 This question of the theory of permanent revolution might seem to many people as an old polemic that took place about 100 years ago in relation to the strategy for the Russian Revolution, the strategy of the Marxists in the Russian Revolution, but in fact is one that is not only limited to that particular period and that particular country but that has worldwide implications and that I would say is still very relevant for today in regards to the strategy for revolution in backward countries, countries of late capitalist development of which there are still quite a lot. This theory of permanent revolution was first formulated by Leon Trotsky in 1904, 1906 and was summarized in a book called Results and Prospects, which Wellread has published together with the permanent revolution in this edition, which I'm guessing is available from the bookshop over there. And at that time Trotsky before, during and after the 1905 revolution in which he played an important role, a very important role, tried to summarize his main conclusions as for the strategy of the Marxists, the strategy of the proletariat in the revolution in Russia. And as I say later on this was shown to have implications, more general implications in other countries which were in one way or another similar to Russia. At that time Russia was a very backward country dominated by the peasantry with dictatorship, very semi feudal class relations in the countryside dominated by big land owners, small peasants and a lot of landless peasants. But at the same time the country had had what Trotsky described as an uneven and combined development. There was this sea of backwardness in the countryside, but there were pockets of capitalist industrial development in the main cities and in the west of the country. So this was a country where the classical tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution had not been completely carried out, in many cases not carried out at all, i.e. the task of national liberation, the task of above all the agrarian reform had not been carried out. But at the same time was a country where there were pockets of capitalist development and this capitalist development was also the grafting of the latest and most development technique of capitalism in the advanced capitalist countries onto this sea of backwardness. So you didn't have a normal development of capitalism in Russia as it had taken place in other more advanced capitalist countries but it was a combination of different stages of development in the same country and this provoked a number of debates in Russia about the strategy of the Marxists. First of all, there were two main trends, two main points of view within Russian social democracy, that of the Mensheviks and that of the Bolsheviks. Both trends agreed on one question and that is the main tasks of the revolution in Russia were the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution, the establishment of a democratic republic and the agrarian reform above all. They never contemplated the idea that the task in a backward country like Russia was to fight for socialism and workers' power. So the main difference between these two trends was as to which class was to lead the revolution and to roll the different classes we're going to play in that particular revolution which they all agreed its character was bourgeois democratic revolution. The Mensheviks, i.e. the reformist or right-wing element within the Russian social democracy, which is the way Marxists call themselves at that time, social democrats, they argued that because the tasks of the revolution were chiefly the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution that the bourgeois had to lead the revolution and that the working class which was the party that they represented, the party of the workers had to play the role of being the extreme left-wing, the left-wing of that movement but always subordinate to the bourgeois liberals and for the bourgeois liberals was the task to lead that revolution and to take power after the overthrow of the old regime. That was more or less the position that the Bolsheviks held which obviously had lots of implications in their practical work in their approach to the bourgeois liberals which they had different groupings and organizations at that time they were very active in petitioning the king, petitioning for a duma for a democratic parliament and so on. The Bolsheviks had a different point of view. They agreed the main tasks of the revolution were bourgeois democratic tasks but they didn't think that the bourgeois liberals were capable of leading such a revolution and they developed this idea also on the basis of their own practice the bourgeois liberals were coward, they wanted the bourgeois democratic republic but they were too afraid to mobilize the masses the main form of agitation was petitions, banquets asking politely from the old regime to concede democratic reforms and so on and it was in the class character of the leadership and the weakness of this social class in Russia furthermore as a matter of fact the capitalist class in Russia in as much as it existed was a weak capitalist class and had many ties, economic, family, personal ties with the land owners so from that point of view it was very difficult for them to be consistent in carrying out one of the main tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution which was the agrarian reform, the agrarian revolution the distribution of the land to the peasants in order to create a class of small capitalist owners in the countryside and a national market for the products of the bourgeoisie they were therefore cowardly, very meek in their demands and the Bolsheviks stressed this point they said look the only class that can really push for a genuine agrarian reform is the class of the poor peasants this is a petty bourgeois class but it's completely different from the bourgeois have links with the land owners, the small peasants they have an interest in this revolution they said therefore the proletariat in workers in the cities must