Permanent revolution

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This article is about the theoretical term. For the Trotskyist group, see Permanent Revolution (group). For the album by Catch 22, see Permanent Revolution (album).

Permanent revolution is a term within Marxist theory, established in usage by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels by at least 1850 but which has since become most closely associated with Leon Trotsky. The use of the term by different theorists is not identical. Marx used it to describe the strategy of a revolutionary class to continue to pursue its class interests independently and without compromise, despite overtures for political alliances, and despite the political dominance of opposing sections of society.

Trotsky put forward his conception of 'permanent revolution' as an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism. Part of his theory is the impossibility of 'socialism in one country' – a view also held by Marx,[1] but not integrated into his conception of permanent revolution. Trotsky's theory also argues, first, that the bourgeoisie in late-developing capitalist countries are incapable of developing the productive forces in such a manner as to achieve the sort of advanced capitalism which will fully develop an industrial proletariat. Second, that the proletariat can and must, therefore, seize social, economic and political power, leading an alliance with the peasantry.

'Permanent revolution' according to Marx and Engels

Marx first used the phrase in the following passage from The Holy Family (1844). He wrote:

Napoleon presented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution [emphasis added]. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. His scorn of industrial hommes d'affaires was the complement to his scorn of ideologists. In his home policy, too, he combated bourgeois society as the opponent of the state which in his own person he still held to be an absolute aim in itself. Thus he declared in the State Council that he would not suffer the owner of extensive estates to cultivate them or not as he pleased. Thus, too, he conceived the plan of subordinating trade to the state by appropriation of roulage [road haulage]. French businessmen took steps to anticipate the event that first shook Napoleon’s power. Paris exchange-brokers forced him by means of an artificially created famine to delay the opening of the Russian campaign by nearly two months and thus to launch it too late in the year.[2]

In this passage, Marx says that Napoleon prevented the 'bourgeois revolution' in France from becoming fulfilled: that is, he prevented bourgeois political forces from achieving a total expression of their interests. According to Marx, he did this by suppressing the 'liberalism of bourgeois society'; and he did it because he saw 'the state as an end in itself', a value which supported his 'political aim of conquest'. Thus, he substituted 'permanent war for permanent revolution'. The final two sentences, however, show that the bourgeoisie did not give up hope, but continued to pursue their interests. This tells us that, for Marx, 'permanent revolution' involves a revolutionary class (in this case, the bourgeoisie) continuing to push for, and achieve, its interests despite the political dominance of actors with opposing interests.

By 1849, Marx and Engels are able to quote the use of the phrase by other writers ('Schwanbeck', a journalist on the Kölnische Zeitung newspaper[3] and Henri Druey[4]), suggesting that it had achieved some recognition in intellectual circles.

The March 1850 Address

Marx's most famous use of the phrase 'permanent revolution' is his March 1850 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League.[5] His audience is the proletariat in Germany, faced with the prospect that 'the petty-bourgeois democrats will for the moment acquire a predominant influence' – i.e. temporary political power. He enjoins them:

While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.[5]

In the remainder of the text, Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power.

The proletariat should organise autonomously

Marx is concerned that throughout the process of this impending political change, the petty-bourgeoisie will

seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy.[5]

Marx outlines how the proletariat should respond to this threat. First, he says that 'above all the [Communist] League, must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers' party, both secret and open, and alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes a center and nucleus of workers' associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence'. That is, 'it is essential above all for them to be independently organized and centralized in clubs'.[5] Marx does say that 'an association of momentary expedience' is permissible if, and only if, 'an enemy has to be fought directly' - though this is not an excuse for a long term alliance, since emergency alliances will arise satisfactorily when needed.

