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Trotsky Lev Davidovich

Permanent revolution

Lev Davidovich Trotsky

Permanent revolution

Introduction I. Forced nature of this work and its purpose II. The permanent revolution is not a "leap" of the proletariat, but the restructuring of the nation under the leadership of the proletariat. III. Three elements of "democratic dictatorship": classes, tasks and political mechanics IV. What did the theory of permanent revolution look like in practice? V. Has a "democratic dictatorship" been realized in our country, and when exactly? VI. About jumping over historical steps VII. What does the slogan of democratic dictatorship now mean for the East? VIII. From Marxism to Pacifism Epilogue What is a permanent revolution (basic points)

INTRODUCTION

This book is devoted to a question closely connected with the history of the three Russian revolutions, but not only with it. This issue has played a huge role in the internal struggle of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in recent years, was then transferred to the Communist International, played a decisive role in the development of the Chinese revolution and determined a number of decisions of paramount importance on issues related to the revolutionary struggle of the countries of the East. We are talking about the so-called theory of "permanent revolution", which, according to the teachings of the epigones of Leninism (Zinoviev, Stalin, Bukharin, and others), constitutes the original sin of "Trotskyism."

The question of the permanent revolution was, after a long interval, and at first glance quite unexpectedly raised in 1924. There were no political grounds for this: it was a matter of long-gone differences. But the psychological reasons were great. The group of so-called "Old Bolsheviks" that opened up a struggle against me opposed me first of all with this title of theirs. But the year 1917 was a big obstacle on her way. No matter how important the previous history of ideological struggle and preparation was, however, not only in relation to the party as a whole, but also in relation to individuals, all previous preparation found its highest and categorical test in the October revolution. None of the epigones passed this test. All of them, without exception, at the moment of the February Revolution of 1917 took the vulgar position of the democratic left. None of them put forward the slogan of the struggle of the proletariat for power. All of them considered the course towards socialist revolution absurd or, even worse, "Trotskyism." In this spirit they led the party until Lenin's arrival from abroad and until the appearance of his famous theses on April 4th. After that, Kamenev, already in direct struggle with Lenin, tried to openly form a democratic wing

in Bolshevism. Later, Zinoviev, who arrived with Lenin, joins him. Stalin, brutally compromised by his social-patriotic position, moves to the sidelines. He lets the party forget about his pitiful articles and speeches in the decisive weeks of March and gradually shifts to Lenin's point of view. From this the question naturally arose: what did Leninism give each of these leading "old Bolsheviks" if not one of them was able to independently apply the theoretical and practical experience of the party

in the most important and responsible historical moment? It was necessary at all costs to avert this question, replacing it with another. To this end, it was decided to put the theory of permanent revolution at the center of the shelling.

My opponents, of course, did not foresee that, creating an artificial axis of struggle, they themselves would imperceptibly turn around this axis, creating for themselves, by the reverse method, a new world outlook. I had formulated the theory of permanent revolution in its main outlines even before the decisive events of 1905. Russia was moving towards the bourgeois revolution. No one in the ranks of the then Russian Social Democracy (we were all then called Social Democrats) doubted that we were moving towards a bourgeois revolution, i.e., one that was generated by the contradiction between the development of the productive forces of capitalist society and the outlived feudal-medieval estates. and state relations. At that time, I had to devote quite a few speeches and articles to the Marxist explanation of the bourgeois character of the forthcoming revolution in the struggle against the populists and anarchists.

But the bourgeois character of the revolution did not prejudge the question of what classes and in what relationships would carry out the tasks of the democratic revolution. Meanwhile, the main strategic problems only began from this point.

Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Martov, and after them all the Russian Mensheviks proceeded from the premise that the leading role in the bourgeois revolution could belong only to the liberal bourgeoisie, as a natural contender for power. According to this scheme, the party of the proletariat fell out of the role of the left flank of the democratic front: the Social Democracy had to support the liberal bourgeoisie against reaction and at the same time defend the interests of the proletariat against the liberal bourgeoisie. In other words, the Mensheviks were characterized by an understanding of the bourgeois revolution primarily as a liberal-constitutional reform.

Lenin posed the question quite differently. The liberation of the productive forces of bourgeois society from the fetters of serfdom meant for him, first of all, a radical solution of the agrarian question, in the sense of the complete liquidation of the class of landowners and the revolutionary reshuffling of landed property. With this was inextricably linked the destruction of the monarchy. The agrarian problem, which grips the vital interests of the vast majority of the population and at the same time forms the basis of the problem of the capitalist market, was posed by Lenin with truly revolutionary boldness. Since the liberal bourgeoisie, hostile to the workers, is linked to large landed property by numerous ties, the true democratic emancipation of the peasantry can only be achieved through revolutionary co-operation between workers and peasants. Their joint uprising against the old society was, according to Lenin, to lead, in case of victory, to the establishment of "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry."

This last formula is now being repeated in the Comintern as a kind of supra-historical dogma, without attempting to analyze the living historical experience of the last quarter of a century, as if we were not at all witnesses and participants in the revolution of 1905, the February revolution of 1917 and, finally, the October revolution. Meanwhile, this kind of historical analysis is all the more necessary because there has never been a regime of "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" in history. In 1905, Lenin dealt with a strategic hypothesis, which was still subject to verification from the side of the actual course of the class struggle. The formula for the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was to a large extent deliberately algebraic. Lenin did not prejudge the question of what would be the political proportions of the two participants in the proposed democratic dictatorship, that is, the proletariat and the peasantry. He did not exclude the possibility that the peasantry would be represented in the revolution by an independent party, moreover, independent on two fronts: that is, not only in relation to the bourgeoisie, but also in relation to the proletariat, and at the same time capable of carrying out a democratic revolution in struggle against the liberal bourgeoisie and in alliance with the party of the proletariat. Lenin even allowed, as we shall see below, that in the government of a democratic dictatorship the revolutionary peasant party would constitute the majority.

On the question of the decisive significance of the agrarian revolution for the fate of our bourgeois revolution, I have been, at least since the autumn of 1902, that is, from the moment of my first flight abroad, a student of Lenin. That an agrarian, and consequently a general democratic revolution, could only be carried out in the struggle against the liberal bourgeoisie by the united forces of the workers and peasants, for me, despite the absurd tales of recent years, was beyond doubt. But I opposed the formula "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry", seeing its drawback in that it left open the question to which class the real dictatorship would belong. I argued that the peasantry, in spite of its colossal social and revolutionary weight, was incapable of creating a truly independent party, much less of concentrating revolutionary power in the hands of such a party. Like the old revolutions since

of the German Reformation of the 16th century and even earlier, the peasantry, during their uprisings, supported one of the factions of the urban bourgeoisie, and often ensured its victory, so in our belated bourgeois revolution, the peasantry, at the highest scope of its struggle, will be able to give similar support to the proletariat and help him come to power. Our bourgeois revolution, I concluded, will be able to solve its problems radically only if the proletariat, with the support of the many millions of peasants, can concentrate the revolutionary dictatorship in its hands.

What will be the social content of this dictatorship? First of all, it will have to complete the agrarian revolution and the democratic restructuring of the state. In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat will become an instrument for solving the problems of the historically belated bourgeois revolution. But the matter cannot stop there. Having come to power, the proletariat will be compelled to carry out more and more profound intrusions into the relations of private property in general, i.e., to pass over to the path of socialist measures.

But do you really think - the Stalins, Rykovs and all the other Molotovs of 1905-1917 objected to me dozens of times - that Russia is ripe for a socialist revolution? To this I invariably answered: no, I don't think so. But the world economy as a whole, and above all the European economy, is fully ripe for the socialist revolution. Whether the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia will lead to socialism or not - at what pace and through what stages - depends on the future fate of European and world capitalism.