forge a close alliance with the poor peasants particularly the poorest sections of the peasants this is the only way that we can push forward the revolution and carry out a sweeping agrarian revolution and establish a democratic republic and they said therefore that this was Lenin's position that a close alliance between the workers and peasants was the only way to carry out the revolution in Russia there should be no trust, should be put on the bourgeois liberals who were already afraid of revolution there is another element here that since, as I explained before Russia was a country of late capitalist development had arrived late to the scene of history from the point of view of the development of capitalism at the same time that the bourgeoisie was supposed to be fighting the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution against the old regime, the land owners, the Tsar and so on a powerful working class had already emerged in the cities and this powerful working class, if mobilized would become a threat to the interests of the capitalist class they didn't want to fully mobilize the working class this is a fact that had already been present in earlier bourgeois revolutions even in the classic bourgeois revolution of France in 1789 you can see how in reality it's not the bourgeois that is the motor force of that revolution it's the plebeian masses of Paris, the artisans, the sans-culottes and so on that provide the most radical battering ram against the old regime under the leadership of the bourgeois the bourgeois are the ones who provide the ideas who finally benefit from that revolution but at the same time they are also afraid and it comes a point where the plebeian masses of Paris are going further and further to the left at one point they impose the law of the maximum the law of the maximum in prices and so on and they start to push for some measures that are already in a very embryonic form anti-capitalist measures and at this point the big bourgeois intervenes this has gone far enough and tries to push the pendulum back although never as back as restoring the old feudal regime but already in that classical bourgeois revolution you can see the contradiction between the plebeian masses the ones who are fighting the revolution in practice and the bourgeois who are afraid of the popular mobilization of the masses will go further than what they want but obviously in Paris in 1789 there wasn't a working class like there was in Petrograd in 1917 the situation is qualitatively different but already in 1848 for instance in the bourgeois revolutions of 1848 you can already see how for instance Marx and Engels criticize the cowardness of the bourgeois in carrying out their own revolution and in that respect they are actually the first ones to use the phrase of permanent revolution but in Russia in 1917 the situation was qualitatively different the bourgeois were very afraid of the independent mobilization of the working class even though the working class parties had set themselves as the main task the bourgeois democratic revolution the capitalist had as I said before all sorts of links and ties with the old regime with the land owners, with the monarchy and so on and this was the reason why Lenin formulated the idea of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry i.e. this was going to be a dictatorship but not a dictatorship of the workers not a government of the workers but a government of the workers in alliance with the peasants it was the way in which he attempted to formulate what class forces had to lead that revolution i.e. the poor peasants the workers could not do this without an alliance with the poor peasants and it was not clear at this time whether the peasantry could play an independent role in this revolution or not this was one of the matters for discussion it was much disputed and it was only resolved in 1917 in the practical experience of the Russian Revolution there was at that time there were a number of peasant parties but the main one was the SR party the Social Revolutionary Party drew its strength mainly from the peasant masses and it was not clear to Lenin at this point what would be the relationship in this government this dictatorship between the workers and the peasants the relative specific way that each one of these two class forces would play in that alliance but it was clear to Lenin that this was not going to be a bourgeois republic a bourgeois democratic republic something else, it was not led by the bourgeois liberal school not consistently carry out this revolution and come to power it had to be the workers in alliance with the peasants Trotsky explains that this formula had an algebraic character because the relative role of the two different classes was not at that point yet clear but there was a third position within Russian social democracy and that was the position that Trotsky formulated in 1904 that he developed during the 1905 revolution and he finally put in writing in results and prospects incidentally I just forgot that Lenin's position had another part to it in Russia the tasks of bourgeois democratic they can only be carried out by the workers and the peasants not by the bourgeois liberals but he then added this revolution in Russia will then be supplemented by revolution in Europe where conditions for a socialist revolution do exist because of the development of capitalism because of the strength of the working class the development of technique and science and technology and capitalism, the development of the productive forces is much more advanced and then the European workers moving over to a socialist revolution will then connect again with the Russian revolution and help us move in the direction of socialism so Lenin also had an internationalist perspective to his approach to the strategy for the revolution but he didn't think the socialist revolution was possible or was posed in Russia at that time only when the European workers as a result of the spark of the Russian revolution will move towards socialism and then socialism