A political programme of demands which threaten the bourgeois consensus

In an article two years earlier, Marx had referred to 'a programme of permanent revolution, of progressive taxes and death duties, and of organisation of labour'.[6] This confirms the impression that Marx's theory of 'permanent revolution' is not about revolution per se, rather more about the attitude that a revolutionary class should adopt in the period of their political subjection, including the programme of political demands they should propose. This aspect is raised in the Address. As well as overtures for organisational alliance with the petty bourgeoisie, Marx is concerned about attempts to 'bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable'.[5] Therefore, the workers' party must use their autonomous organisation to push a political programme which threatens the bourgeois status quo, along the following lines:

1. They can force the democrats to make inroads into as many areas of the existing social order as possible, so as to disturb its regular functioning and so that the petty-bourgeois democrats compromise themselves; furthermore, the workers can force the concentration of as many productive forces as possible - means of transport, factories, railways, etc. - in the hands of the state.
2. They must drive the proposals of the democrats to their logical extreme (the democrats will in any case act in a reformist and not a revolutionary manner) and transform these proposals into direct attacks on private property. If, for instance, the petty bourgeoisie propose the purchase of the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these railways and factories simply be confiscated by the state without compensation as the property of reactionaries. [...] The demands of the workers will thus have to be adjusted according to the measures and concessions of the democrats[5]

In this passage, we can see that Marx believes the proletariat should refuse to moderate its demands to the petty-bourgeois consensus, and advocate extensive nationalisation. Furthermore, the demand of the workers should always seek to push the bourgeois further than they are prepared to go.

The Address in context

Marx concludes his Address by summarising the themes elucidated above:

Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.[5]

Since Marxism emphasises the contingency of political developments on material historical circumstances (as against 'idealism'), it is worthwhile to have some idea of how Marx saw the context in which he advocated 'permanent revolution'. It seems that he believed that 'the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama [in Germany] will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated'. That is, the petty-bourgeois are expected to come to power in Germany at the same time as the 'direct victory' of the proletariat in France. Furthermore, Marx seems to believe that the former (and hence, of both) is 'imminent' (c.f. the third paragraph of the Address[5]). Marx clearly believes, therefore, that Europe is entering a time, and is at a level of development of the 'productive forces', in which the proletariat have the social revolution within their reach. If Marx is understood to be consistent about his emphasis on historical circumstance, it is unclear how the relevance of his theory of permanent revolution should be evaluated in times in which the social revolution is not expected to be imminent.

Summary, and the relation of Marx's theory to Trotsky's

Marx and Engels advocated 'permanent revolution' as the proletarian strategy of maintaining organisational independence along class lines, and a consistently militant series of political demands and tactics. It will be noted that at no stage does Marx make the central claim with which Trotsky's conception (see below) of 'permanent revolution' is concerned - i.e., that it is possible for a country to pass directly from the dominance of the semi-feudal aristocrats, who held political power in Russia in the early part of the 19th century, to the dominance of the working class, without an interceding period of dominance by the bourgeois. On the contrary, Marx's statements in his March 1850 Address explicitly contradict such a view, assuming a 'period of petty-bourgeois predominance over the classes which have been overthrown and over the proletariat'.[5]

Marx and Engels do claim, as does Trotsky, that socialism is impossible in one country, but they also say that 'in all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity' (Engels' The Principles of Communism, Sections 17 and 19[7]). The Communist Manifesto alludes to Marx's view that the dominance of the bourgeoisie is a necessary prelude to that of the proletariat: 'the bourgeoisie therefore produces ... its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable'.[8] In this sense, Trotsky's version of the theory represents both a development and (to some observers) a contradiction of the expressed opinions of Marx and Engels.

It must be borne in mind that for Marx the dominance of the bourgeoisie as a prerequisite for subsequent proletarian rule holds on a world scale, as the Manifesto makes clear: "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle." (loc. cit.) Trotsky's theory took it for granted (as did Lenin in The State and Revolution) that the domination of the world by the bourgeoisie was complete and irreversible after the emergence of imperialism in the late 19th century. The uncertain relationship between international and national parameters in relation to class power underlies many of the disputes concerning the theory of the permanent revolution.

