The Theory of Permanent Revolution and the Origins of Trotskyism
Christoph Vandreier
The following lecture was delivered by Christoph Vandreier, the national secretary of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Germany), at the SEP (US) International Summer School, held between August 2-9, 2025. It is the first part of a two-part lecture on the Origins of Trotskyism.
The WSWS will be publishing all the lectures at the school in the coming weeks. The introduction to the school by SEP National Chairman David North, “The place of Security and the Fourth International in the history of the Trotskyist movement” was published on August 13.
Trotskyism is essentially backwards, and rejects the revolutionary role of the peasantry. In essense, in modern days, it plays the role of “left” anticommunist, attack dog of empire against the legitimacy of AES on the left. That’s ignoring Trotsky’s treason, and allowing personal grudges to overtake his politics later in life. As an example of Trotskyism in action, the Chinese Trotskyists wished to fight Imperial Japan and the Kuomintang at the same time, knowing it would be suicide.
In short, Trotskyism is theoretically backwards and less developed than Marxism-Leninism, and Trotskyites in practice has historically served empire and opposed socialism in real life. Trotskyism, in the global context, is a fringe subcategory of Marxism largely found in western countries and pockets of Latin America. It’s the epitome of the failures of “Western Marxism.”
Most egregiously, Permanent Revolution is already a failure, the soviets were able to ally the proletariat with the peasantry and establish socialism, and continue to do so in AES countries today. Had the soviets committed to attacking the peasantry and merely hoping the western European working class would save them from the backlash, the Soviet Union would have fallen in the 20s-30s.
I will never understand the personal demoralization and intellectual dishonesty required for an individual to defend the bloody and counterrevolutionary legacy of Stalinism. There is not a trace of anticommunism in legitimate Trotskyism. Stalin, on the contrary, as the agency of imperialism in the workers movement, murdered hundreds of thousands of communist revolutionaries and Old Bolsheviks, and promoted a program of class collaboration with imperialism, which led to repeated disaster. The physical anhilalation of revolutionary cadres was devastating to Marxist political culture. The damage Stalin did to the reputation of communism in the workers movement is incalculable.
You want to talk about the revolutionary role of the peasentry at a time now in history when the world peasant population has shrunk to a fraction of its size and the proletarian working class makes up the majority of the world population? Pathetic. Trotsky’s theory, adopted by Lenin in April 1917, of the proletariat leading the peasantry in revolution to establish a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry was absolutely correct, as demonstrated in the victory of October 1917. Returning to the old pre-April 1917 formulation of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was a reactionary step away from the program of world socialist revolution, which strengthened the position of imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie.
Trotsky correctly predicted the result of Stalinist politics, which would be the restoration of capitalism by the initiative of the Stalinist bureaucracies, as was carried out by Deng in China in 1989 and Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1991. The political base of Stalinism is nationalism and class collaboration.
“Stalinism” largely refers to “Socialism in One Country,” which won out democratically over Permanent Revolution. This proved correct, socialism was solidified in the USSR, and Trotsky’s bitter jealousy turned him towards organized terrorism against the Soviet Union, and calls to overthrow the Soviet Union. Trotsky is the epitome of a wrecker. Stalin was never a collaborator with imperialism, unless you mean allying with the imperialist west against Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. You’re not going to find me finger-wagging siding with the West against Nazi Germany, that was absolutely the right move.
Yes, Trots that uphold Trotskyism when the peasantry is increasingly phased out in favor of industrialized agriculture are indeed silly. Trotskyism’s relevance was in the theoretical debates in the early Soviet Union, then proven false, and should have been forgotten then and there. Instead, it survives in the west, as it serves as an anticommunist form of Marxism. Western Marxists love purity and martrydom, but hate real revolution.
Trotsky predicted nothing correctly. Trotsky predicted that the peasantry would turn against the proletariat, which was the sole basis of Permanent Revolution. The liberalization under Gorbachev was not an inevitability. Deng’s reforms were not a betrayal of socialism, either, they stabilized growth while maintaining socialism.
Trots are, in theory and in practice, “left” anticommunists. They are useful for imperialism as they promote the anti-AES narrative among the left, harming solidarity and siding with the global north against the global south.
Arguably it wasn’t carried out in the USSR because it happened after Yeltsin’s coup dissolved it. One might argue that Gorbachev’s Perestroika would have inevitably led to that outcome, but we’ll never really know.
It hasn’t been carried out in China. China’s bourgeoisie don’t collaborate with the Chinese state so much as take orders from it. Previously:
If the state owns [the means of production], and the state also owns the money printer and also the banks (which are another form of money printing), then it’s not compelled to be run in the M-C-M’ capitalist mode of production, because it doesn’t need to make a profit, or even break even.
Furthermore, the capitalists in China have virtually no political power. Just look at the number of rich people who’ve received the death sentence with reprieve, or the property developers who were left to flail and go bankrupt, or the sorry state of billionaire Jack Ma.
Also what “imperialism” was Stalin involved with, and who were the “hundreds of thousands of communist revolutionaries and Old Bolsheviks” that Stalin murdered?
Your inability to understand a thing is not a particularly good argument against it, neither is anything else you’ve said here
Permanent Revolution is also the title of a pretty great Catch 22 album inspired by Trotsky
Interesting to see a sympathetic portrayal of Trotsky’s life in popular culture. It is bizarre how such a significant figure in modern history has been confined to relative obscurity. Whenever Trotsky is considered at all, his role is usually minimized and his person demonized. It is not hard to understand why. Between imperialism and Stalinism, he represented a serious political challenge to the forces of world reaction and embodied the power of political consciousness in the working class that reverberates to this day.
As charming as the album is (I gave it a few listens through) I would say it is not without serious problems. Despite the obvious sympathy and admiration for Trotsky, it gives the feeling of a well intentioned though ill-fated struggle of a lofty idealist who was ultimately powerless to stop the descent into the bloody grip of Stalinist reaction. In the end, we are left with impression of an exuberant and violent affair that ended in bloody ruin. What is there to admire or desire to repeat about that?
It also focuses too narrowly on the political turmoil within the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, while Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution emphasizes the primacy of the international situation in determining political programs and analyses. Entirely missing from the narrative are the development of the International Left Opposition, the experience of the Spanish Civil War, the struggle for a revolutionary program against the Nazis in Germany, and founding of the Fourth International, which are essential moments in the fight back against Stalinism.
The music is catchy and shows a range of stylistic expression. The political understanding of Trotsky leaves much to be desired.
Yeah, that was my reaction, too.
But Party Song is a banger