will be possible in Russia on the basis of that the position of Trotsky was also very close to the position of the Bolsheviks in his mind he also thought obviously the bourgeois liberals could not play a leading role in this revolution but he developed this position a bit further and he argued clearly that the peasantry could not play an independent role in the revolution he argued that the peasantry is a very heterogeneous class it's upper layers, rich peasants who on some instances employ labor of other peasants and so on, have big extensions of land and so on they tend, the upper layers of the peasantry they tend to come closer to the ruling class in the cities, the bourgeoisie while the lower layers, the poor peasants or the landless peasants tend to come closer to the class interest identify themselves, identify them with a class in the city which is the proletariat, the working class also because of the very individualistic approach the peasant wants the land for himself he wants the division of the land he doesn't have a collective approach instinctively therefore the peasantry could not play an independent role and had to seek support, lean on one or another of the main classes in a capitalist society in the cities, the bourgeois or the workers and therefore the bourgeois democratic revolution could only be carried out by a dictatorship of the proletariat, dictatorship of the workers with the support of the poor peasants so this is already kind of resolving the algebraic nature of Lenin's formulation he doesn't say this is an alliance of equals he says that the working class must play the leading role with the support of the poor layers of the peasantry and he then said another thing he also argued that once the workers come to power in an alliance and relying on the strength of the peasants in the countryside they will obviously first carry out the main task of the bourgeois democratic above all the agrarian revolution the distribution of the land the breaking up of the big land owning states but they will not be satisfied with that they will not be able to remain within those limits of bourgeois democratic tasks and they will be forced very soon without any continuity they will be forced to make inroads into bourgeois property relations that's what he argued and therefore the revolution which started as a bourgeois democratic revolution would in a permanent way become a socialist revolution or will start to carry out some of the tasks of the socialist revolution and in this sense the revolution will be permanent but he also said that the revolution will be permanent in another way he said that because of the existence of the capitalist system as a worldwide system which links all the countries to these international relations the revolution cannot be limited to one country and therefore it will spread it will necessarily have to spread to other countries in order to be completed other countries of much higher level of development of the productive forces a much higher level of development of capitalism where there were stronger more developed working classes and in this sense the revolution will be permanent as well it will be permanent because it will go from bourgeois democratic tasks over to socialist tasks it will be permanent because it will start on the national level with national demands and in a national context but it will then have to spread internationally now this is important to understand this because for instance just to give you an example in Venezuela where in the last 15 years of the Venezuelan revolution the question of permanent revolution has been discussed a lot some people have distorted the idea of permanent revolution so that for them from a reformist point of view it means that we are always in revolution and the revolution will never reach a turning point a qualitative turning point in which we'll abolish capitalism but it will be a permanent revolution little by little they transform the revolutionary idea of permanent revolution into a completely reformist, gradualist interpretation of these words which is obviously not correct now Trotsky was wrong on many things in 1905 and in the debates inside the Social Democratic Party which he admitted himself later on but on this question he was the more fast-sighted of the theoreticians of Russian social democracy he was able to foresee in advance the necessary strategy but also the balance of forces how the revolution had to necessarily develop this debate was closed in 1917 by practice and we also have to understand that we as Marxists we do not base ourselves just on ideas ideas have to be tested against the proof of reality do not correspond with reality then there's something wrong with the ideas not with reality and in 1917 it was demonstrated in practice and Lenin came over to the point of view of Trotsky in relation to this question particularly you can see this in the writings of Lenin just before he arrived in Russia in 1917 and particularly most clearly formulated in the April thesis in 1917 but also in the letters from a father he was writing letters on tactics and so on he was already striving towards this idea one very clearly the bourgeois liberals couldn't be trusted but also that in reality it was to be the working class that was to lead the revolution in Russia in an alliance with the poor peasants but also that this could not be limited to purely bourgeois democratic tasks but also had to make inroads into capitalist property and the old formula of a democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants of the proletariat and the peasantry was abandoned at this time by Lenin he was very emphatic anyone who now after the February Revolution still defends the old formula of living in the past he was criticising heavily the right wing of the party represented amongst others by Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin who had led the party from February until Lenin arrived back in Russia and had put forward a strategy there was not only the old strategy but it was a very reformist