Such are the main features of the theory of the permanent revolution, as it took shape already in the first months of 1905. After that, three revolutions had time to take place. The Russian proletariat rose to power on a mighty wave of peasant uprising. The dictatorship of the proletariat has become a fact in Russia before it has been in any of the incomparably more developed countries of the world. In 1924, i.e., seven years after the historical forecast of the theory of the permanent revolution was confirmed with absolutely exceptional power, the epigones launched a frenzied attack against this theory, pulling out separate phrases and polemical remarks from my old works, thoroughly by myself to this time forgotten.

Here it is appropriate to recall that the first Russian revolution broke out more than half a century after the period of bourgeois revolutions in Europe, and 35 years after the episodic uprising of the Paris Commune. Europe has managed to wean itself from revolutions. Russia did not know them at all. All the problems of the revolution were posed anew. It is not difficult to understand how many unknown and conjectural quantities the future revolution then contained for us. The formulas of all groupings were a kind of working hypotheses. What is needed is a complete incapacity for historical forecasting and a complete lack of understanding of its methods in order now, in hindsight, to consider the analyzes and assessments of 1905 as if they had been written yesterday. I have often said to myself and to friends: I have no doubt that there were large gaps in my forecasts for 1905, which it is not difficult to open now in hindsight. But did my critics see better and further? Without rereading my old works for a long time, I was ready in advance to consider the gaps in them much more significant and important than they really were. I became convinced of this in 1928, during my exile in Alma-Ata, when forced political leisure gave me the opportunity to re-read my old works on the question of the permanent revolution, pencil in hand. I hope that from what follows, the reader will be fully convinced of this.

Within the framework of this introduction, however, it is necessary to characterize, as accurately as possible, the constituent elements of the theory of permanent revolution and the main objections to it. The controversy has broadened and deepened to such an extent that it has come to embrace in essence all the most important questions of the world revolutionary movement.

Permanent revolution, in the sense that Marx gave this concept, means a revolution that does not put up with any form of class domination, does not stop at the democratic stage, passes over to socialist measures and to a war against external reaction, a revolution, each subsequent stage of which is laid down in the previous one, and which can only end with the complete liquidation of class society.

In order to disperse the chaos that has been created around the theory of permanent revolution, it seems necessary to dissect the three series of ideas that are combined in this theory.

First, it covers the problem of the transition from a democratic to a socialist revolution. This is essentially the historical origin of the theory.

The concept of permanent revolution was put forward by the great communists of the middle of the 19th century, Marx and his

like-minded people, as opposed to democratic ideology, which, as you know, claims that with the establishment of a "reasonable", or democratic state, all issues can be resolved in a peaceful, reformist or evolutionary way. Marx considered the bourgeois revolution of 1948 only as a direct introduction to the proletarian revolution. Marx was wrong. But his error was factual, not methodological. The revolution of 1848 did not turn into a socialist revolution. But that is precisely why it did not end with democracy. As for the German revolution of 1918, this is by no means the democratic consummation of the bourgeois revolution: it is a proletarian revolution decapitated by the Social Democracy; more correctly, it is a bourgeois counter-revolution, forced, after the victory over the proletariat, to preserve pseudo-democratic forms.

Vulgar "Marxism" worked out a scheme of historical development according to which each bourgeois society sooner or later secures a democratic regime for itself, after which the proletariat, in a democratic environment, is gradually organized and educated for socialism. The very transition to socialism was not conceived in the same way: open reformists imagined it in the form of a reformist filling of democracy with socialist content (Jores). Formal revolutionaries recognized the inevitability of revolutionary violence in the transition to socialism (Gaed). But both of them considered democracy and socialism in relation to all peoples and countries in general, as two, not only completely separate, but also far from each other, stages in the development of society. This view was also dominant among the Russian Marxists, who in the period of 1905 belonged in general to the left wing of the Second International. Plekhanov, the brilliant founder of Russian Marxism, considered the idea of ​​the dictatorship of the proletariat in contemporary Russia to be delusional. The same point of view was held not only by the Mensheviks, but also by the overwhelming majority of the leading Bolsheviks, in particular, without exception, by all the present leaders of the party, who were in their time resolute revolutionary democrats, but for whom the problems of the socialist revolution, not only in 1905, but still and on the eve of 1917, were the vague music of a distant future.

The theory of permanent revolution, revived in 1905, declared war on these ideas and sentiments. It showed how the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations in our epoch lead directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat, while the dictatorship of the proletariat places socialist tasks on the order of the day. This was the central idea of ​​the theory. If the traditional view was that the path to the dictatorship of the proletariat lay through a long period of democracy, then the theory of permanent revolution established that for the backward countries the path to democracy leads through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus, democracy does not become a self-sufficient regime for decades, but only a direct entry into the socialist revolution. They communicate with each other in a continuous connection. Between the democratic revolution and the socialist reorganization of society, the permanence of revolutionary development is thus established.

The second aspect of the "permanent" theory already characterizes the socialist revolution as such. Over an indefinitely long time and in a constant internal struggle, all social relations are rebuilt. Society is constantly shedding. One stage of transformation follows directly from the other. This process, of necessity, retains a political character, i.e., it unfolds through clashes between different groups of the society being restructured. Explosions of civil war and external wars alternate with periods of "peaceful" reforms. Revolutions of the economy, technology, knowledge, family, way of life, morals unfold in complex interaction with each other, preventing society from reaching equilibrium. This is the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such.

The international character of the socialist revolution, which constitutes the third aspect of the theory of permanent revolution, follows from the present state of the economy and the social structure of mankind. Internationalism is not an abstract principle, but only a theoretical and political reflection of the world character of the economy, the world development of the productive forces and the world scope of the class struggle. The socialist revolution begins on national soil. But it can't end there. The preservation of the proletarian revolution within the national framework can only be a temporary regime, even if it is a long one, as the experience of the Soviet Union shows. However, under an isolated proletarian dictatorship, contradictions, external and internal, inevitably grow along with successes. Remaining further isolated, the proletarian state would eventually have to fall victim to these contradictions. The only way out for him is the victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries. From this point of view, the national revolution is not

self-sufficient whole: it is only a link in the international chain. The international revolution is a permanent process, in spite of temporary ebb and flow.

The struggle of the epigones is directed, although not with equal clarity, against all three aspects of the theory of permanent revolution. It cannot be otherwise, since it is a question of three indissolubly connected parts of the whole. The epigones mechanically separate the democratic dictatorship from the socialist one. They separate the national socialist revolution from the international one. The conquest of power within the national framework is for them, in fact, not the initial, but the final act of the revolution: then a period of reforms opens, leading to a national socialist society.

In 1905, they did not even allow the thought of the possibility of the proletariat winning power in Russia earlier than in Western Europe. In 1917 they preached a self-sustaining democratic revolution in Russia and rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1925-27 they set the course for a national revolution in China under the leadership of the national bourgeoisie. After that they put forward for China the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, opposing it to the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They proclaimed the possibility of building an isolated and self-contained socialist society in the Soviet Union. The international revolution, instead of being a necessary condition for victory, has become for them only a favorable circumstance. The epigones came to this deep break with Marxism in the process of a permanent struggle against the theory of permanent revolution.

