The ToPR has undoubtedly been one of the most significant and widely discussed contributions (even if as a topic of factional dispute) made by a Marxist in the 20th century. The theory, which Trotsky initially restricted to Russia, addressed one of the most pressing problems of the day: What would be the class character of the revolution that would overthrow autocratic rule, solve the agrarian problem and free the mass of the population (the peasants) from poverty and hunger?
Trotsky’s proposals on the nature of the Russian Revolution were a radical departure from the dominant ideas and methodology of the Second International, particularly on the subject of the future of semi-feudal Russia. His analysis, and the theory developed from it, represented an astonishing theoretical breakthrough. Einstein’s theory of relativity, published in 1905, fundamentally altered the conceptual framework within which man viewed the universe, so Trotsky’s ToPR fundamentally shifted the analytical perspective from which revolutionary processes were viewed. Without wishing to develop the analogy too far, it can also be said that, initially, both revolutionary changes were largely ignored by the establishment of the day.
Prior to 1905, the development of revolutions tended to be seen as a progression of national events, each outcome determined by the logic of its own internal socio-economic relations. Trotsky proposed that in the modern era another approach was required: revolution must be viewed as a world-historic process of social transition from class society, rooted in nation-states, to a classless society based on a global economy and the international working class[62].
There were four distinct characteristics to the young Trotsky’s contribution to the theory of the coming Russian Revolution, and these implicitly contained a number of fundamental criticisms of the mechanistic Marxism of the older leaders of Russian socialism.
1. First, and most importantly, Trotsky addressed the problem of the transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist and, in a truly Marxist manner, began with a study of the reality of the development of capitalism in Russia. Many senior Russian Marxists (e.g. Plekhanov) tended, probably because of their polemics with Populism, to play down any specificity of Russian social formations, and insisted on an inevitable similarity between the social and economic development of Western Europe and the future of Russia. Trotsky sited the coming Russian Revolution squarely in terms of Russian history, and observed that at a time when the development of capitalism in Russia was still in its relative infancy, the joint action of state and foreign capital had parachuted into semi-feudal Russia, a number of large-scale industries employing tens of thousands of workers in some of the largest factories in the world. This made the working-class relatively much stronger with respect to the bourgeoisie than in any previous bourgeois revolution. Trotsky also determined from his analysis that because of the links which the Russian liberal and urban petty-bourgeoisie had with the land, they would play a counter-revolutionary role[63].
Trotsky argued that Plekhanov[64] had proposed a pattern of historical development according to which democracy and socialism for all peoples and in all countries, were two stages in the development of society which were entirely distinct and, in time, were separated by generations. Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, considered the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat in semi-feudal Russia, to be a delusion, a view that was not only that of the Mensheviks but also of the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik ‘Old Guard’[65].
Up to this point in the debate, Trotsky had much in common with Lenin and Kautsky, but the ToPR then proposed that, in the present epoch, the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations led directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat and this put socialist tasks on the order of the day. In complete contradiction to both the vulgar Marxists and Lenin, the ToPR established that for semi-feudal and backward countries, the road to democracy passed through the dictatorship of the proletariat. The major tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution (in particular the solution of the agrarian problem), could not be carried through unless under the dictatorship of the proletariat[66].
2. Trotsky, Lenin and Kautsky observed that in the conditions of the early 20th century, industrialists and landlords were economically entwined with the banks through loans and credit, and socially through family links, social activities, common education, etc. Kautsky and Lenin drew the conclusion that the urban petty bourgeois would be anti-revolutionary and that the proletariat, with the support of, and in alliance with, the peasantry, would be the armed vanguard of the bourgeois revolution. Trotsky went qualitatively further and concluded that the revolutionary agrarian reforms necessary to end feudal relations on the land, would be such a massive blow against the economic, social and political interests of the bourgeois classes, that these could be carried through only under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin would come to the same conclusion some ten years later, in 1917[67], while Kautsky would join the camp of counter-revolution.
3. Trotsky explicitly rejected the economist traits of Plekhanov’s Marxism. This is one of the fundamental methodological presuppositions of the ToPR, as shown by the well-known passage from Results and Prospects:
“To imagine that the dictatorship of the proletariat is in some way automatically dependent on the technical development and resources of a country is a prejudice of ‘economic’ materialism simplified to absurdity. This point of view has nothing in common with Marxism”[68].
Trotsky recognised that the immediate social conditions of the Russian factory workers meant their consciousness was very different from that generated by the general technical and economic level of peasant Russia. This was reinforced by his experience as leader of the St Petersburg Soviet which convinced him that the workers, once committed to revolutionary struggle and having taken governmental power, would not voluntarily restrain themselves and allow the bourgeoisie to take control, but would rapidly progress to placing socialist demands on their government.