moderate interpretation of that old strategy in which they said basically we must support the provisional government we must support the leadership of the Soviets the leadership of the Soviets were then in support of the provisional government basically they positioned the Bolshevik party as the far left of the provisional government as a left critic of the provisional government not with the intention of replacing it not with the intention of establishing a dictatorship of the workers in an alliance with the peasants to support this provisional government in carrying out the bourgeois democratic revolution something which the provisional government was completely unable incapable and unwilling to do as was proven in practice the provisional government didn't solve the question of the nationalities didn't solve the question of the land and didn't certainly not solve the question of the war it was incapable unwilling and did not solve any of these questions in fact if you see the whole period of the Russian revolution in 1917 you see how the peasant party the social the SR the social revolutionaries split down the middle after the in October in two clearly differentiated wings the right wing SRs they went over right over to the site of counter-revolution to armed counter-revolution they ended up in the same camp as the old regime as the sadist regime and the left social revolutionaries who for a period of time were in an alliance with the Bolsheviks they were part of the first coalition government and they supported the Bolsheviks in as much as the Bolsheviks were the ones that were carrying out the gradient reform the social revolutionary party for the division of the land and the distribution of the land what happened with the left SRs later on is a different matter but what Trotsky had said either the peasant league will not play an independent role and will gravitate towards one or other of the classes in the cities was also proven to be correct and this was permanent revolution in any other name the strategy of permanent revolution was proven in practice not only proven in practice was part of the program of the Bolshevik party after the taking of power all the way into the 1920s and there was no debate about this the debate had been settled in practice in 1920 for instance if you read the first of the second congress of the communist international about the national and colonial questions it is clearly explained about the need for the workers to play an independent role about the question that the countries should not be divided in countries that are right for socialist revolution that are not right for socialist revolution it says we live in the idea of Soviet power which can go over to Soviet power regardless of the level of economic development by virtue of the existence of already Soviet power in the Soviet Union but in 1924 Stalin and Boharin created this debate which had not existed in 1917 about the question of socialism in one country they proposed the idea that because of they said special circumstances of Russia being a very big country with lots of natural resources and over a big extension of land and so on that it was possible to build socialism in one country in reality this was not so much a theory that came from analyzing concrete circumstances a reaction of the bureaucracy that was already establishing itself as an independent force in Russia a conservative reaction there was a certain element of tiredness all these years of strife and struggle the civil war in Russia the defeats of the revolution in different European countries the defeat in Germany in Hungary in Italy the perspective of world revolution was moving further away into the horizon and the Soviet bureaucracy wanted to establish their own power and privilege in Russia and forget about all this struggle internationally and then they formulated the theory to back this the theory of socialism in one country and with socialism in one country also came sorry also came the revival of the two-stage theory as a strategy for other countries i.e. that in other countries of backward countries countries of late capitalist development somehow the working class had to support the revolutionary role of the national bourgeoisie in those countries the first place where this was put into practice and it was a complete disaster a tragedy in a massacre was in China in 1925 1927 revolution the communist international the communist party under the leadership and guidance of Stalin and others Radik and others they pushed the young communist party in China to pursue a policy which was completely at odds with the experience of the Russian Revolution in fact it was a policy whereby which contradicted the congresses and documents of the communist international they forced the communist party to enter and join the Kuomintang and to lose any independence they basically had to give up the paper they had to basically dissolve themselves into the Kuomintang because the Kuomintang somehow bourgeois nationalist party was to carry out the Chinese the Chinese revolution in fact this went so far as to the point where Chiang Kai-shek the leader of the Kuomintang was invited to the executive committee of the communist international to participate in the debates and the Kuomintang was an observer to the communist international completely the opposite of what the thesis and resolutions on the national colonial question said in 1920 sorry congress of the communist international first they supported the Kuomintang leadership and the Kuomintang leadership swiftly proceeded to smash the communist party they destroyed the communist chaos they killed the trade union organizers and they basically attacked the communist party in a very sharp way then later on in order to cover up for this disastrous strategy and policy then they decided the Stalinist leadership of the communist international they decided that they had to support the left Kuomintang which had split around that time but the left Kuomintang basically proceeded in the same way to attack the communist