Permanent revolution

Permanent Revolution is a plan for the overthrow of capitalism throughout the world, as envisioned by Communist leader Leon Trotsky in the 1920s.

Socialist theory from the days of Marx had stated that he socialist revolution would automatically happen some years after capitalism and the bourgeoisie had triumphed over feudalism. It would happen when the industrial proletariat, organized by the party, overthrows capitalism in advanced industrial states. Thee revolution, according to this theory, could not happen in undeveloped countries like Russia because they had not yet reached the proper stage of development.

Yet the Revolution did happen first in Russia, and Trotsky was there to explain what happened. He argued for an immediate seizure of power everywhere in order to telescope the bourgeois and socialist revolutions into one seamless sequence. That was "permanent revolution."

Trotsky broke with Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and was expelled from Russia, but before he was murdered at Stalin's command in 1940 Trotsky preached "permanent revolution" as a rallying cry for the anti-capitalist far left.

Liberal historians in recent years have alleged that Neoconservative believe in the Trotskyite Permanent Revolution because most of them came out of the Trotskyite cause in the 1930s. That is false. Very few neoconservatives ever were Trotskyites, and even those discarded permanent Revolution when they rejected all forms of Communism.