Permanent Revolution vs Two Stage Theory

[R_P_A_S]

here are the definitions for both:

PERMANENT REVOLUTION: The use of the term by different theorists is not identical. Marx used it to describe the strategy of a revolutionary class to continue to pursue its class interests independently and without compromise, despite overtures for political alliances, and despite the political dominance of opposing sections of society.

TWO STAGE THEORY: is the Marxist Leninist political theory which argues that underdeveloped countries, such as Tsarist Russia, must first pass through a stage of bourgeois democracy before moving to a socialist stage.[1] The two stage theory was applied to countries worldwide which had not passed through the capitalist stage.

ok. so I never knew that these two were complete opposite of one an other. someone told me the it's either one or the other. they can't go hand in hand.

I don't see why they can't NOT? think about it. unless im missing something. for example, I believe it's necessary to have develop means of production through and advance capitalist class. other wise a revolution, socialism will come harder or not at all. And once that's obtain continue on with a permanent revolution. why stop? why loosen our grip and our path towards true democracy?

[Dros]

They were probably thinking abour the theory of "Permanent Revolution" as used by Trotsky. Trotsky believed that in under developed countries with weak Bourgoisie, the Bourgoisie could not accomplish there own historic tasks. Trotsky believed that in these countries, the Proletariat must first accomplish the task of the Bourgoisie democratic revolution and then continue the revolution (thus making it "permanent") in order to complete the Proletarian tasks, thus largely skipping the capitalist stage.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 02:39 am
I believe it's necessary to develop means of production through an advanced capitalist class. otherwise a revolution, socialism, will come harder or not at all. And once that's obtained continue on with a permanent revolution. why stop? why loosen our grip and our path towards true democracy?
I dont quite follow your argument. A revolutionary alliance seizes power. What then ? Do you advocate the new state being committed to the development of capitalism ?

[jacobin1949]

I don't see how anyone in good faith can condemn Trotsky and then refute Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Three Represents.

How are you not asking China to skip a stage of development history? The essence of Permanent Revolution.

[Guest1]

The permanent revolution is not about developing Capitalism, but rather completing the tasks that the bourgeois revolutions of old once did, under the control of the working class.

This includes the redistribution of land and the building up of the means of production, as well as liberating the country from the yoke of foreign powers, something that clearly cannot be done by a native bourgeoisie, as they are automatically pawns of foreign capital. The differences between this and two stage theory, or "Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Three Represents" is that one says workers must control the country and surpass the bourgeois tasks immediately into building socialism, while the other says that workers should wait until the bourgeois revolution is complete. If they don't like that, off to the gulags with them.

Two stage theory is a Menshevik and Stalinist deformation. The unfortunate thing about stages is that history, and the working class, have an annoying habit of not recognizing them, being impatient, and going ahead and having revolutions anyways. This is what happened in Russia, and the permanent revolution meant the revolutionaries had to try to link up with the revolution in Germany and elsewhere and try to bring industry up to speed through workers' control and a planned economy.

Stalinist bureaucrats used the two-stage theory, the failure of the German revolution (their own doing), and "socialism in one country" to strangle workers' democracy and establish themselves as the ruling caste.

In Spain, they helped destroy the revolution and hand power to the Fascists because, while they were fighting the Fascists, their top priority was drowning the workers' collectives in blood as Spain wasn't ready yet for socialism. First it needed "democracy".

In China, they told the Communist party, a magnificent party with a mass base in the working class, that China needed a national bourgeois revolution first, so they should disarm and merge with the nationalist Kuomintang party to fight the Japanese occupation. This they did, and then were promptly subjected to mass slaughter. Mao survived, and went on to build his deformed Communist party, with no connection to the workers, and based on the peasantry.

This is the history of two-stage theory, and the ridiculous idea - prevalent on revleft - that workers should just wait and let the bourgeoisie finish their business first.

The world is ready for socialist revolution, this is as far as Capitalism will go, and the revolutions have already begun to erupt. This is will be another era of wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions, much like the beginning of the 20th century. We can't fuck it up again by continuing to imagine that workers will wait another hundred years, till Capitalism is ready to die. The moment workers have the power to kill it, we have no choice but to be a part of that revolution, calling for the revolution to continue striking harder and harder until Capitalism itself is abolished. Or else the workers will revolt without us, and we will have a choice to make.

There is one last example of the two-stage theory in action. Germany itself, where the workers rose up time and again, expropriating the factories under workers' control, building soviets across the country, and arming themselves in democratic militias. The Social Democratic Party, the party of Engels, the party whose basis was still claimed to be Marxism, decided the country was not ready for revolution. They had decided that Marx meant for the revolution to occur after a stage of full Capitalist development, that socialism had to be introduced gradually at a later stage.

So they drowned the workers' movement in blood. They fought the Communist party (whose mistakes led to further deterioration of the movement). After more than a decade of almost perpetual civil war, they got what they wanted, the movement died back, the middle class became sick and deranged and called forth a monster that the bourgeoisie could use to smash the labour movement and burn it all to the ground.

The next time you say that a country isn't ready for revolution, remember that movements don't die without massacres. This is what your two-stagist theories really mean.

[Guest1]

Bump.

[Dros]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 02:24 am
I don't see how anyone in good faith can condemn Trotsky and then refute Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Three Represents.