In the preface to the 1882 Russian Edition of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explicitly raised the issues Trotsky would later develop: "Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West? The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development".[9]

By stating that this is "[t]he only answer possible today..." they incontrovertibly emphasized the priority of the international class situation over national developments.

'Permanent revolution' according to Trotsky

An edition of The Permanent Revolution, published by Socialist Resistance

Trotsky's conception of Permanent Revolution is based on his understanding, drawing on the work of fellow Russian Alexander Parvus, that a Marxist analysis of events began with the international level of development, both economic and social. National peculiarities are only an expression of the contradictions in the world system. According to this perspective, the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution could not be achieved by the bourgeoisie itself in a reactionary period of world capitalism. The situation in the backward and colonial countries, particularly Russia, bore this out.[10] This conception was first developed in the essays later collected in his book 1905 and in his essay Results and Prospects, and later developed in his 1929 book, The Permanent Revolution.

The basic idea of Trotsky's theory[11] is that in Russia the bourgeoisie would not carry out a thorough revolution which would institute political democracy and solve the land question. These measures were assumed to be essential to develop Russia economically. Therefore it was argued the future revolution must be led by the proletariat who would not only carry through the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution but would commence a struggle to surpass the bourgeois democratic revolution.

How far the proletariat would be able to travel upon that road would depend upon the further course of events and not upon the designation of the revolution as "Bourgeois Democratic". In this sense the revolution would be made permanent. Trotsky believed that a new workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. This theory was advanced in opposition to the position held by the Stalinist faction within the Bolshevik Party that "socialism in one country" could be built in the Soviet Union.

Trotsky's theory was developed in opposition to the Social Democratic theory that undeveloped countries must pass through two distinct revolutions. First the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, which socialists would assist, and at a later stage, the Socialist Revolution with an evolutionary period of capitalist development separating those stages. This is often referred to as the Theory of Stages, the Two Stage Theory or Stagism.

Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks initially held to an intermediate theory. Lenin's earlier theory shared Trotsky's premise that the bourgeoisie would not complete a bourgeois revolution. Lenin thought that a 'Democratic Dictatorship' of the workers and peasants could complete the tasks of the bourgeoisie.[12] Lenin was arguing by 1917 not only that the Russian bourgeoisie would not be able to carry through the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and therefore the proletariat had to take state power, but also that it should take economic power via a Soviet (council). This position was put forward to the Bolsheviks on his return to Russia, in his April Theses. The first reaction of the majority of Bolsheviks was one of rejection of the Theses. Initially, only Alexandra Kollontai rallied to Lenin's position within the Bolshevik party.

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks, now including Trotsky, did not discuss the theory of Permanent Revolution as such. However, its basic theses can be found in such popular outlines of Communist theory as The ABC's of Communism, which sought to explain the program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, by Yevgeni Preobrazhensky and Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938).

Later on, after Lenin's death, in the 1920s, the theory did assume importance in the internal debates within the Communist Party and was a bone of contention within the opposition to Joseph Stalin. In essence a section of the Communist Party leadership, whose views were voiced at the theoretical level by Nikolai Bukharin, argued that socialism could be built in a single country, even an underdeveloped one like Russia. This meant that there would be less need to encourage revolutions in advanced Western countries in the hope that a Socialist Germany (for example) would later give Russia the economic base needed to construct a socialist society. Bukharin argued that Russia's pre-existing economic base was sufficient for the task at hand, provided the USSR could be militarily defended. Acting on these ideas, the Communist International became less revolutionary and more willing to compromise with "reactionary" forces, for example by advising its Chinese section to back the Kuomintang's efforts to unify China. This effort was seen as being the Chinese Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, and the fact that communists supported it meant a return to a Stagist position.