now the experience of the 1925-1927 communist Chinese revolution is extremely important because almost to the detail these events were then replicated in the 1950s in the 1960s in many colonial and former colonial countries where the communist parties applied exactly the same policies with exactly the same disastrous results not only this but the communist international leadership the Stalin the Stalin leadership of the communist international did not draw any lessons any conclusions from this scandalous disaster, debacle and massacre in fact they adopted completely wholesale the old mainstream policy of two stages i.e. that first you had to have a bourgeois democratic revolution in which the bourgeois liberals or the progressive sections of the bourgeois were to play the main role and the role of the communists was to support them uncritically dissolve within that movement and then only later on after a certain period of capitalist development will then the question of socialist revolution be posed and the communist party could play a role as I said this was to have completely disastrous effects particularly after the Second World War when we saw a massive uprising of the colonial peoples against the domination of the imperialist powers in Africa, in Asia in Latin America and in many of these countries where the communist parties were in existence and they had large support they followed exactly this policy to disastrous consequences in Indonesia for instance the communist party was very strong was a party that organized more than a million members and had perhaps 10 million in party linked organizations of peasants workers and intellectuals and so on and they basically had a policy of uncritical support for for Sukarno was a bourgeois allegedly anti-imperialist bourgeois progressive and they supported him to the point when it was a military coup and the communist party was smashed with the death of a million or more people in the 1960s similar situation happened in countries like Iraq and Sudan in the 1950s and 60s where the communist party was a large force that was able to mobilize hundreds of thousands and millions of people but also followed a completely wrong strategy of support for bourgeois liberals for progressive army officers and so on who as soon as they came to power turned around and destroyed the communist party because they feared that working class masses would go further than what they intended in Latin America this was also the case for many years even though in Latin America the original leaders of the communist parties as it could not be in any other way had a completely different policy they had a policy of permanent revolution for instance the founder of the communist party in Cuba Julio Antonio Mella in the 1920s he basically said in the struggle between the foreign thief the imperialists and the national thief the national bourgeois the local thief attempts to gather the support of the local working class but as soon as the working class starts to move the local thief realizes that this is a danger for him and enters into an alliance with the foreign thief against the local workers this is a permanent revolution position which was at that time not unusual because that was the policy of the communist international the leader of the communist leader and founder of the communist party in Peru José Carlos Mariátegui also had developed a similar position and clashed with the Stalinists because of him having that position of permanent revolution in Peru and for the whole of Latin America but then in the 1940s this policy in Latin America adopted a particularly cruel twist because the position of the communist international at that time was one of the struggle between fascism and democracy in the context of the second world war and in Latin America the struggle between fascism and democracy meant support for US imperialism because US imperialism was on the side of democracy in the second world war against fascism so you had the communist parties like the communist party in Libya, the communist party in Argentina the communist party in Cuba entering into alliances or supporting from outside elements, political parties in their own countries which were basically puppets of US imperialism just because US imperialism was on the side of democracy in Cuba for instance the Cuban communist party entered the first government of Batista in 1940 1942 I think it was with two ministers the communist party was legal and was allowed to dominate the trade unions in a change for their support for the Batista regime in 1942 this was completely a criminal policy that had nothing to do with communism or with Leninism and in fact was the Stalinists adopting the old two-stage theory of the mainstream I would like to finish with a couple of examples which I think demonstrate the theory of permanent revolution and its validity one is a negative example if you look at the history of the Cuban revolution in 1959 you will see that the leadership of the Cuban revolution Fidel Castro, Raul and Che Guevara they did not have a strategy of a dictatorship of the proletariat or the workers coming to power in order to solve the national democratic revolution in Cuba, on the contrary they were bourgeois democrats they were mostly coming from petty bourgeois layers of society and they wanted to solve, they did want to solve the national democratic tasks of the revolution in Cuba i.e. national independence from US imperialist domination agrarian reform which was quite an important issue in Cuba and generally a democratic republic because there had been very little democracy in the 40 or 50 years of independence in Cuba and the country had been completely under the boot of US imperialism and they came to power with this idea they never intended to violate private property rights or to expropriate the means of production, you can see it in all of the statements the history will absolve me, which is the program that Castro presented when he was tried for the Moncada Barracks assault in 1953 in any of the public statements