Talk:Permanent revolution

message: I must voice strong disagreement with the very first statement of the article that permanent in Permanent Revolution means "final", not "continuous". Clearly, the disagreement is not purely linguistic (even though a Russian writer would hardly ever use word permanent in the sense of final), as this unusual interpretation takes out a fundamental property of the theory.
To explain, allow me (in the worst tradition of Soviet Marxism ;) ) to quote Introduction to Trotsky's Permanent Revolution at length, adding my own emphasize.
"The theory of the permanent revolution, which originated in 1905, declared war upon these ideas and moods. It pointed out that the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations lead directly, in our epoch, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and that the dictatorship of the proletariat puts socialist tasks on the order of the day. Therein lay the central idea of the theory. While the traditional view was that the road to the dictatorship of the proletariat led through a long period of democracy, the theory of the permanent revolution established the fact that for backward countries the road to democracy passed through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus democracy is not a regime that remains self-sufficient for decades, but is only a direct prelude to the socialist revolution. Each is bound to the other by an unbroken chain. Thus there is established between the democratic revolution and the socialist reconstruction of society a permanent state of revolutionary development.
The second aspect of the ‘permanent’ theory has to do with the socialist revolution as such. For an indefinitely long time and in constant internal struggle, all social relations undergo transformation. Society keeps on changing its skin. Each stage of transformation stems directly from the preceding. This process necessarily retains a political character, that is, it develops through collisions between various groups in the society which is in transformation. Outbreaks of civil war and foreign wars alternate with periods of ‘peaceful’ reform. Revolutions in economy, technique, science, the family, morals and everyday life develop in complex reciprocal action and do not allow society to achieve equilibrium. Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such.
The international character of the socialist revolution, which constitutes the third aspect of the theory of the permanent revolution, flows from the present state of economy and the social structure of humanity. Internationalism is no abstract principle but a theoretical and political reflection of the character of world economy, of the world development of productive forces and the world scale of the class struggle. The socialist revolution begins on national foundations—but it cannot be completed within these foundations. The maintenance of the proletarian revolution within a national framework can only be a provisional state of affairs, even though, as the experience of the Soviet Union shows, one of long duration. In an isolated proletarian dictatorship, the internal and external contradictions grow inevitably along with the successes achieved. If it remains isolated, the proletarian state must finally fall victim to these contradictions. The way out for it lies only in the victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries. Viewed from this standpoint, a national revolution is not a self-contained whole; it is only a link in the international chain. The international revolution constitutes a permanent process, despite temporary declines and ebbs"
Conclusion: Permanent indeed means permanent means continuous means a process, a dialectical, self-contradictory assension. If you feel I am mistaken here, please explain why and how. Otherwise, please consider removing the first statement in parentheses from the paper.
05:17, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Permanent means "final"?

message: Please add references. —Theo  (Talk) 19:47, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like it now has plenty of references, so I've removed the cleanup-verify tag VoluntarySlave 02:50, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: I propose that all the stuff on the workers' states can be cut. Permanent Revolution is not a strategy for workers' state. --DuncanBCS 19:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contributed to the 1953 split? 

message: " This text has been plagiarised from http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Permanent-Revolution"
:Um, its the other way around, actually. Look at the bottom of that nationmaster page and you will see a link back to here. R Lowry 12:28, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Copyvio (not)

message: There are 4**4 organizations each claiming to be the one and only true inheritor to Leon Trotsky.  Wikipedia already has its List of Trotskyist internationals and doesn't need it replicated.
But this stuff isn't NPOV, it's clearly party line from the David North-flavor ICFI. Tribune 00:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  so, THIS is where Gerry Healy went after he died 

message: The opening paragraph is all esoteric Marxist jargon that very few people will understand.  That said, the precise information in it could and should probably be relocated in the article.
Jacrosse 15:27, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening Paragraph 

