examined and the special tactical problems of each addressed. The strategic road in all cases, however, was toward a world socialist society.

The "Transitional Program" was not intended to constitute a mere collection of tactics, but was primarily a method for taking the proletariat from their given consciousness to higher levels. It is identical to the method which underlies Marx and Engels' Revolution in Permanence.

The method of the "Transitional Program" was summarized well by American Trotskyist, Joseph Hansen:

"The real solution to the problem of bridging the gap between the masses and our program of revolutionary socialism is to be found in the proper application of the transitional method taught us by Trotsky. The method is not complicated. It consists in approaching the masses at whatever level they may stand and in drawing them through progressive struggles and explanations toward a higher level of thought and action, that is, in the direction of socialist revolution....

"Moreover, our own wishes, or our own level of class consciousness, must not be permitted to influence our judgement as to the real nature of the current concerns of the masses or the issues on which they are prepared to go into action."4 Footnotes:

1- "V.I. Lenin, "April Theses," V.I. Lenin Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), Vol. 24, pp. 21-26.

2-The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were factions of the Russian Social Democratic Party, but they functioned essentially as separate parties. In line with Lenin's "April Theses," the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

3-Trotsky declared the Third International dead and called for the formation of the Fourth International after Stalin led the German workers to defeat in 1933.

ALeon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1977).

afford anything less than a sober look at the facts in all their contradictory reality.

Following Trotsky's example in his analysis of the degeneration of the Soviet state, it is necessary to note the class conquests that exist in these countries, despite the anti-working class role of the bureaucracies, and their impact on masses of people.

The collective ownership of the means of production, the planned economy, and the state monopoly of foreign trade (together constituting the socialization of the process of production) set into motion forces which objectively benefit the great majority in the workers' states, and represent a qualitative break from capitalism.

In its simplest terms, these socialized economies objectively serve to expand the productive forces, which is the only real foundation for progress. Moreover, the system of production-for-use guarantees everyone a job, shelter, food, clothing, and medical care.

Even the toiling masses of post-capitalist China-which emerged from generations of war, revolution, and devastating economic destruction-gained the fundamental right to a minimum level of living standards rivaling many countries far ahead of them in economic development.

The least-advantaged members of these societies, in fact, are better off than their (continued on page 13)

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Soviet demonstrators in Moscow demand Communist Party end one-party rule on day before Plenum.

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Send to: 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, San Fran, CA 94110 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1990 13 (continued from page 12: “Soviet democracy vS. parliamentary democracy”)

counterparts in the backward capitalist countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

It is for this reason that revolutionary Marxists make a sharp distinction between the anti-capitalist conquests of the workers' states and the parasitic bureaucratic castes fastened upon these objectively progressive foundations.

That is why we see the character of the revolution developing in the workers' states not as social but as political. This means the overthrow of the privileged bureaucracy and their system of political dictatorship; and at the same time, the preservation and development of the social and economic foundations for a socialist society.

Political revolution is by itself no solution to the task of constructing a socialist society, although it is an indispensable beginning for the bureaucratized states to go forward.

Socialism can be achieved only after the revolution is extended to the major industrialized capitalist societies. It cannot be built on an economic foundation lower than that of the most advanced capitalist countries, least of all in countries that are excluded from access to a world division of Entering the threshold to socialism, in short, is impossible without planned economic cooperation between workers' states which approaches, in technological development and scale, the level achieved in the sphere of the planet dominated by capitalist market relations.

For instance, a socialist West Germany plus East Europe including the Soviet Union, united in a single planned economy and managed by democratic workers' committees, would provide a material base that would open the door to equalling and surpassing the productivity of the capitalist world.

Pre-conditions for revolution The objective conditions for revolution are determined by the unconscious forces of history. We are in an epoch which long ago became rotten ripe for socialist revolution. But Trotsky warned in 1938:

"The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.... [Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind....

"[T]he chief obstacle in the path of transforming the pre-revolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of proletarian leadership: its petty-bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its death agony."3 Since that was written the world has indeed suffered that catastrophe! World War II resulted in scores of millions killed, including the holocaust in which 6 million Jews and other "inferior" peoples were slaughtered, and ended with the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities along with hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants.

This horror, a direct result of betrayal by the reformist and Stalinist handmaidens to imperialism, was followed by further betrayals in the aftermath of World War II. This brought to a close the pre-revolutionary situation in Western Europe which Trotsky spoke of, giving world imperialism a new lease, on life. A new period of capitalist expansion was permitted to unfold with the indispensable aid and assistance of the reformists, especially the Stalinists.

Thus since shortly after World War II, broad layers of the middle classes, including even a layer of workers, have been able to share more or less in the fruits of property ownership. Millions of workers for instance, have accumulated savings from a lifetime of labor which they have invested in some form, including in stocks and bonds, from which they augment their income from wages or pensions. These are not capitalists, but they nevertheless have a stake in a stable capitalism.

So long as this stability in the centers of imperialism persists, such social layers constitute a bulwark of the system. But unfortunately for the luckier portions of the exploited millions, this security is doomed by the financial adventures of the masterminds of capitalist financial and monetary manipulation.