the program of the 26 of July movement, you will not see any of those measures that you can describe as socialist or anti-capitalist nevertheless when they came to power in 1959 they were genuinely wanted to solve these problems and they found themselves in a very short space of time of 2 or 3 years were advancing in that direction of the national democratic revolution they were forced to expropriate capitalism and capitalism had been abolished in Cuba by 1962-1963 they first started in a conflict with the United States they expropriated all United States first they didn't expropriate them but they intervened them and then later on they expropriated US companies, US sugar mills US telephone company the US telecoms company the US refining companies and so on and finally they found themselves having expropriated capitalism without that having been their original aim so in a negative way this demonstrates that the national democratic revolution can only be completed by the expropriation of capitalism in a backward country there are other problems of the Cuban revolution which we can discuss some other time but this is an important question I also like to mention in this respect Venezuela in Venezuela there's been a revolutionary process that was open for many years now it was open in 1998 and again at the beginning when Chávez came to power was elected in 98 this was not just the election of a democratic or progressive president it was a revolutionary movement in the sense that the masses participated they took the initiative, they started organizing at the local level and so on but in any case the program of Chávez was program of progressive reforms in fact during the 98 election campaign he came to Britain he spoke at the Oxford Union I think and he praised Tony Blair he said I'm for a third way something that is not communism and is not capitalism obviously that's not what Tony Blair understood for the third way but in this confused in a confused way Chávez had those ideas right of cleaning the politics in Venezuela from corruption and nepotism and so on of introducing progressive reforms particularly agrarian reform and so on when in 2001 he introduced the 49 enabling laws these laws were not anti-capitalist by any stretch of imagination but one of them was very crucial was the law on agrarian reform now this agrarian reform on paper was more moderate than the agrarian reform that had already been introduced in Venezuela in the 1960s by a different woman of Axial democratica but nevertheless the point is that this moderate very limited progressive democratic national reforms and his attempt to throw away the yoke of US imperialism created an immediate response on the part of the capitalist class and the capitalist class from December 2001 that these laws were passed started to organize an uprising to overthrow this government and this kind of proves in the fact that the ruling class in these countries cannot carry out the bourgeois democratic revolution but is mortally opposed to the bourgeois democratic revolution and then over a period of time in 2005 he made a speech and he said through my own experience through reading and discussing with many people I have come to one conclusion that the improvement of the conditions of the poor masses in Venezuela can only be done by going beyond capitalism and we must go towards socialism now how clear he was about what this meant is a different matter and he was clearly he clearly didn't know what followed on from that and what measures had to be introduced but he was very clear on this capitalism is no solution for the masses in Venezuela even this moderate reforms that we want to implement can only be implemented by doing away with capitalism and introducing socialism so in a certain sense through his own experience he had come to that conclusion which proves at the end of the day the permanent revolution is not just a good idea that Trotsky developed in his head in 1905 but it corresponds or is derived from the concrete analysis of concrete class relations and conditions in backward capitalist countries and this is why this is still relevant today is relevant today in Venezuela is relevant today in Colombia is relevant today in many countries of course now is a hundred years since the Russian revolution and even this backward capitalist countries today they are not at the same level of backwardness or very few countries around the world have now the same level of backwardness that Russia had in 1917 so the conditions for socialist revolution are much more favorable in the sense that the working class in many of these countries represents a bigger section of society is more organized has a bigger specific weight in a country like Venezuela for instance 85% of the population live in urban areas and the oil workers play a completely dominant role in society in a country like Bolivia which has pockets of backwardness but also there is a very developed mining proletariat which already in 1952 played a decisive role in the revolution countries like Colombia where the agrarian question is still a crucial question of the revolution but nevertheless also has the developed working class and a majority of the population who live in urban centers and so therefore the conditions today are much more favorable but the strategy remains the same and whoever in any country of the world thinks that the local bourgeois or the national bourgeois or the progressive or that there is such a thing as a progressive bourgeois that can play a progressive role and that can lead a revolution that genuinely solves or addresses the problems that are left over from the national democratic revolution, agrarian reform national independence from imperialism and a genuine democratic republic is completely misguided and all these examples in history show that this strategy leads to complete disaster and this is the reason why this discussion on the permanent revolution is not just of historic interest but is a relevant discussion for strategy called revolution in backward countries today