The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects

“Permanent revolution” calls Leon Trotsky to mind as surely as “relativity” does Albert Einstein. In their originality and scope, these two famous theories have a symmetry. Leon Trotsky was a leading Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was a central leader of the Russian revolution and an influential politician in the early days of the Soviet Union. He was Commissar for Foreign Affairs, founder and commander of the Red Army and Commissar of War. He led the struggle against Stalin’s bureaucratization of the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union in the Great Purge. As the founder of the Fourth International, he continued in exile to encourage workers and oppressed peoples to unite against capitalism, and for socialist revolution. PRAISE FOR ‘THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION’ I’m very much of Trotsky’s line – the permanent revolution. – Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela Trotsky’s writings on the permanent revolution are the theoretical mainspring of proletarian revolutionary strategy and are an obligatory study for all who aspire to lead the working-class in the struggle for socialism, whether in the capitalist countries of the West or in the backward colonial countries. – Li Fu-jen, co-founder, Communist League of China The whole essence of Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution lies in the idea that the colonial bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of the backward countries are incapable of carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. – Ted Grant, editor, Militant