Permanent revolution

The concept of permanent revolution referred to Marxist political thought to the seamless development of the democratic into a socialist revolution in semi-feudal or in backward capitalist countries (or even in colonies or semi-colonies ) and the international spread of this process.

Conceptual history

The term occurs for the first time in Karl Marx's early writings and is probably due to using the Jacobins phrase of the Revolutionary People's Assembly " in perpetuity ".

The first text in which the term " permanent revolution " was the bearer of a strategic political importance, was written by Marx Address of the Central Authority to the League of Communists of March 1850. Marx calls here the achievement of the revolutionary goals, " the revolution in permanence "which alone can guarantee the elimination of bourgeois-capitalist class rule and national delimitation of the movement.

After the revolutionary upheavals of 1905 in Russia, the term was again programmatic significance. At Rosa Luxembourg and Franz Mehring, he became the guiding principle for social democracy.

A central role was given the term in the work of Leon Trotsky. He expanded the concept to a systematic approach that combines various revolutions - strategic and political aspects. The Permanent Revolution here comprises three " inseparable parts of a whole ":

Josef Stalin labeled the theory of permanent revolution of Trotsky as a " variety of the Mensheviks ." During the Revolution, Mao Tse Tung, the concept took a new methodological and systematic application. They called there the progress of an economic, political and ideological or technical development to the next level.

Marx

In his " Address of the Central Authority " Marx tried to draw lessons from the failed German revolution of 1848/49. In his estimation, the bourgeoisie was in contrast to the French Revolution of 1789 is no longer prepared to carry out the democratic and national goals of the bourgeois revolution consistently, and made ​​a pact for fear of the claims of the workers rather with the monarchist reaction. The interest and the task of the working class is it, however, " to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from power, captured the state power by the proletariat and the association of the proletarians not only in one country, but in all the leading countries of the world is so far advanced that competition between the proletarians has stopped in these countries and that at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers ".

Marx argued for the independent political organization of the working class, which must be released from its role as a left appendage of the bourgeois democrats to either together to fight with them for the common goals, but to go beyond that as soon as the conservative self-restraint of the revolution could be overcome.

This strategy is by no means corresponded to the 1850 actually existing in Germany power relations: the 1848/49 commenced revolution was already defeated and the German proletariat to weak to play a leading role. However, this document is considered " amazing anticipation of the social and political dynamics of the October Revolution of 1917 ."

Trotsky

When Trotsky put forward the ' theory of permanent revolution, " one of the most influential concepts behind his practical activities in the years before the October Revolution is that he developed in an exchange with Alexander Parvus. She was an essential part of his revolution approach which should be applied to all backward countries worldwide.

After Trotsky held the "moderate" Socialists take the traditional idea divorced " stages " of the revolution firmly. Only then should the Tsardom be ruined by the bourgeoisie before the proletarian revolution could be carried out by the Labour Party. The "radical" social democrats, however, did not trust to the bourgeoisie, to really bring the overcoming of Tsarism to its logical conclusion. They assumed the bourgeoisie rather that they 'll make a pact for fear of the proletariat is mobilizing with the reaction, and therefore called for a common "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry." This was linked with the expectation that the peasantry will own political party engendering of the Labour Party after the fall of Tsarism a coalition government would be able to form.

Trotsky advocated along with very few other Social Democrats, the third position is that only the conquest of political power by the workers and poor peasants, based on the mass of the oppressed rural population, would allow the complete and lasting solution to the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. Although Trotsky recognized so that the role of the peasantry in the revolution, but stressed that their main demands (such as the agrarian reform ) could be met only by a working class in power.

In his book, Results and Prospects ( 1905/ 06) Trotsky gave the " theory of permanent revolution " for the first time a uniform written form. In this treatise, he analyzes the nature of Tsarist Russia, the ratio of the different forces of the impending Russian revolution to each other, the general expression of the society and summarized taking into account the various bourgeois revolutions since 1789. Trotsky, that the national bourgeoisie in the course of capitalist Genesis their had lost progressive role, and foresaw that they would necessarily take in a backward country like the former Tsarist Empire, which ( etc. land reform, creation of parliamentary democracy ) stood before the fulfillment of the tasks of the democratic revolution, a passive to counter-revolutionary role, how the experiences of 1905 and 1917 proved.

In his view, the working class would have the only consistently oppositional force to take the lead, while first animate the general struggle of the peasantry during the revolution would later find their column on the land in the village poverty. The revolution would take place in two phases:

All this is according to Trotsky, however, only under the assumption of a world revolution; would this not happen every revolution led by the working class would be doomed to failure.

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