The question of the Chinese revolution and the subjection of the Communist Party of China to control by the Kuomintang at the behest of the Russian Communist Party was a topic of argument within the opposition to Stalin [13] in the Russian Communist Party. On the one hand, figures such as Karl Radek argued that a Stagist strategy was correct for China, although their writings are only known to us now second hand, having perished in the 1930s (if original copies exist in the archives, they have not been located since the fall of the USSR in 1989). Trotsky, on the other hand, generalised his Theory of Permanent Revolution, which had only been applied in the case of Russia previously, and argued that the proletariat needed to take power in a process of uninterrupted and Permanent Revolution in order to carry out the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic revolution.

His position was put forward in his essay entitled The Permanent Revolution, which can be found today in a single book together with Results and Prospects. Not only did Trotsky generalise his theory of Permanent Revolution in this essay but he also grounded it in the idea of uneven and combined development. This argument goes, again in contrast to the conceptions inherent within Stagist theory, that capitalist nations, indeed all class-based societies, develop unevenly and that some parts will develop more swiftly than others. However, it is also argued that this development is combined and that each part of the world economy is increasingly bound together with all other parts. The conception of uneven and combined development also recognises that some areas may even regress further economically and socially as a result of their integration into a world economy.

The theory since Trotsky


Since the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940, the theory of Permanent Revolution has been maintained by the various Trotskyist groups which have developed since then. However, the theory has been extended only modestly, if at all. While their conclusions differ, works by mainstream Trotskyist theoreticians such as Robert Chester, Joseph Hansen, Michael Löwy and Livio Maitan related it to post-war political developments in Algeria, Cuba and elsewhere.

Deflected Permanent Revolution

An attempt to elaborate an exception to the theory was made by Tony Cliff of the Socialist Workers Party (Britain). In a 1963 essay,[14] he develops the idea that where the proletariat is unable to take power, a section of the intelligentsia may be able to carry out a Bourgeois Revolution. He further argues that the use of Marxist concepts by such elements (most notably in Cuba and China, but also for example by regimes espousing Arab Socialism or similar philosophies) is not genuine but is the use of Marxism as an ideology of power. This reflects his view that these countries are state capitalist societies rather than deformed workers states.

Cliff's views have been criticised by more orthodox Trotskyists as an abandonment of Trotsky's theory in all but name in favour of the stagist theory, countering that Cliff was more cautious than Trotsky about the potential of the working class in underdeveloped countries to seize power. Cliff saw such revolutions as a detour (deflection) on the road to socialist revolution rather than a necessary preliminary to it.

See also

New Democracy


  1. ^ Marx, Karl (1845), The German Ideology
  2. ^ Engels, Frederick (1845). "Critical Battle Against the French Revolution (Ch. VI, part 3, § c)". The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Company. Translated by Richard Dixon and Clement Dutts (1956). 
  3. ^ Marx, Karl (11 February 1849), "The Division of Labour in the Kölnische Zeitung", Neue Rheinische Zeitung (2nd ed.) (219) 
  4. ^ Engels, Frederick (15 March 1849), "The Model Republic", Neue Rheinische Zeitung (246) 
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Marx, Karl (March 1850), Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League 
  6. ^ Engels, Frederick (1848), "The French Working Class and the Presidential Elections", Gesamtausgabe 
  7. ^ Engels, Frederick (1847), Principles of Communism 
  8. ^ Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1848), Communist Manifesto 
  9. ^ Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1882), "Preface", Communist Manifesto 
  10. ^ Van Auken, Bill. "Socialism in one country or permanent revolution". World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International. Retrieved 3 June 2013. 
  11. ^ Trotsky, Leon (1931), "2. The Permanent Revolution is Not a ‘Leap’ by the Proletariat, but the Reconstruction of the Nation under the Leadership of the Proletariat", The Permanent Revolution 
  12. ^ Trotsky, Leon. "Three conceptions of the Russian Revolution". World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International. Retrieved 3 June 2013. 
  13. ^ Whitehouse, David (July–August 2006), "The fading relevance of permanent revolution", International Socialist Review (48) 
  14. ^ Cliff, Tony (Spring 1963), "Deflected Permanent Revolution", International Socialism, 1st (12) 

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