The struggle, which began with the artificial revival of historical memories and with the falsification of the distant past, led to a complete restructuring of the worldview of the ruling stratum of the revolution. We have explained more than once that this reassessment of values ​​was carried out under the influence of the social needs of the Soviet bureaucracy, which was becoming more and more conservative, striving for a national order, and demanded that the already completed revolution, which had secured privileged positions for the bureaucracy, be recognized as sufficient for the peaceful construction of socialism. . We will not return to this topic here. Let us only note that the bureaucracy is deeply aware of the connection between its material and ideological positions and the theory of national socialism. This is most clearly expressed right now, despite the fact, or because of the fact that the Stalinist apparatus, under the onslaught of contradictions that it did not foresee, is swerving to the left with all its might and inflicting rather severe blows on its yesterday's Right inspirers. The hostility of the bureaucrats towards the Marxist opposition, from which they hastily borrowed their slogans and arguments, is not weakening in the least. From the oppositionists who raise the question of re-admission to the party in order to maintain the course towards industrialization, etc., they demand, first of all, the condemnation of the theory of permanent revolution, and, at least indirectly, the recognition of the theory of socialism in a particular country. In this way, the Stalinist bureaucracy reveals the purely tactical nature of the left turn, while maintaining the national-reformist strategic foundations. There is no need to explain the meaning of this: in politics, as in military affairs, tactics are ultimately subordinate to strategy.

The question has long since left the special sphere of struggle against "Trotskyism." Gradually expanding, it has now embraced literally all the problems of the revolutionary world outlook. Permanent revolution or socialism in a separate country - this alternative equally embraces the internal problems of the Soviet Union, the prospects for revolutions in the East, and, finally, the fate of the entire Communist International.

This pamphlet does not deal with the issue from all these sides: there is no need to repeat what has already been said in other works. In Critique of the Program of the Comintern, I attempted to theoretically expose the economic and political failure of National Socialism. The theoreticians of the Comintern took water in their mouths on this occasion. This is probably the only thing left for them to do at all. In this book I restore, first of all, the theory of the permanent revolution, as it was formulated in 1905, in relation to the internal problems of the Russian revolution. I show how my formulation really differed from Lenin's, and how and why it coincided with Lenin's in all decisive circumstances. Finally, I am trying to reveal the decisive importance of the question that interests us for the proletariat of backward nations, and thus for the entire Communist International.

What accusations were made by the epigones against the theory of permanent revolution? If thrown aside

endless contradictions of my critics, then all their truly immense literature can be reduced to the following propositions:

1. Trotsky ignored the difference between a bourgeois revolution and a socialist one; already in 1905 he considered that the proletariat of Russia faced the tasks of a direct socialist revolution.

2. Trotsky completely forgot about the agrarian question. The peasantry did not exist for him. He portrayed the revolution as a single combat between the proletariat and tsarism.

3. Trotsky did not believe that the world bourgeoisie would allow any long existence of the dictatorship of the Russian proletariat, and considered its death inevitable if the proletariat of the West did not seize power in the shortest possible time and come to our aid. By this, Trotsky did not underestimate the pressure of the Western proletariat on his bourgeoisie.

4. Trotsky does not believe at all in the strength of the Russian proletariat, in its ability to independently build socialism, and therefore he placed and still places all his hopes on the international revolution.

These motives not only run through the countless writings and speeches of Zinoviev, Stalin, Bukharin and others, but are also formulated in the most authoritative resolutions of the CPSU and the Communist International. Nevertheless, it must be said that they are based on a combination of ignorance and dishonesty.

The first two claims of the critics, as will be shown later, are false at their very core. No, I proceeded precisely from the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution and came to the conclusion that the depth of the agrarian crisis could raise the proletariat of backward Russia to power. Yes, it was this idea that I defended on the eve of the revolution of 1905. It was precisely this idea that the very name of the revolution "permanent," that is, continuous, that is, passing directly from the bourgeois stage into the socialist, expressed it. To express the same idea, Lenin later used the excellent expression about the development of the bourgeois revolution into a socialist one. Stalin retrospectively (in 1924) opposed the concept of overgrowth to the permanent revolution, as a direct leap from the realm of autocracy to the realm of socialism. The unfortunate "theoretician" did not even take the trouble to think about what, then, means the permanence of the revolution, i.e., the continuity of its development, since it is a question of a naked leap?

As for the third accusation, it is dictated by the short-lived belief of the epigones in the possibility of neutralizing the imperialist bourgeoisie for an indefinite period with the help of "reasonably" organized pressure from the proletariat. In 1924-27. this was Stalin's central idea. Its fruit was the Anglo-Russian Committee. Disappointment in the possibility of binding hand and foot the world bourgeoisie with the help of an alliance with Purcell, Radic, Lafolet and Chiang Kai-shek led to an acute paroxysm of fear of an immediate military danger. The Comintern is passing through this period even now.

The fourth objection to the theory of permanent revolution boils down simply to the fact that in 1905 I did not subscribe to the point of view of the theory of socialism in a single country, which Stalin fabricated for the Soviet bureaucracy only in 1924. This accusation is the purest historical curiosity. One might actually think that my opponents, insofar as they thought politically at all in 1905, considered Russia prepared for an independent socialist revolution. In fact, during the years 1905-1917 they tirelessly accused me of utopianism in view of my assumption of the possibility that the proletariat of Russia would come to power earlier than the proletariat of Western Europe. Kamenev and Rykov accused Lenin of utopianism in April 1917, and popularly explained to Lenin that the socialist revolution must first take place in England and other advanced countries, after which only Russia's turn could come. Stalin held the same point of view until April 4, 1917. Only gradually and with difficulty did he assimilate the Leninist formula of the dictatorship of the proletariat as opposed to the democratic dictatorship. Back in the spring of 1924, Stalin repeated after others that Russia, taken separately, was not ripe for building a socialist society. In the autumn of 1924, in the struggle against the theory of permanent revolution, Stalin made the first discovery about the possibility of building an isolated socialism in Russia. After that, the red professors picked up quotes for Stalin that convict Trotsky of being in 1905 - oh, horror! - believed that Russia could come to socialism only with the help of the proletariat of the West.

If we take the history of the ideological struggle for a quarter of a century, cut it into small pieces with scissors, mix these

pieces in a mortar and then instructing the blind to glue them together, then it is unlikely that a more monstrous theoretical and historical nonsense will turn out than that with which the epigones feed their readers and listeners.

In order to make the connection between yesterday's problems and today's problems clearer, it is necessary to at least concisely recall here what was done by the leadership of the Comintern, i.e., Stalin and Bukharin in China.

Under the pretext that a national liberation revolution was imminent in China, the leading role was recognized for the Chinese bourgeoisie from 1924. The party of the national bourgeoisie - the Kuomintang - was officially recognized as the leading party. The Russian Mensheviks did not go that far in 1905 in relation to the Cadets (the party of the liberal bourgeoisie).

But the leadership of the Comintern did not stop there. It obliged the Chinese Communist Party to join the Kuomintang and submit to its discipline. Special telegrams from Stalin advised the Chinese Communists to restrain the agrarian movement. The insurgent workers and peasants were forbidden to form their own soviets, so as not to alienate Chiang Kai-shek, whom Stalin at the beginning of April 1927, i.e., a few days before the revolution in Shanghai, defended from the opposition at a party meeting in Moscow, as "reliable ally".

The official subordination of the Communist Party to the bourgeois leadership and the official prohibition of soviets (Stalin and Bukharin taught that the Kuomintang "replaces" soviets) were a far more flagrant and flagrant betrayal of Marxism than all the actions of the Mensheviks in 1905-17.

After Chiang Kai-shek's coup in April 1927, the left wing under the leadership of Wang Ting-wei temporarily broke away from the Kuomintang. This latter was immediately declared in Pravda to be a reliable ally. Essentially, Wang Ting-Wei related to Chiang Kai-Shek as Kerensky related to Milyukov, with the difference that in China Milyukov and Kornilov combined in one person Chiang Kai-Shek.

