Not a Czar, but a workers´ government

"The Permanent Revolution" (first published in 1929) is Trotsky's failed attempt to defend his erroneous theory of permanent revolution. "Results and prospects" is an earlier text by Trotsky expounding the same theory. After the death of Lenin, Trotsky's opponents claimed that the theory of permanent revolution was ultraleft, sectarian, underestimated the peasantry and denied the possibility of building socialism in one country. They also pointed out that Lenin had opposed the theory in favour of "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry".

These criticisms are correct. Trotsky's attempts to cast his theory in a Leninist mould are unconvincing. I don't hear Lenin speak in these pages. The theory reeks of adventurist ultraleftism, especially in its earlier formulation, when Trotsky didn't even believe in a vanguard party.

:-P

OK, seriously. A specific criticism of Trotsky's theory feels moot. Lenin's theory wasn't much better. The Bolshevik revolution established neither "the dictatorship of the proletariat" nor the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" (although the regime very temporarily came close to both). Rather, it established the rule of a new bureaucracy, based on the centralized state and party apparatus, and later on the nationalized and collectivized economy.

This was probably inevitable. Lenin always believed that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" would be led by the vanguard party of professional revolutionaries. Trotsky came around to this position as well, when he joined the Bolsheviks in 1917. Since the Bolshevik regime was neither a "workers' government" nor a "workers' and farmers' government" sensu stricto, the entire debate between Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek and Stalin feels somewhat surreal and esoteric. Objectively, this is a debate on what strategy the budding bureaucracy should follow in order to take power.

And precisely for that reason, Trotsky lost the great debate. He rejected both "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" and the popular front in the belief that neither can lead to state socialism. At the time, Trotsky's position wasn't "out there". Communist attempts to ally with "bourgeois" forces had failed or ended in disaster in Turkey, Iran, Croatia and (above all) China. Later, the popular fronts failed to usher in state socialism in France and Spain. Thus, it was understandable from a state socialist viewpoint that Trotsky proposed a more radical line than Stalin, Bukharin, Zinoviev and (de facto) even Lenin. However, the post-war world proved that state socialism and its attendant rule of a bureaucracy *can* be set up by middle class guerrillas, peasant armies led by professional revolutionaries, military officers or Stalin's bureaucracy. Even popular fronts can be a "salami tactic" stepping stone to state socialism, provided that the Communists control the security apparatus or the army. Of course, many Trotskyists reject these regimes with the argument that they lack "workers' democracy". But this is moot, since "workers' democracy" withered away already during Lenin's tenure in Russia, a regime the Trotskyists support.

Finally, I would recommend readers that aren't interested in the nooks and crannies of Communist factional struggles to skip "The Permanent Revolution" and only read "Results and Prospects". It's shorter, easier to read and show the radical Marxist positions of Leon Trotsky in all their red splendour.