It is always tempting to look for the roots of new ideas in the writings of the past, and it is incontestable that an important historic trend had already been noted by Marx and Engels, that the big bourgeoisie were ever more reluctant to take a revolutionary path to complete even the bourgeois revolution. Instead, their political perspective was to seek a compromise with the monarchy and aristocracy. Marx and Engels praised the revolutionary power of the bourgeois in the Great French Revolution in 1789, but after the revolution of 1848 were forced to recognise that the German bourgeoisie was prepared, even eager, to compromise with the aristocracy[15]. In their Address to the Central Committee Communist League, Marx and Engels presented their most developed permanentist position:
“while the democratic petty-bourgeoisie wants to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible … it is in our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and … at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers”[16].
One month later Engels published his analysis of the constitutional campaign in Germany and concluded that since June 1848 the question had stood as either the rule of the revolutionary proletariat or the rule of the landed aristocracy:
“A middle road is no longer possible. In Germany, in particular, the bourgeois has shown itself incapable of ruling; it could only maintain its rule over the people only by surrendering it once more to the aristocracy and bureaucracy. … the revolution can no longer be brought to a conclusion in Germany except with the complete rule of the proletariat”[17].
Three years later Engels was to further refine his attitude to the workers’ party taking power in the bourgeois revolution:
“In a backward country such as Germany which possesses an advanced party … at the first serious conflict, and as soon as there is real danger, the turn of the advanced party will inevitably come, and this in any case will be before its normal time. … we shall start off straight away with the Manifesto… “[18].
The bourgeoisie is neither willing nor able to carry through the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the “advanced party” will be forced by events to take the power and once in power has no choice but to start with the Communist Manifesto and make “communist experiments”. It could, then, be sensibly argued that the seeds of the ToPR may be found in the writings of Marx and Engels[19].
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Marx, K. and Engels, F., Address to the Central Committee Communist League (March 1850) MESW, Vol 1 p107
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Marx, K. and Engels, F., Ibid, p110
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Engels, F., The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution, April 1850, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/german-imperial/ch04.htm)
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Engels, F., Letter to Joseph Weydmeyer 12 April 1853 MECW Vol 39 p303
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Trotsky, L.D., My Life Penguin Books, 1984, p194