After April 1927, the Chinese Communist Party was ordered to join the "left" Kuomintang and submit to the discipline of the Chinese Kerensky, instead of preparing open war against him. The "faithful" Wang Ting-wei subjected the Communist Party, and with it the workers' and peasants' movement, to no less predatory defeat than Chiang Kai-shek, whom Stalin declared to be his reliable ally.

If the Mensheviks supported Milyukov in 1905 and later, they still did not belong to the liberal party. If the Mensheviks in 1917 went hand in hand with Kerensky, they still retained their own special organization. Stalin's policy in China was a vicious caricature even of Menshevism. This was the first and main strip.

After its inevitable fruits were revealed: the complete decline of the workers' and peasants' movement, the demoralization and collapse of the Communist Party, the leadership of the Comintern commanded: "to the left around", and demanded an immediate transition to an armed uprising of workers and peasants. In this way, the young, crushed and mutilated Communist Party, which had only yesterday been the fifth wheel in the cart of Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ting-wei and, consequently, had absolutely no independent political experience, was ordered to move the workers and peasants, whom the Comintern had yesterday held under the banner of the Kuomintang, for an immediate uprising against this Kuomintang, which managed to concentrate power and the army in its hands. A fictitious council was improvised in Canton within 24 hours. The armed uprising, timed in advance to coincide with the opening of the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU, was at the same time an expression of the heroism of the advanced Chinese workers and the criminality of the leadership of the Comintern. Smaller adventures preceded and followed the Cantonese uprising. Such was the second chapter of the Chinese strategy of the Comintern, which can be called the worst caricature of Bolshevism.

The liberal opportunist leader, together with the adventurist one, dealt the Chinese Communist Party a blow from which, with a correct policy, it will be able to recover only in a number of years.

The 6th Congress of the Comintern summed up the results of this work. He approved it completely. No wonder: it was convened for this purpose. For the future, he put forward the slogan "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants." How this dictatorship will differ from the dictatorship of the right or left Kuomintang, on the one hand, from the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the other, was not explained to the Chinese Communists. Yes, this cannot be explained.

Having proclaimed the slogan of democratic dictatorship, the Sixth Congress at the same time declared inadmissible the slogans of democracy (Constituent Assembly, universal suffrage, freedom of speech and press, etc., etc.), and thereby completely disarmed the Chinese Communist Party before the dictatorship of the military oligarchy. Around the slogans of democracy, the Russian Bolsheviks mobilized workers and peasants over a long period of time. Democracy slogans played a huge role during 1917. Only after the Soviet power, which already really existed, came into an irreconcilable political clash with the Constituent Assembly before the eyes of the entire people, did our Party liquidate the institutions and slogans of formal, i.e., bourgeois democracy, in favor of real, Soviet, i.e., democratic democracy. proletarian democracy.

The 6th Congress of the Comintern, under the leadership of Stalin-Bukharin, turned all this on its head. Prescribing to the party the slogan of "democratic" and not "proletarian" dictatorship, he at the same time forbade it to use democratic slogans for the preparation of this dictatorship. The Chinese Communist Party was not only disarmed, but completely stripped naked. On the other hand, as a consolation, it was finally allowed, during the period of unlimited domination of the counter-revolution, to use the slogan of the soviets, which had been banned during the rise of the revolution. A very popular hero of a Russian folk tale sings wedding songs at funerals and funeral songs at weddings. He gets cuffs here and there. If the matter were limited to cuffs against the strategists of the present leadership of the Comintern, this could be reconciled. But the stakes are higher. It is a matter of the fate of the proletariat. The tactics of the Comintern were an unconscious, but all the more reliably organized, sabotage of the Chinese revolution. This sabotage worked for sure, because the Comintern covered the right-wing Menshevik policy of 1924-1927 with all the authority of Bolshevism, and the Soviet government protected the powerful machine of repression from criticism of the left opposition.

We ended up with a completed experiment of the Stalinist strategy, which from the beginning to the end took place under the sign of the struggle against the permanent revolution. It is, therefore, perfectly in the order of things if the main Stalinist theorist of the subordination of the Chinese Communist Party to the national-bourgeois Kuomintang was Martynov, who was the main Menshevik critic of the theory of permanent revolution from 1905 until 1923, when he began to fulfill his historical ranks of Bolshevism.

The essentials of how the present work came into being are given in the first chapter. In Alma-Ata, I was slowly preparing a theoretical and polemical book against the epigones. A major place in the book was to be occupied by the theory of the permanent revolution. In the course of my work I received Radek's manuscript devoted to the same opposition between the permanent revolution and Lenin's strategic line. Radek needed this seemingly unexpected sortie for the reason that he himself was bogged down to the waist in Stalin's Chinese policy: Radek, together with Zinoviev, defended the subordination of the Communist Party to the Kuomintang not only before Chiang Kai-shek's coup, but also after the coup. In justifying the enslavement of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, Radek naturally referred to the necessity of an alliance with the peasantry and to my "underestimation" of this necessity. Following Stalin, he defended Menshevik policy in Bolshevik phraseology. With the formula of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, Radek, following Stalin, again covered up the distraction of the Chinese proletariat from an independent struggle for power at the head of the peasant masses. When I exposed this ideological masquerade, Radek felt an urgent need to prove that my struggle against opportunism, masquerading as quotations from Lenin, actually springs from the contradiction between the theory of permanent revolution and Leninism. Radek turned the lawyer's defense of his own sins into a public prosecutor's speech against the permanent revolution. This performance was for him only a bridge to capitulation. I suspected this all the more justly because Radek had intended in previous years to write a pamphlet in defense of the theory of the permanent revolution. But still I was in no hurry to put an end to Radek. I made an attempt to answer his article with all frankness and categoricalness, but without cutting off the bridges of retreat for him at the same time. I am typing my reply to Radek as it was written, with a few explanatory additions and stylistic corrections.

Radek's article did not appear in the press and, I think, will not appear, because in the form in which it was written in 1928 it could not have passed through the sieve of Stalinist censorship. And for Radek himself today it would be too deadly, since it would give a vivid picture of his ideological evolution, which is very reminiscent of the "evolution" of a man flying from the sixth floor to the pavement.

The origin of this pamphlet sufficiently explains why Radek occupies more space in it than he would perhaps have a right to claim. Radek did not invent a single new argument against the theory of permanent revolution. He acted as an epigone of epigones. The reader is therefore advised to see in Radek not simply Radek, but a representative of some collective firm, in which Radek became an unfair participant at the cost of renouncing Marxism. If, nevertheless, Radek personally found that too many kicks fell to his lot, he could, at his own discretion, pass them on to more responsible recipients. This is an internal business of the company. There will be no objection from my side.

Various factions of the German Communist Party rose to power or struggled for power, demonstrating their suitability for leading critical exercises about the permanent revolution. But all this literature - Maslov, Thalheimer and so on. - deployed at such a deplorable level that it does not even give rise to a critical response. Telmans, Remele and others, the current leaders, by appointment, lowered the issue even a step lower. All these critics have only managed to show that they have not even come close to the threshold of the question. That's why I left them... outside the door. Anyone who is able to be interested in the theoretical criticism of Maslov, Thalheimer, etc., after reading this book, can return to the writings of these authors in order to be convinced of their ignorance and dishonesty. This result will be, so to speak, a by-product of the work proposed to the reader.

