Date: Mon, 18 Mar 96 09:33:23 GMT
From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Permanent Revolution and Nicaragua



A couple of points :

1. It is true to say that Trotsky developed the theory of
permanent revolution in a Russian context.

He did not put it forward as a general theory until
after the China debacle, when Stalin forced the CP
first into alliance with the Nationalists, and then
with the more left wing nationalists, each time resulting
in massacres of CP members and crushing defeats of
the working class.

At this point, Trostsky put forward the theory as being
generally true. In my opinion, he was right to do so.
His basic class analysis was correct. 

[ He didn't do so earlier at least in part because the
basic Leninist framework was quite satisfactory anyway :
support for nationalist movements combined with not
"painting them red" , to quote Lenin. Tactically, Trosky
decided to argue from this perpective rather than publicising
his own, superior, analysis - in retrospect, a mistake, 
since a working class approach to fighting Imperialism
became a great deal harder to work out through the 
distortions of Stalinism than it might have been if
he had argued for hos own theories when he still had
influence in the Comintern. Hey ho, as they say.]

The theory of permanent revolution was merely the 
political consequence of the theory of combined and
uneven development.

Because of the uneven and combined development of capitalism,
there existed in all the colonial countries islands of advanced
capitalist relations in seas of colonial backwardness. This
had created working classes in these countries, which, to
express it crudely, scared the shit out of the local ruling
classes. These ruling classes instinctively understood the
theory of permanent revolution - that if they, the nationalist
bourgeoisie, set the masses into conflict with the Imperialists,
that this would inevitably lead to social demands being raised.

This meant that Trotsky was right to argue that the bourgeoisie
had become a counter revolutionary class, that therefore only
the working class could solve the national question, and that
inevitably the working class would raise its own demands, which
could only be solved in an international context.

Trostky however, failed to see the potential role a socially
significant middle class could play, especially when the working
class was tied politically to the nation bougeoisie by the 
politics of Stalinism.

This wasn't exactly his fault, as these social developments
hadn't developed fully in his lifetime.

2. You are right to point out the problems Cuba poses
for the theory of permanent revolution. However, I 
think most of Africa and Asia poses similar problems,
without  the revolutionary attractiveness of Cuba.

I think any update to the theory of permanent revolution
needs to be able to deal with Ghandi, Nehru, and Nasser,
and all the "socialist" African regimes from Algeria to
Zimbabwe [ some of which had a significant effect on eg
Malcolm X, CLT James, etc ] as well as Castro.

Adam Rose

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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