message: :I don't know what the overview looked like before today, but I was very pleased to read it as it stands now (don't remember what it said before. Not gonna look). Job well done: whoever is complaining doesn't have a clue. Can't get much more succinct and clear than that on such a difficult topic.
:The only thing I feel to be missing would be a reference to combined and uneven development right up front. I am no expert on this, unfortunately; but it seems to me that Trotsky's advance here on Marx' work is exactly what is different between Marx' version of permanent revolution and Trotsky's: how there was little evidence of combined and uneven development yet in Marx' day, in the colonies, etc. -- whereas in Trotsky's time (as now) we have the full "development" (yech) of the comprador system, etc. What we have here is an unforeseen development which Trotsky discovered and analyzed -- and which we can all thank him for.
:And I believe something should now be added about permanent revolution as it relates to the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Talk about an ideal laboratory situation to understand this dialectical process.
:Pazouzou 04:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thats for that. Yes, we should add in CAUD. However, I don't see what we can add about the Bolivarian revolution, other than to nod to Chavez's use of the term. Any suggestions? --Duncan 07:34, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Combined and Uneven development

message: I have just reverted a wholesale rewrite, unreferenced of the article. The general line of this is that the theory of permanent revolution was the idea that socialism cannot exist in one country. Trotsky did argue this, but the theory of permanent revolution predates that idea, and orginated in 1905 -- with a long hertiage. It is an opposition to stagism; socialism in one country came decades later. --Duncan 23:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "permanent revolution states that the road to socialism must be an international effort by many nations" 

message: I'm missing the implications of the Permanent Revolution as it differs to Socialism in one country. Since this was a struggle-between Stalin and Trotsky-that determined Soviet policy and thus world history it has (IMHO) more importance than the strength of the relation to Marx' theses. Prezen 18:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You have be right about relative importance. The implications concerned the importance of the USSR buuilding the Communist International as a revolutionary movement. Trotsky's theory, and Marx's, was that the capitalist class could not be trsuted to complete the bourgeois revolution, and therefore that the toiling masses need to organise independently to complete the revolutionary process and make it permanent. Stalin's theory was revolutionary overturns should not be attempted, and that the Communist parties should subordinate themselves to the leadership of the bourgois nationalists, for example the Nationalist Party of China. --Duncan 19:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Implications of Trotsky's theory 

message: I read a book on Trotsky an few years back that mentioned "Evolutionary Communism". Is this the same thing as Permanent Revolution or something different?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Septagram (talk • contribs) 04:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, that is Cabot's theory of utopian socialism. --Duncan (talk) 11:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evolutionary Communism? 

message: Addressing in absence of any discussion supporting same. Lycurgus (talk) 14:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  2010-03 tagging 

message: Does it mean "lasting" or "continuous" ?--85.104.65.134 (talk) 21:28, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaning of Permanent 

message: Permanentna revolucija 188.252.142.1 (talk) 19:38, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Povjest 

message: The "Permanent revolution" is described in sources almost exclusively as the Trotskyist concept. It is another matter that the same expression/wording, with a different meaning, was previously used by Marx. See book Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record by Richard B. Day, ‎Daniel Gaido, 2009, for example. Same in EB: : "Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” held that, historically, an economic system had to be seen as a world system rather than a national one. All national economic development was affected by the laws of the world market, even though such regional factors as location, population, available resources, and pressure from surrounding countries made the rate of development different in each country. Thus, in Trotsky’s view, the Russian Revolution, to be permanently successful, would have to depend on revolutions in other countries, particularly in western Europe." This needs to be fixed. Lenin and others also supported this idea, at least during a period of time. Based on this concept, they have created the Third International and arguably (according to some sources) also the Soviet Empire.  My very best wishes (talk) 16:19, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: In addition, the current summary of the page is poor to say the least. "Trotsky's permanent revolution is an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism." and so on. "is an explanation of how". No only this is not understandable, but what is the concept? This should be something similar to text in EB. My very best wishes (talk) 00:57, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Looking at other tertiary sources, that one, Encyclopedia.com explains this subject well and should be used for making the summary. That one is less clear, but it also says: Trotsky acknowledged that the material base for socialism did not exist in Russia but he contended that this could be resolved by the second part of the theory—the international character of the revolution. Russia was just a link in the chain; it could not survive without the support of the European proletariat.. Yes. My very best wishes (talk) 01:27, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Thus, in Trotsky’s view, the lasting success of a socialist revolution (e.g., the October Revolution) depends on revolutions in other countries. . 
*Probably the best short article online from Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy:  My very best wishes (talk) 01:46, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Incorrect focus and poor summary