L. Trotsky.

FORCED NATURE OF THE PRESENT WORK AND ITS PURPOSE

The theoretical demand of the party, led by the Center-Right bloc, has been covered by anti-Trotskyism for six years in a row: the only product that is available in unlimited quantities and given away for free. Stalin first entered into theory in 1924 with his immortal articles against the permanent revolution. Even Molotov was baptized as a "leader" in this font. Fraud is in full swing. The other day I happened to see an announcement about the publication in German of Lenin's works of 1917. This is an invaluable gift to the advanced German workers. But one can imagine in advance how many falsifications there are in the text and especially in the notes. Suffice it to say that in the first place in the table of contents are Lenin's letters to Kolontai in New York. Why? Only because in these letters there are sharp remarks addressed to me, based on completely false information on the part of Kolontai, who at that time was inoculating her organic Menshevism with hysterical ultra-leftism. In the Russian edition, the epigones were forced to point out, albeit ambiguously, that Lenin had been incorrectly informed. There can, however, be no doubt that the German edition does not even contain this evasive clause. It must also be added that in the same letters from Lenin to Kolontai there were violent attacks on Bukharin, with whom Kolontai was in solidarity. But this part of the letters is still hidden. It will only come into being at the moment of an open campaign against Bukharin. It's not long to wait*1. On the other hand, a number of the most valuable documents, articles and speeches of Lenin, protocols, letters, etc., remain hidden only because Stalin and the Co. are slaughtered or the legend of Trotskyism is undermined. In the history of the three Russian revolutions, as in the history of the party, there is literally no living place left: theory, facts, traditions, Lenin's legacy, everything was sacrificed to the struggle against "Trotskyism", which, from the moment of Lenin's illness, was conceived and organized as a personal struggle with Trotsky, but unfolded as a struggle against Marxism. /*1 This prediction has since come true./

It has again been confirmed that the most seemingly aimless shaking up of disputes that have long ceased to be heard usually satisfies some unconscious social need of the present day, which in itself does not at all follow the line of old disputes. The campaign against "old Trotskyism" was in fact a campaign against the October traditions, which were becoming more and more embarrassing and unbearable for the new bureaucracy. Trotskyism began to be called everything from which it was necessary to push off. Thus, the struggle against Trotskyism gradually became an expression of theoretical and political reaction in broad non-proletarian and, to some extent, proletarian circles, and a reflection of this reaction in the Party. In particular, the caricatured, historically distorted opposition of the permanent revolution to the Leninist line of "alliance with the peasant" was born entirely in 1923.

year, together with the period of socio-political and party reaction, as its most striking expression, as the organic repulsion of the bureaucrat and the owner from the international revolution with its "permanent" upheavals, as an expression of the petty-bourgeois and bureaucratic craving for order and peace. The vicious persecution against the permanent revolution was, in turn, only clearing the ground for the theory of socialism in a single country, i.e., for a new formation of National Socialism. Of course, these new social roots of the struggle against "Trotskyism" in themselves say nothing either for or against the correctness of the theory of permanent revolution. But without an understanding of these underlying roots, the debate will inevitably become academically fruitless.

During these years I could not bring myself to tear myself away from new tasks and return to the old questions connected with the period of the revolution of 1905, since they mainly concerned my past and were artificially directed against it. To disassemble the old disagreements and, in particular, my old mistakes in connection with the conditions that gave rise to them, to disassemble with such completeness that they become understandable to the younger generation, not to mention the old people who have fallen into political childhood, is possible only on the scale of a whole book. It seemed absurd to waste time, one’s own and others’, on this, when new questions of gigantic importance were constantly on the order of the day: the tasks of the German revolution, the question of the future fate of England, the question of the relationship between America and Europe, the problems opened up by the strikes of the British proletariat, the tasks of the Chinese revolution Finally, and first of all, our internal economic and socio-political contradictions and tasks - all this is enough, in my opinion, to justify the constant pushing back on my part of the historical and polemical work on the permanent revolution. But public consciousness does not tolerate emptiness. In recent years, the theoretical void has been filled, as has already been said, with the rubbish of anti-Trotskyism. Epigones, philosophers and businessmen of the party reaction, slid down, learned from the stupid Menshevik Martynov, trampled Lenin, floundered in the swamp, and all this was called the struggle against Trotskyism. During these years they managed not to produce a single serious or significant work that could be called out loud without shame, not a single political assessment that would be preserved, not a single prognosis that would be confirmed, not a single independent slogan that would ideologically moved us forward. Everywhere is rubbish and trash.

Stalin's "Questions of Leninism" is a codification of this ideological rubbish, an official textbook of short thinking, a collection of numbered vulgarities (I try to give the most moderate definitions). Zinoviev's "Leninism" is... Zinoviev's Leninism, no more and no less. Its principle is almost like that of Luther: "I stand on this, but ... I can also do otherwise." Assimilation of these theoretical fruits of epigonism is equally unbearable, with the difference that when reading Zinoviev's "Leninism" it seems as if you are choking on unpressed cotton wool, while Stalin's "Questions" evoke a physical sensation of finely chopped bristles. These two books, each in its own way, reflect and crown the epoch of ideological reaction.

Trying on and fitting all questions to "Trotskyism" - right, left, top, bottom, front and rear - the epigones managed, in the end, to make all world events directly or indirectly dependent on how Trotsky's permanent revolution looked in 1905 year. The legend of "Trotskyism" stuffed with falsifications has become a factor in modern history. And, although the center-right line of recent years has compromised itself in all parts of the world with a series of bankruptcies of historical proportions, nevertheless, the struggle against the centrist ideology of the Comintern is already unthinkable now, or, at least, extremely difficult without assessing the old disputes and forecasts leading its own way. origin since the beginning of 1905. The revival of Marxist, and therefore Leninist, thought in the party is inconceivable without a polemical auto-da-fé for the waste paper of epigones, without a theoretically merciless execution of apparatus executors. It is not difficult to write such a book. All elements of it are present. But it is precisely because of this that it is difficult to write it, because, in the words of the great satirist Saltykov, one has to descend into the realm of "alphabetical vapors" and remain for a long time in this completely unspiritual atmosphere. Nevertheless, it has become absolutely urgent, because the defense of the opportunist line in the sphere of the problems of the East, that is, of the greater half of mankind, is built directly on the struggle against the permanent revolution.

I was about to begin this unattractive work, the theoretical polemic with Zinoviev and Stalin, having put aside the books of our classics for hours of rest (and the divers are forced to go upstairs to take a breath of fresh air), when suddenly, unexpectedly for me, an article by Radek appeared in circulation devoted to "in-depth" opposition of the theory of permanent revolution to Lenin's views on the same question. At first I was going to put Radek's work aside, so as not to be distracted from the combination prepared for me by fate of unpressed cotton wool and chopped bristles. But a number of friendly letters made me

PERMANENT REVOLUTION

(from lat. permaneo - I remain, I continue) - a continuous revolution. Idea P. r. was first put forward by K. Marx and F. Engels in con. 40s 19th century in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" and in the "Appeal of the Central Committee to the Union of Communists". Marx and Engels pointed out that the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic. revolution should not stop at the implementation of democratic. tasks. While the bourgeoisie strives to complete the revolution as soon as possible, the task of the proletariat is to "... make the revolution continuous until all more or less propertied classes are removed from domination, until the proletariat wins state power .. ." (Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 7, p. 261). Marx and Engels also expressed the idea of ​​the need to combine the proletarian revolution with the cross. revolutionary movement. Opportunistic leaders of the 2nd International and Russian. the Mensheviks consigned to oblivion the idea of ​​the P. r. According to their scheme, the proletariat in the socialist. revolution comes out alone against all non-proletarian classes and strata, including the peasantry. Therefore, after the commission of the bourgeoisie. the revolution should allegedly take a long time. period during which the proletariat will become the majority of the nation. V. I. Lenin restored the Marxist idea of ​​P. r. and developed it into the theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic. revolution into a socialist one. Lenin pointed out that the presence of two kinds of contradictions in the socio-economic system of Russia: the contradictions between the remnants of serfdom and developing capitalism and the contradictions within capitalism itself, created objective conditions for the outgrowth of the bourgeois-democratic. revolution into a socialist one. Under these conditions, not the bourgeoisie, but the proletariat, headed by its own political. the party acted as the hegemon of the bourgeois-democratic. revolution. The peasantry acted as an ally of the proletariat, since only the complete victory of the revolution could satisfy its demands, above all the abolition of landlordism. At the same time, the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution was a transitional stage to a successful struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The essence of the outgrowth of the bourgeois-democratic. revolution into a socialist revolution consisted in the regrouping of forces around the proletariat towards the end of the bourgeois-democratic. revolution. Having made the bourgeois-democratic. revolution in alliance with the entire peasantry, the proletariat must immediately go over to the socialist. revolution in alliance with the rural poor and other semi-proletarian elements. Revolutionary-Democratic the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry must develop into a socialist. dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin considered bourgeois-democratic. and socialist. revolutions as two links in one chain, two strategic stage of a single revolution. process. The theory of the outgrowth of the bourgeois-democratic. revolution into a socialist one was most fully developed by Lenin in 1905 (Two Tactics of Social Democracy in a Democratic Revolution, Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, Social Democracy's Attitude to the Peasant Movement, etc.). The propositions put forward by Lenin in 1905 served as the basis for the conclusion drawn by Lenin in 1915 about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country.

