Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The phrase has come to stand for a running together, into one continuous process, of two types of revolutionary transformation. Of obscure origin, it was introduced into Marxist thought by Karl Marx himself. But the full-blown theory of permanent revolution is associated with the name of Leon Trotsky who, from 1905 until his death in 1940, developed, defended and systematized the idea of such a double revolutionary transformation, for countries at an early stage of capitalist development. The term itself is not altogether apt to the meaning it has acquired, seeming to suggest, rather, an outlook of never-ending upheaval or radical change. Except when caricatured by opponents, however, it has not been put forward in this sense. Marx's discussion of Germany's political prospects in the mid-nineteenth century indicates the principal themes. A merely democratic or ‘bourgeois-democratic’ R evolution – one, that is, directed against political autocracy and precapitalist economic relations – was, he thought, problematic in that country. For the chief beneficiary of such a partial revolution, the bourgeoisie, lacked the political will to carry it through, being afraid of the class beneath it, the proletariat. The latter, as the only truly radical class, could and must take the initiative: fighting, though, not just for the democratic revolution that was necessary for a still-backward Germany ... log in or subscribe to read full text