Lenin, Trotsky and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution

Lenin, Trotsky and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution PDF Author: John Peter Roberts
Publisher: Wellred Books
ISBN: 1900007525
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Today, yet again, from Latin America to Nepal, in India and the Middle East, the question of which strategy the masses should adopt to take control of their own lives is being posed. Without exception the leaders of the mass workers’ parties urge class-collaboration as the way forward. Actively supported by the national Communist Parties and even Maoist guerrilla groups a petty-bourgeois amalgam proposes collaboration with the so-called national bourgeoisie as the only path to national independence and democracy. In the century since the Russian Revolution, the first modern, popular revolution to succeed in throwing out the imperialists, much time and effort has been spent, especially by the former Soviet bureaucracy, in neutering Lenin – praising him while tearing out the revolutionary heart of his theories. This book demonstrates that the Russian Revolution, a model for a victorious, popular revolution in a semi-colonial country in the era of imperialism, required not a bourgeois-democratic, but a socialist revolution for the people to take power. The old regime had to be destroyed and the state and governmental power seized by the working classes before it was possible to achieve national independence and carry though any meaningful agrarian reform for the benefit of the peasantry. Lenin’s close collaborator in October 1917 was Leon Trotsky and the success of that revolution was due to the combination of the discipline and organisation of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and Trotsky’s political theory of the permanent revolution. This book goes back to basics, critically analysing and comparing Lenin’s and Trotsky’s own writings, which are sited in their source and inspiration - the Russian Revolution of 1905. It is shown that Lenin, in October 1917, adopted the perspectives of Permanent Revolution: that to finally rid Russia of autocracy, and legitimise the peasants’ seizure of the land, the Russian Revolution required the introduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the first steps towards the collectivisation of the means of production. Those who attack the theory of Permanent Revolution never challenge the correctness of its basic concept, that the international socialist revolution could begin in semi-feudal Russia. Instead, in the guise of anti-Trotskyism, they deny the validity of Lenin’s struggle for a socialist revolution in October 1917.

Lenin, Trotsky and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution

Lenin, Trotsky and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution PDF Author: John Peter Roberts
Publisher: Wellred Books
ISBN: 1900007525
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Get Book Here

Book Description
Today, yet again, from Latin America to Nepal, in India and the Middle East, the question of which strategy the masses should adopt to take control of their own lives is being posed. Without exception the leaders of the mass workers’ parties urge class-collaboration as the way forward. Actively supported by the national Communist Parties and even Maoist guerrilla groups a petty-bourgeois amalgam proposes collaboration with the so-called national bourgeoisie as the only path to national independence and democracy. In the century since the Russian Revolution, the first modern, popular revolution to succeed in throwing out the imperialists, much time and effort has been spent, especially by the former Soviet bureaucracy, in neutering Lenin – praising him while tearing out the revolutionary heart of his theories. This book demonstrates that the Russian Revolution, a model for a victorious, popular revolution in a semi-colonial country in the era of imperialism, required not a bourgeois-democratic, but a socialist revolution for the people to take power. The old regime had to be destroyed and the state and governmental power seized by the working classes before it was possible to achieve national independence and carry though any meaningful agrarian reform for the benefit of the peasantry. Lenin’s close collaborator in October 1917 was Leon Trotsky and the success of that revolution was due to the combination of the discipline and organisation of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and Trotsky’s political theory of the permanent revolution. This book goes back to basics, critically analysing and comparing Lenin’s and Trotsky’s own writings, which are sited in their source and inspiration - the Russian Revolution of 1905. It is shown that Lenin, in October 1917, adopted the perspectives of Permanent Revolution: that to finally rid Russia of autocracy, and legitimise the peasants’ seizure of the land, the Russian Revolution required the introduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the first steps towards the collectivisation of the means of production. Those who attack the theory of Permanent Revolution never challenge the correctness of its basic concept, that the international socialist revolution could begin in semi-feudal Russia. Instead, in the guise of anti-Trotskyism, they deny the validity of Lenin’s struggle for a socialist revolution in October 1917.

The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects

The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects PDF Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher: Red Letter Press
ISBN: 0932323294
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Originally published: Moscow; New York: Progress Publishers/ Militant Publishing Association, 1931.

Results and Prospects

Results and Prospects PDF Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
In response to criticism from Soviet politician Karl Radek, Leon Trotsky wrote the essay "The Permanent Revolution". Following Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1927, The Left Opposition released the text in Russian. This was written following the death of Vladimir Lenin, which started a power struggle among the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's military, bureaucratic, and legislative branches. General Secretary Joseph Stalin created a political partnership with Trotsky opponents Lev Kamenev, Zinnoviev, and Nikolai Bukharin inside The Politburo and The Central Committee. Stalin's bloc followed an isolationist ideology known as Socialism in One Country, which prioritized economic growth above global upheaval.

Witnesses to Permanent Revolution

Witnesses to Permanent Revolution PDF Author: Richard B. Day
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004167706
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 697

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Book Description
The theory of Permanent Revolution has been associated with Leon Trotsky for more than a century since the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Trotsky was the most brilliant proponent of Permanent Revolution but by no means its sole author. The documents in this volume, most of them translated into English for the first time, demonstrate that Trotsky was one of several participants in a debate from 1903-7 that involved numerous leading figures of Russian and European Marxism, including Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Parvus and David Ryazanov. This volume reassembles that debate, assesses it with reference to Marx and Engels, and provides new evidence for interpreting the formative years of Russian revolutionary Marxism.