The Marxist-Leninist theory of P. r. Parvus (A. L. Gelfand) and L. D. Trotsky, who in 1905 created the opportunist. so-called. the theory of "permanent revolution", which was based on the Menshevik denial of the revolution. opportunities of the peasantry, disbelief in the strength and ability of the proletariat to lead the democratic. population elements. According to the Trotskyist theory of "permanent revolution", the proletariat alone, without allies, "in one battle" could overthrow the autocracy and take power into its own hands. The essence of this "theory" was expressed in the slogan "without a tsar, but a workers' government," which meant jumping over the bourgeois-democratic. stage of the revolution. Lenin pointed out that Trotsky's theory is semi-Menshevik, since it "...takes from the Bolsheviks a call for a decisive revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and for the conquest of political power by it, and from the Mensheviks - the "denial" of the role of the peasantry" (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 27, pp. 80 (vol. 21, pp. 381-82)). During World War I and after the victory of Oct. socialist. Revolution of 1917 Trotsky contrasted his theory of "permanent revolution" with Lenin's theory of the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country. While Lenin emphasized that in Russia there are all the necessary conditions for the victory of the socialist. revolution and building a complete socialist. society, especially the union of the working class with DOS. masses of the peasantry with the leading role of the working class, Trotsky denied the socialist. character Oct. revolution, considering it only as a signal, an impetus to the socialist. revolution in the West, denied the possibility of building socialism in the USSR under capitalist conditions. environment. Trotsky argued that after coming to power the proletariat would inevitably enter into a struggle with the hostile peasantry; owing to its small size, the working class can win this struggle only if the revolution becomes "permanent", i.e. will spread to the most important countries of Europe, when the victorious proletariat of the West will help the proletariat of Russia to cope with its peasantry, and then the building of socialism will become possible. If the socialist the revolution in the West will not happen in the near future, the Trotskyists said, then the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia will fall or be reborn into a bourgeoisie. state. Unlike Lenin, who considered the socialist. revolution in Russia as part of the world revolution, the basis of its further development, Trotsky portrayed the building of socialism in one country as a sign of "national narrowness", as a departure from the principles of proletarian internationalism. I don't believe in internal socialist forces. revolution in the USSR, the Trotskyists imposed adventuristic parties. the tactics of "pushing" the world revolution by the method of "revolutionary war," of introducing revolution into other countries of violence. way, which contradicted the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the socialist. revolution as a result of maturation ext. class contradictions in each department. country.

Criticism of the Trotskyist theory of "permanent revolution" is given in Lenin's works "Social Democracy and the Provisional Revolutionary Government" (1905), "The Purpose of the Proletariat's Struggle in Our Revolution" (1909), "The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle in Russia" (1910), "On two lines of revolution" (1915), "Letters on tactics" (1917) and other opportunistic. the essence of the Trotskyist "theory" was also revealed in the resolution on Trotsky's speech, adopted by the plenums of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the RCP (b) on January 17, 1925, in the "Theses on the tasks of the Comintern and the RCP (b) in connection with the expanded plenum of the ECCI, adopted by the XIV Conference of the RCP (b)", in the resolution of the XV Conference of the CPSU(b) "On the Opposition Bloc in the CPSU(b)". Due to the fact that Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution" largely coincided with the views of the leader of the right-wing Social Democrats O. Bauer, the XV Conference of the CPSU (b) qualified Trotskyism as "... a social democratic deviation in our party on the main question of character and prospects of our revolution" ("CPSU in resolutions...", 7th ed., part 2, 1954, p. 332). A prominent role in exposing the Trotskyist theory of "permanent revolution" was played by the works of J. V. Stalin "On the Foundations of Leninism" (1924), "The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists" (1924), -democratic deviation in our party" (1926), "Once again about the social democratic deviation in our party" (1926).

The practice of international revolutionary movement, the experience of building socialism in the USSR and other socialist countries. systems refuted the opportunistic. Trotskyist theory of "permanent revolution" and confirmed the correctness of Lenin's theory of socialist. revolution.

Lit .: Marx K. and Engels F., Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 4, p. 459; vol. 7, p. 261; vol. 8, p. 211, 607; v. 29, p. 37; Lenin V.I., Poln. coll. soch., 5th ed., vol. 9, p. 131-32, 341-46 (vol. 8, p. 8, 204-09); vol. 10, p. 1-19, 20-31 (vol. 8, pp. 24-63, 264-74); vol. 11, p. 14-17, 72-77, 90, 104, 120-21, 221-23, 282-84 82); vol. 12, p. 154-157, 264-66 (vol. 10, pp. 73-74, 168-69); v. 15, p. 142-43 (vol. 12, pp. 246-48); v. 17, p. 381-85 (vol. 15, pp. 341-45); v. 19, p. 362-368 (vol. 16, pp. 348-53); v. 27, p. 80-81 (vol. 21, pp. 381-83); v. 31, p. 21-22, 45, 55-56, 137-138, 249 (v. 23, p. 300-01, 322, 331-32; v. 24, p. 28-29, 123); v. 37, p. 311-12, 326, 327 (vol. 28, pp. 276-77, 290-91); v. 44, p. 144-47 (vol. 33, pp. 29-32).

Soviet historical encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. Ed. E. M. Zhukova. 1973-1982 .

See what "PERMANENT REVOLUTION" is in other dictionaries:

From German: Die Revolution in Per/nanenz Authorship is usually attributed to Leon Trotsky. But this expression entered the Russian language thanks to the founder of the social democratic movement in Russia, G. V. Plekhanov, who wrote about the “permanent revolution” ... Dictionary of winged words and expressions

- (permanent revolution) Trotsky's theory (see Trotskyism - Trotskyism), according to which a non-socialist revolution can develop into a proletarian socialist revolution without interruption. He stated it mainly in the work Results and ... ... Political science. Dictionary.

See Continuous Revolution. Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia. Ch. editors: L. F. Ilyichev, P. N. Fedoseev, S. M. Kovalev, V. G. Panov. 1983... Philosophical Encyclopedia

The theory of permanent revolution (from Latin permaneo I continue, I remain) is a theory about the development of the revolutionary process in peripheral and underdeveloped countries. The theory was originally proposed by Marx and Engels, later developed by ... ... Wikipedia

Permanent revolution- Comprehensive theory of the world socialist revolution, developed by Leon Trotsky. As Trotsky explained in the preface written in 1922 to his report on the revolution of 1905, expresses the idea that the Russian revolution, having begun as a bourgeois one, ... ... Historical reference book of a Russian Marxist

The idea of ​​a permanent, that is, continuous, revolution was put forward by K. Marx and F. Engels in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848) and "Appeal of the Central Committee to the Union of Communists" (1850). The founders of Marxism believed that...