Of course, the urban proletariat had to win the support of the peasantry – without this it could not hold power. But the only way for it to attract the mass of small rural proprietors was (a) firstly to show the necessary vigour, strength, organisation and determination through taking power in an armed uprising, and (b) then to solve the agrarian problem by ending feudal relations on the land. We shall see that this first … then approach, would later become an important element in Lenin’s analysis and plan of action for the October Revolution. The role of the revolutionary Social Democratic Party would be crucial in such a process. By appearing before the peasants as their liberators, the revolutionary proletariat could take state power long before they became the majority in Russian society.
Trotsky, while clearly stating that the active support of the peasantry was necessary for a successful Russian Revolution, placed certain limits on its role: the peasantry would be unable to play an independent role due to its dispersion and class heterogeneity; the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution could only triumph under proletarian, socialist leadership. He argued, that a working-class which had just achieved victory – including taking state power – against both Tsarism and all politically conservative forces (including the bourgeoisie), could not be expected, on the following day, to return to the workplace and voluntarily submit to unarmed capitalists. It would be ridiculous to expect the proletariat to agree to rule outside the factory gate but not inside.
Trotsky recognised that the working class could actually conquer power before, and instead of, the bourgeoisie in a relatively backward country. Here Trotsky’s conception of the task of Marxists was as instigators, not interpreting history, but working to change it in a radically new way. This would be an argument that Trotsky would later use to justify the Bolshevik’s dissolving of the Constituent Assembly in 1918, the revolution was actively creating a majority not statically reflecting the electoral balance at a given instant[69]. However, it must be recognised that Trotsky did downplay the subjective factor and, in 1906 and for many years subsequently, failed to recognise the necessity for the centralised, disciplined, revolutionary party.
4. It was one of Trotsky’s great achievements that he grasped the impact of the world economy on Russia’s national, social and political life and was then able to develop a consequent practical approach to Russian politics, and elaborate an effective revolutionary strategy. With Lenin, Trotsky accepted the international context of the Russian Revolution but, more than Lenin in 1905, he posed the question of the character of that revolution in terms of the world-wide capitalist system and in this way rose above national restrictions. From this he rejected Lenin’s division between bourgeois and proletarian revolutions as not corresponding to Russian reality. The international situation, was an essential consideration in determining what form of state power should be the goal of the Russian revolutionary movement. Trotsky concluded that because of the weight of European capital in Russia, the huge superiority of foreign industry and its virtual domination of world markets, the lack of a radical agrarian revolution meant the Russian bourgeoisie would be unable to carry through any thorough-going industrialisation of its own.
It was the synthesis of these innovations which transformed them into something new and made Results and Prospects unique[70]. Starting from a weak and largely foreign bourgeoisie, and a modern and exceptionally concentrated proletariat – Trotsky came to the conclusion that only the workers’ movement, supported by the peasantry, could accomplish the democratic revolution in Russia, by overthrowing the autocracy and the power of the landowners. The novelty of Permanent Revolution was not so much in its definition of the class leadership of the coming Russian Revolution (all SDs agreed that the proletariat would take the leading role in the armed struggle), than in its definition of the historic tasks (bourgeois-democratic or proletarian) to be undertaken. Trotsky’s novel contribution was the idea that the Russian proletarian revolution would carry through the bourgeois-democratic tasks more thoroughly than the bourgeoisie itself, and then transcend those limits and begin to take anti-capitalist measures with a clearly socialist content.
However, Trotsky warned that while the Russian socialist revolution would undoubtedly begin on national foundations, the maintenance of the proletarian revolution within a national framework could only be provisional. An isolated proletarian state must finally fall to imperialism. The way out for it lay in the victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries, an opinion that Lenin agreed with both in terms of the provisional RDDPP in 1905, and the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1917. It was this conclusion, which has now been proved correct, that was the main butt of Stalinist venom and the source of many slanders alleging Trotsky’s hostility to the Soviet Union. That it was also Lenin’s opinion was always conveniently ignored.
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Lowy, M., The Relevance of Permanent Revolution, International Viewpoint Oct 2000,
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Mandel, E., Trotsky: A Study in the Dynamic of His Thought, NLB, London, 1979, p12 -14
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Trotsky, L.D., Stalin, Hollis and Carter, London, 1947, p422-423
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Zinoviev, G., History of the Bolshevik Party, New Park Publications, London, 1973
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Trotsky, L.D., Results and Prospects, New Park Publications, London, 1962, p169-177
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Lenin, V.I., From a Publicist’s Diary, Aug 1917, CW 25:278-286
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Trotsky, L.D., Results and Prospects, New Park Publications, London, 1962, p195
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Trotsky, L.D., Terrorism and Communism, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1921, p43
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