Lenin and Trotsky – What they really stood for

Lenin and Trotsky – What they really stood for PDF Author: Alan Woods
Publisher: Wellred Books
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The ideas of Lenin and Trotsky are without doubt the most distorted and slandered ideas in history. For more than 100 years, they have been subjected to an onslaught from the apologists of capitalism, who have attempted to present their ideas – Bolshevism – as both totalitarian and utopian. An entire industry was developed in an attempt to equate the crimes of Stalinism with the regime of workers' democracy that existed under Lenin and Trotsky. It is now more than fifty years since the publication of the first edition of this work. It was written as a reply to Monty Johnstone, who was a leading theoretician of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Johnstone had published a reappraisal of Leon Trotsky in the Young Communist League's journal Cogito at the end of 1968. Alan Woods and Ted Grant used the opportunity to write a detailed reply explaining the real relationship between the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. This was no academic exercise. It was written as an appeal to the ranks of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League to rediscover the truth about Trotsky and return to the original revolutionary programme of Lenin. Also included in this new edition is Monty Johnstone's original Cogito article, as well as further material on Lenin's struggle with Stalin in the last month of his political life. The foreword is written by Trotsky's grandson, Vsievolod Volkov.

Permanent Revolution

Permanent Revolution PDF Author: James Simpson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674240545
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
How did the Reformation, which initially promoted decidedly illiberal positions, end up laying the groundwork for Western liberalism? The English Reformation began as an evangelical movement driven by an unyielding belief in predestination, intolerance, stringent literalism, political quietism, and destructive iconoclasm. Yet by 1688, this illiberal early modern upheaval would deliver the foundations of liberalism: free will, liberty of conscience, religious toleration, readerly freedom, constitutionalism, and aesthetic liberty. How did a movement with such illiberal beginnings lay the groundwork for the Enlightenment? James Simpson provocatively rewrites the history of liberalism and uncovers its unexpected debt to evangelical religion. Sixteenth-century Protestantism ushered in a culture of permanent revolution, ceaselessly repudiating its own prior forms. Its rejection of tradition was divisive, violent, and unsustainable. The proto-liberalism of the later seventeenth century emerged as a cultural package designed to stabilize the social chaos brought about by this evangelical revolution. A brilliant assault on many of our deepest assumptions, Permanent Revolution argues that far from being driven by a new strain of secular philosophy, the British Enlightenment is a story of transformation and reversal of the Protestant tradition from within. The gains of liberalism were the unintended results of the violent early Reformation. Today those gains are increasingly under threat, in part because liberals do not understand their own history. They fail to grasp that liberalism is less the secular opponent of religious fundamentalism than its dissident younger sibling, uncertain how to confront its older evangelical competitor.

The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development

The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development PDF Author: Michael Löwy
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608460681
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Löwy's book is the first attempt to analyze, in a systematic way, how the theories of uneven and combined development, and of the permanent revolution &mdash inseparably linked &mdash emerged in the writings of thinkers such as Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. Such radical reflections permit us to understand modern economic development across continents as a process of ferocious change, in which "advanced" and "backward" elements fuse, come into tension, and collide &mdash and how the resulting ruptures make it possible for the oppressed and exploited to change the world.

Permanent Revolution in Latin America

Permanent Revolution in Latin America PDF Author: John Peter Roberts
Publisher: Wellred Books
ISBN: 1913026019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
This book presents the histories of the revolutions in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as the latest demonstrations of the price the popular masses pay for the absence of a correct revolutionary strategy. The goal of the leaders of the revolutionary movements in all three countries was to create a progressive, independent bourgeois-democratic state but contrary to expectations, the national bourgeoisie did not welcome a national democratic revolution. Instead, faced with a mass movement, it fought hard to re-assert its own and US imperialism’s economic and political stranglehold, opposing increased democratic rights, greater social equality, agrarian reform and the redistribution of wealth. We trace how, in all three countries, the national bourgeoisie joined forces with imperialism and used violent methods to reverse the progressive measures made, and when these attempts failed carried on a campaign of economic sabotage to starve the masses into submission. In Cuba the revolution was propelled forward by abolishing capitalism and enormous conquests were made. In Nicaragua and Venezuela, the revolution was stopped half way, leading to disaster and defeat. As the world enters a decisive revolutionary epoch, reformists, just as they did in Nicaragua and Venezuela, attempt to hold that revolution back. In the face of all experience, their solution to social crises is one which stubbornly remains within the narrow limits of capitalism. This book is a contribution to the debate about revolutionary strategy. It highlights the lessons to be learned from the recent past, argues against the failed reformist approach and draws the conclusion that only through the workers coming to power and expropriating the oligarchy can we begin to overcome the exploitation and oppression of the masses.

Trotsky on Lenin

Trotsky on Lenin PDF Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608462935
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
“Fascinating . . . full of insight and a perceptive portrait of Lenin’s single-mindedness and his relentless, all-consuming drive towards revolution in Russia.” —The Guardian Combining Young Lenin and On Lenin in one volume, this is a fascinating political biography by Lenin’s fellow revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky on Lenin brings together two long-out-of-print works in a single volume for the first time, providing an intimate and illuminating portrait of the Bolshevik leader by another of the twentieth century’s greatest revolutionaries. Written shortly after its subject’s death, On Lenin covers the period of revolutionary struggle leading up to 1917 as well as the early years of Bolshevik power. We see a man totally committed to the revolutionary cause, whose legacy was later corrupted under the Soviet Union’s Stalinist degeneration. Young Lenin, meanwhile, describes his early years and conversion to Marxism, dispelling many of the myths later created by Soviet hagiography in the process. This is the essential guide for anyone wanting to understand Lenin as a thinker, active revolutionary, and personality.

In Defense of Leon Trotsky

In Defense of Leon Trotsky PDF Author: David North
Publisher: Mehring Books
ISBN: 1893638057
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description