PERMANENT REVOLUTION- (permanent revolution) (Marxism) Trotsky's concept of a continuous process of moving the revolution from democratic to socialist, developed by him in response to the 1905 revolution in Russia. Contrary to the orthodox Marxist interpretation, ... ... Big explanatory sociological dictionary

The first people's revolution of the era of Imperialism, which shook the foundations of the autocratic system and created the prerequisites for the subsequent successful struggle to overthrow tsarism. It was a new type of bourgeois democratic revolution, the hegemon of which ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Permanent revolution. The idea of ​​a permanent, that is, continuous, revolution was put forward by K. Marx and F. Engels in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848) and "Appeal of the Central Committee to the Union of Communists" (1850). The founders of Marxism believed that the proletariat, having sufficient strength, organization, influence and taking an independent political position, could make the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist revolution, to the establishment of its own power. “While the democratic petty bourgeois want to finish the revolution as quickly as possible, ... our interests and our tasks are to make the revolution uninterrupted until all more or less propertied classes are removed from the rule, until the proletariat will conquer state power ... ”(K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 7, p. 261). Continuity was understood by K. Marx and F. Engels as a successive change of stages of the revolutionary process. They warned that "... the workers cannot, at the beginning of the movement, propose purely communist measures" and "... they will not be able to achieve dominance and the realization of their class interests without having completely passed the longer path of revolutionary development ..." (ibid., pp. 266, 267).

In the new historical conditions of the era of imperialism, the idea of ​​continuous revolution was developed by V. I. Lenin into the theory of the development of a democratic revolution into a socialist one. “... From the democratic revolution,” wrote V. I. Lenin, “we will immediately begin to pass, and just to the extent of our strength, the strength of the conscious and organized proletariat, we will begin to move on to the socialist revolution. We stand for continuous revolution. We will not stop halfway” (Poln. sobr. soch. (composition), 5th ed., vol. 11, p. 222).

V. I. Lenin rejected the scheme of the opportunist leaders of the 2nd International and the Russian Mensheviks, according to which the victory of the bourgeois revolution is necessarily followed by a more or less long period of development of capitalism. In the epoch of imperialism, when the world capitalist system is ripe for socialist revolution, revolutionary-democratic transformations objectively pose a threat to capitalism. Monopoly capital unites with the most reactionary forces on a common platform of hostility to any revolution. That is why, V. I. Lenin emphasized, “in the 20th century in a capitalist country one cannot be a revolutionary democrat if one is afraid to go towards socialism” (ibid., vol. 34, p. 190).

The cornerstone of Lenin's theory of the development of a democratic revolution into a socialist one is the idea hegemony of the proletariat , which plays the role of an engine for the unstoppable development of the democratic revolution, a gradual transition to solving more and more radical tasks, and creating conditions for the socialist revolution. As a result of the victory of the democratic revolution, a revolutionary-democratic type of power is established, which acts as an instrument for the continuous deepening and development of the democratic revolution into a socialist one. In relation to the conditions of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. V. I. Lenin defined the class content of such power as the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.

After World War II (1939–45), democratic revolutions developed into socialist revolutions in a number of European and Asian countries. In some countries, democratic and socialist transformations were closely intertwined, essentially constituting two stages in a single revolutionary process (see Vol. People's Democratic Revolution ).

The significance of the Marxist-Leninist theory of continuous revolution lies in the fact that it reveals the natural connection between the socialist revolution and various types of people's democratic movements and revolutions, and makes it possible to find ways and forms of transition to a socialist revolution that meet the specific conditions of a given country.

Marx's idea of ​​uninterrupted revolution received a distorted interpretation in the Trotskyist theory of political revolution, advanced by A. Parvus and L. Trotsky during the years of the Revolution of 1905–07 in Russia and which became the platform for the struggle of the Trotskyists against Leninism. The continuity of the successive stages of the revolutionary process was replaced in Trotskyist theory by a subjectivist concept, which arbitrarily mixed all the stages, ignoring the natural connection between them; it denied the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution and put forward the adventurist idea of ​​a direct transition to a socialist revolution (see V. I. Lenin, ibid., vol. 17, p. 381). This position of Trotsky, who ignored the idea of ​​a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, was expressed in the slogan "without a tsar, but a workers' government." Revealing the eclecticism of the Trotskyist theory, V. I. Lenin noted: “Trotsky’s original theory takes from the Bolsheviks a call for a decisive revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and for the conquest of political power by it, and from the Mensheviks it takes the “denial” of the role of the peasantry” (ibid., vol. 27, p. 80). By rejecting the Marxist-Leninist strategy of class alliances between the proletariat and the peasantry and other non-proletarian strata of the working people, Trotskyist theory essentially closed the way to the formation of a mass political army of the socialist revolution and undermined the internal factors of the development and victory of this revolution. Trotsky associated the permanence of the revolutionary process, the fate of the socialist revolution in each country, with external factors, with the victory of the world revolution. From these mechanistic positions, the Trotskyists opposed Lenin's theory of the possibility of the victory of socialism, initially in one country taken separately. From this flowed a directive, contrary to Marxism, to "export", to artificially push the revolution.

Trotskyist theory of P. r. represents one of the ideological sources of modern concepts of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, including Maoism , a characteristic feature of which is also disbelief in the ability of the working class to unite the broad masses of working people around itself to solve the problems of socialist construction. This attitude is expressed in the entire adventurist policy of this petty-bourgeois trend. Such ideas contradict Marxism-Leninism, the practice of the world revolutionary movement.

Lit.: Leibzon B. M.. Petty-bourgeois revolutionarism, M., 1967; Lenin's theory of socialist revolution and modernity, M., 1972, ch. (chapters) 6.