This changed objective situation-the stabilization of capitalist society in the major countries—also limits possibilities for the time being in the workers' states. The internationalist perspective of the early Bolsheviks, the orientation toward the extension of the revolution to the advanced countries of the world as the only real road to socialism, appears to be a utopian vision. But this too will change when the contradictions boiling beneath the surface of world capitalism break through their artificially imposed limits.

Inevitable capitalist crisis

Although world capitalism has successfully avoided a major economic collapse such as erupted in 1929 for nearly half a century, it has done so at the heavy price of mortgaging the future in the course of an unparalleled and ultimately hyper-inflationary expansion of credit. And the longer the crisis is postponed, the more explosive will be its effects.

In the United States alone, the potential for disaster is indicated by a national debt which is rapidly approaching $3 trillion. The debtor nations are bankrupt and repayment of the $300 billion principal owed imperialist governments and banks is virtually ruled out. Even interest payments have been halted in many instances. The speculative and credit-fueled boom has already bankrupted savings and loan institutions, threatening the entire banking system.

Freeing the world's currencies from the dictatorship of a gold base has played the decisive part in enabling the world's capitalist rulers to enormously expand the role of credit as a vehicle for carrying world capitalist economy to unsupportable heights.

At this very moment the monstrous debt harnessed by a maze of financial mechanisms threatens to burst free and engulf the capitalist world in uncontrollable hyperinflation. The collapse of monetary stability in the Latin American backyard of U.S. imperialism already appears to be just inches away-and the rest of the capitalist world may not be far behind.

Crisis of revolutionary leadership But there is no crisis from which capitalism is unable to extricate itself. Without a conscious revolutionary proletarian les dership to carry the struggle through to th e end, capitalism will take advantage of every missed opportunity, every delay, to save itself.

The ruling classes are always more or less conscious of their interests and their goals. And they know that because they are invariably a tiny minority, they can rarely rule in their own name.

In the final analysis they can maintain their monopoly on power only with the help of elements within the majority of the oppressed who have been bribed or corrupted or demoralized. These more or less conscious agents of the ruling classes then serve to hitch the proletarians to the capitalist wagon in the name of reform; that is, to ameliorate the worst evils of capitalism.

And what invariably follows from this reformist strategy is to counsel the proletariat to rely on alliances with "reformminded" sections of the ruling capitalists.

Reformism disarms the working class. It leads logically toward an outlook that denies the conflicting material interests between opposed classes. Instead of a strategy based on uniting all exploited and oppressed in their common class interests, reformism substitutes a strategy of uniting all people of "good will" in the interest of an undifferentiated humanity.

This not only disarms the workers, it leads them into coalitions with the class enemy which can only be at the expense of sacrificing the interests of sections of the working class-especially the most exploited and oppressed—in the name of the alliance with good capitalists.

Class collaboration disorients, confuses and leads the masses into the dens of the class enemy which feeds off them. It is a road that can only lead to defeats and demoralization.

Without the construction in time of a mass-based revolutionary party in every country on Earth, the petty bourgeois "socialist" and labor lieutenants of the capitalist class will again lead the masses to defeat and a catastrophe that will dwarf that of World War II.

Fortunately, it's not necessary to start from scratch in the task of reconstructing the world party of socialist revolution. The programmatic basis for reconstructing a mass proletarian leadership in every country exists. Its organizational nucleus, the Fourth I ]6 months for $4, Name Address International also exists.

Socialist Action is in political solidarity with this world nucleus. In the coming months and years—no one can predict when—the long-postponed but unavoidable collapse of capitalist stability will open up a new pre-revolutionary period.

In this new situation, the festering wounds suffered by workers in the course of a twenty year-long anti-labor offensive, the unfulfilled promise of the long struggles of Blacks and women for equality, the outrage by the many-millioned masses at the uninterrupted poisoning of the planet, and the ever-present threat of nuclear destruction will all come together in a massive eruption of resistance and a swift rise in class consciousness.

The example provided by the labor upsurge of the 1930s and '40s, which showed the irresistible power of American workers; the mass Black mobilizations in the 1950s and '60s here in the United States that killed Jim Crow laws (legally imposed Vladmir Sumovsky/ZOJA PICTURES segregation); the women's struggle, which legalized abortion in many countries in the 1970s; the colonial revolutions from Asia to Africa to Latin America unfolding without let-up since the end of World War I; and the series of working-class revolts in the Stalinist states, starting in 1953, reaching ever-higher and continuing to this day, will all provide the launching pad from which the next upsurge will take off.

The diverse experiences of the exploited and oppressed in every land will feed each other and ultimately converge in a series of interlinked revolutionary risings everywhere, East and West. Revolutionary parties will sprout and grow as if from the Earth itself. The human race can be rescued from capitalist barbarism and a new age of socialist cooperation will open up for the whole human race.

Footnote 1-Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1977).

2—Published in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955), Vol. I.

3—Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1977). Introduction by Joseph Hansen.

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