This chapter draws together the arguments on whether the Maoist theory of stages or Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution more accurately described the processes of the Third Chinese Revolution. It explains why it was possible for a deformed workers’ state to revert to capitalism in a so-called cold process, without a revolution. Finally, it addresses whether the return to capitalism in China challenges the theory of the permanent revolution and asks whether the theory of permanent revolution remains relevant in the China of today.

The acid test of any theory is how well it measures up to reality. Has Mao’s Stalinist theory of stages been proven correct by the Third Chinese Revolution, and permanent revolution proven wrong? Hardline Stalinists such as Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Cuban Minister responsible for agrarian reform (1962-1965)[1], have continued to argue for the theory of stages. These people are now supported in their view by former Trotskyists such as the leadership of the American Socialist Workers Party who grew tired and impatient with the slow and arduous work of building a revolutionary party and chose, at the cost of basic theory, to become uncritical cheer-leaders for the Castro regime in the false hope that this would accelerate the growth of their organisation. The old Cuban leaders were primarily activists not theoreticians, and to get Russian aid and break the American blockade were willing to endorse such Stalinist concepts as the theory of stages, and there being no need for proletarian democracy or Soviets. The American SWP chose to compromise not with the best elements of the Castroist regime but the worst.

There is a parallel phenomenon that must be addressed here, one that appeared amongst the radical students who fought on the barricades in Paris in 1968, and their fellows who demonstrated on the streets of London, Rome and Berlin, and gained popularity as news of the Cultural Revolution spread. It was accepted that the theory of permanent revolution was correct and, because Mao had come to power in a semi-colonial country he must, somehow, be an ‘unconscious Trotskyist’ and his interpretation of the theory of stages could have no substantial differences with the theory of the permanent revolution. This view infected a number of revolutionary Marxists; people who should have known better opened the doors of their organisations to self-professed anti-Trotskyists with disastrous consequences.

Though the conclusions of the two arguments appear to be opposites, the opportunist method that gave rise to them is the same: impatience, looking for short cuts to building the revolutionary party.

  1. Rodriguez, C. Lenin and the Colonial Question, New International, 1(1)93-144, 1983.

    ↩