Permanent revolution

Thank you for downloading the book from the free e-library http://filosoff.org/ Happy reading! Trotsky L.D. Permanent revolution. INTRODUCTION This book is devoted to a question closely connected with the history of the three Russian revolutions, but not only with it. This issue has played a huge role in the internal struggle of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in recent years, was then transferred to the Communist International, played a decisive role in the development of the Chinese revolution and determined a number of decisions of paramount importance on issues related to the revolutionary struggle of the countries of the East. We are talking about the so-called theory of "permanent revolution", which, according to the teachings of the epigones of Leninism (Zinoviev, Stalin, Bukharin, and others), constitutes the original sin of "Trotskyism". The question of the permanent revolution was, after a long interval, and at first glance quite unexpectedly raised in 1924. There were no political grounds for this: it was a matter of long-gone differences. But the psychological reasons were great. The group of so-called "Old Bolsheviks" that opened up a struggle against me opposed me first of all with this title of theirs. But the year 1917 was a big obstacle on her way. No matter how important the previous history of ideological struggle and preparation was, however, not only in relation to the party as a whole, but also in relation to individuals, all previous preparation found its highest and categorical test in the October revolution. None of the epigones passed this test. All of them, without exception, at the moment of the February Revolution of 1917 took the vulgar position of the democratic left. None of them put forward the slogan of the struggle of the proletariat for power. All of them considered the course towards socialist revolution absurd or, even worse, "Trotskyism." In this spirit they led the party until Lenin's arrival from abroad and until the appearance of his famous theses on April 4th. After that, Kamenev, already in direct struggle with Lenin, tried to openly form a democratic wing in Bolshevism. Later, Zinoviev, who arrived with Lenin, joins him. Stalin, cruelly compromised by his social-patriotic position, steps aside. He lets the party forget about his pitiful articles and speeches in the decisive weeks of March and gradually shifts to Lenin's point of view. From this the question naturally arose: what did Leninism give each of these leading "Old Bolsheviks" if not one of them was able to independently apply the theoretical and practical experience of the Party at the most important and crucial historical moment? It was necessary at all costs to avert this question, replacing it with another. To this end, it was decided to put the theory of permanent revolution at the center of the shelling. My opponents, of course, did not foresee that, creating an artificial axis of struggle, they themselves would imperceptibly turn around this axis, creating for themselves, by the reverse method, a new world outlook. I had formulated the theory of permanent revolution in its main outlines even before the decisive events of 1905. Russia was moving towards the bourgeois revolution. No one in the ranks of the then Russian Social Democracy (we were all then called Social Democrats) doubted that we were going towards a bourgeois revolution, i.e., one that was generated by the contradiction between the development of the productive forces of capitalist society and those who had outlived themselves as serfs. medieval estate and state relations. At that time, I had to devote quite a few speeches and articles to the Marxist explanation of the bourgeois character of the forthcoming revolution in the struggle against the populists and anarchists. But the bourgeois character of the revolution did not prejudge the question of what classes and in what relationships would carry out the tasks of the democratic revolution. Meanwhile, the main strategic problems only began from this point. Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Martov, and after them all the Russian Mensheviks proceeded from the premise that the leading role in the bourgeois revolution could belong only to the liberal bourgeoisie, as a natural contender for power. According to this scheme, the party of the proletariat fell out of the role of the left flank of the democratic front: the Social Democracy had to support the liberal bourgeoisie against reaction and at the same time defend the interests of the proletariat against the liberal bourgeoisie. In other words, the Mensheviks were characterized by an understanding of the bourgeois revolution primarily as a liberal-constitutional reform. Lenin posed the question quite differently. The liberation of the productive forces of bourgeois society from the fetters of serfdom meant for him, first of all, a radical solution of the agrarian question, in the sense of the complete liquidation of the class of landowners and the revolutionary reshuffling of landed property. With this was inextricably linked the destruction of the monarchy. The agrarian problem, which grips the vital interests of the vast majority of the population and at the same time forms the basis of the problem of the capitalist market, was posed by Lenin with truly revolutionary boldness. Since the liberal bourgeoisie, hostile to the workers, is linked to large landed property by numerous ties, the true democratic emancipation of the peasantry can only be achieved through revolutionary co-operation between workers and peasants. Their joint uprising against the old society was, according to Lenin, to lead, in case of victory, to the establishment of a "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry." This last formula is now being repeated in the Comintern as a kind of supra-historical dogma, without attempting to analyze the living historical experience of the last quarter of a century, as if we were not at all witnesses and participants in the revolution of 1905, the February revolution of 1917 and, finally, the October revolution. Meanwhile, this kind of historical analysis is all the more necessary because there has never been a regime of "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" in history. In 1905, Lenin dealt with a strategic hypothesis, which was still subject to verification from the side of the actual course of the class struggle. The formula for the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was to a large extent deliberately algebraic. Lenin did not prejudge the question of what would be the political proportions of the two participants in the proposed democratic dictatorship, that is, the proletariat and the peasantry. He did not exclude the possibility that the peasantry would be represented in the revolution by an independent party, moreover, independent on two fronts: that is, not only in relation to the bourgeoisie, but also in relation to the proletariat, and at the same time capable of carrying out a democratic revolution in struggle against the liberal bourgeoisie and in alliance with the party of the proletariat. Lenin even allowed, as we shall see below, that in the government of a democratic dictatorship the revolutionary peasant party would constitute the majority. On the question of the decisive significance of the agrarian revolution for the fate of our bourgeois revolution, I have been, at least since the autumn of 1902, that is, from the moment of my first flight abroad, a student of Lenin. That an agrarian, and consequently a general democratic revolution, could be achieved only in the struggle against the liberal bourgeoisie by the united forces of the workers and peasants, for me, despite the absurd tales of recent years, was beyond doubt. But I opposed the formula "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry", seeing its drawback in that it left open the question of which class the real dictatorship would belong to. I argued that the peasantry, in spite of its colossal social and revolutionary weight, was incapable of creating a truly independent party, much less of concentrating revolutionary power in the hands of such a party. Just as in the old revolutions, beginning with the German Reformation of the sixteenth century and even earlier, the peasantry, during their uprisings, supported one of the factions of the urban bourgeoisie, and often ensured its victory, so in our belated bourgeois revolution, the peasantry, at the highest scope of its struggle , will be able to provide similar support to the proletariat and help it come to power. Our bourgeois revolution, I concluded, will be able to solve its problems radically only if the proletariat, with the support of the many millions of peasants, can concentrate the revolutionary dictatorship in its hands. What will be the social content of this dictatorship? First of all, it will have to complete the agrarian revolution and the democratic restructuring of the state. In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat will become an instrument for solving the problems of the historically belated bourgeois revolution. But the matter cannot stop there. Having come to power, the proletariat will be compelled to carry out more and more profound intrusions into the relations of private property in general, i.e., to pass over to the path of socialist measures. “But do you really think,” the Stalins, Rykovs and all the other Molotovs of 1905-1917 objected to me dozens of times, “that Russia is ripe for a socialist revolution? To this I invariably answered: no, I don't think so. But the world economy as a whole, and above all the European economy, is fully ripe for the socialist revolution. Whether the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia will lead to socialism or not - at what pace and through what stages - depends on the future fate of European and world capitalism. Such are the main features of the theory of the permanent revolution, as it took shape already in the first months of 1905. After that, three revolutions had time to take place. The Russian proletariat rose to power on a mighty wave of peasant uprising. The dictatorship of the proletariat has become a fact in Russia before it has been in any of the incomparably more developed countries of the world. In 1924, i.e., seven years after the historical forecast of the theory of the permanent revolution was confirmed with absolutely exceptional power, the epigones launched a frenzied attack against this theory, pulling out separate phrases and polemical remarks from my old works, thoroughly by myself to this time forgotten. Here it is appropriate to recall that the first Russian revolution broke out more than half a century after the period of bourgeois revolutions in Europe, and 35 years after the episodic uprising of the Paris Commune. Europe has managed to wean itself from revolutions. Russia did not know them at all. All the problems of the revolution were posed anew. It is not difficult to understand how many unknown and conjectural quantities the future revolution then contained for us. The formulas of all groupings were a kind of working hypotheses. A complete incapacity for historical forecasting and a complete lack of understanding of its methods are needed in order now, in hindsight, to consider the analyzes and assessments of 1905. as if they were written yesterday. I have often said to myself and to friends: I have no doubt that there were large gaps in my forecasts for 1905, which it is not difficult to open now in hindsight. But did my critics see better and further? Without rereading my old works for a long time, I was ready in advance to consider the gaps in them much more significant and important than they really were. I became convinced of this in 1928, during my exile in Alma-Ata, when forced political leisure gave me the opportunity to re-read my old works on the question of the permanent revolution, pencil in hand. I hope that from what follows, the reader will be fully convinced of this. Within the framework of this introduction, however, it is necessary to characterize, as accurately as possible, the constituent elements of the theory of permanent revolution and the main objections to it. The controversy has broadened and deepened to such an extent that it has come to embrace in essence all the most important questions of the world revolutionary movement. Permanent revolution, in the sense that Marx gave this concept, means a revolution that does not put up with any form of class domination, does not stop at the democratic stage, passes over to socialist measures and to a war against external reaction, a revolution, each subsequent stage of which is laid down in the previous one, and which can only end with the complete liquidation of class society. In the interests of dispelling the chaos that has been created around the theory of permanent