Democratic Revolutionin Permanenz

Abstract

According to Richard Day and Daniel Gaido, the editors of Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record (2009), the basic insights of Trotsky's theory of “permanent revolution” were shared by other prominent German and Russian Social Democrats, including Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Parvus, Rosa Luxemburg and David Ryazanov. In reality, the documents found in Witnesses show that these writers did not use the expression “permanent revolution” in the same way as Trotsky, namely, to link together the democratic and socialist revolutions. Rather, such expressions were used to link together episodes within the process of democratic revolution. These writers exhorted the Russian workers never to get discouraged or rest on their laurels, but rather to keep on fighting for the democratic revolution in Permanenz until final victory was reached. An essential reason for their lack of interest in Trotsky's scenario was a clash over the role of the non-socialist peasantry.