How are you not asking China to skip a stage of development history? The essence of Permanent Revolution.
Very easily. Please elaborate on this "contradiction".

[Raúl Duke]

Originally posted by drosera99+December 19, 2007 09:28 pm--> (drosera99 @ December 19, 2007 09:28 pm)
[email protected] 19, 2007 02:24 am
I don't see how anyone in good faith can condemn Trotsky and then refute Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Three Represents.

How are you not asking China to skip a stage of development history? The essence of Permanent Revolution.
[/b]
I don't understand...but if you're assuming that China skipped capitalism to socialism I think a reality check is in order.

China is now openly capitalist. They even admit them into their CPC (or CCP).

[Guest1]

One more thing, though picked up heavily by Stalin, and later on all the Stalinist bureaucracies and parties, two-stage theory was first a Menshevik theory. The Mensheviks joined the bourgeois provisional government, while the Bolsheviks actually took the understanding that the Duma was not a reflection of real power, the soviets were. They understood that those workers' councils were a true reflection of workers' power, that workers had the power to govern Russia economically as well as politically. The peasants' and soldiers' soviets made the revolutionary government of the workers and peasants a real force. Considering the total participation of most factories and workplaces in the Soviets, some being factories of tens of thousands, to hesitate in calling for a takeover by the Soviets themselves on the basis of stageism meants suicide.

That is exactly what the Mensheviks and SR's were pushing for in practice by attempting to establish a bourgeois constitution and calling for a bourgeois republic. The Menshevik line of uniting with the "progressive bourgeoisie" to allow for the development of parliamentary bourgeois "democracy" actually took hold on some of those in the Bolshevik party. That included Stalin and Zinoviev, Stalin later using the same mentality in arguing for "People's Fronts" in China and Spain.

Though most soviets were majority Menshevik, Lenin and the Bolsheviks' main slogan developed into "factories to the workers, land to the peasants, all power to the soviets".

Establishing that took Lenin's return to Russia from exile, after becoming incredibly frustrated with Stalin and Zinoviev's censorship of his articles, and sometimes quiet refusal to publish them. Those two, from their position on the editorial committee of the party paper, had pushed the party in the direction of aping the Menshevik line, and voting in a bloc with them in the Duma.

The recognition that workers not only could, but had to seize power under threat of Kornilov's military coup, was a recognition of the permanent revolution.

In other words: had the very same two-stageist theory Stalinism applied on revolutions in Spain and China not been rejected in Russia, there would have been no October revolution, a Military coup by forces linked to the Fascist Black Hundreds would have taken power instead.

[Led Zeppelin]

CyM, isn't the only "difference" between Lenin and Trotsky's position on the matter that Lenin only changed his view on the subject in 1917 while Trotsky had the same view on the subject since 1905?

[Guest1]

Absolutely, he said so himself actually. Like I said, Lenin's realization that the proletariat had to take power was a vindication of the permanent revolution.

And considering that Marx hadn't condemned the Paris Commune as a mistake in timing, but rather had hoped it could win, his ideas weren't any different either.

Neither those who dismiss the October revolution as a mistaken attempt to skip Capitalism which led to dictatorship, nor any of those who believe Spain was an Anarchist equivalent are on a firm Marxist footing. Marx himself believed the proletariat should seize power when it can, and when the two-stage theory finally took root, it was under the condition of complete terror by a reactionary and counterrevolutionary bureaucracy.

Which is ironic, because those on the "left" who decry the bolshevik revolution as a coup trace that as the root of bureaucratic dictatorship.

So they tell the working class "go home, it's not time to rule yet", and when it does and dictators take over, they point and say "ha! see? the proletariat wasn't ready, Stalinists took over".

[Guest1]

No responses guys? Come on, this is a pretty important one.

[chebol]

read this (http://www.dsp.org.au/dsp/permrev.htm)

more when I have permanent access to the net

[chimx]

And considering that Marx hadn't condemned the Paris Commune as a mistake in timing, but rather had hoped it could win, his ideas weren't any different either.I was under a different impression, that Marx thought Parisians could win concessions but could not realistically form a long-standing socialist government because it was simply a local town uprising. Here is a letter Marx wrote that alludes to this:


The "question" of the forthcoming Zürich Congress about which you inform me seems to me--a mistake. The thing to be done at any definite given moment of the future, the thing immediately to be done, depends of course entirely on the given historical conditions in which one has to act. But this question is in the clouds and therefore is really the statement of a phantom problem to which the only answer can be--the criticism of the question itself. No equation can be solved unless the elements of its solution are involved in its terms. Moreover the embarrassments of a government which has suddenly come into being through a people's victory have nothing specifically "socialist" about them. On the contrary. The victorious bourgeois politicians at once feel themselves embarrassed by their "victory" while the socialist can at least take action without any embarrassment. One thing you can at any rate be sure of: a socialist government does not come into power in a country unless conditions are so developed that it can above all take the necessary measures for intimidating the mass of the bourgeoisie sufficiently to gain time--the first desideratum [requisite]--for lasting action.

Perhaps you will point to the Paris Commune; but apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a town under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no sense socialist, nor could it be. With a small amount of sound common sense, however, they could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of the people -- the only thing that could be reached at the time. The appropriation of the Bank of France alone would have been enough to dissolve all the pretensions of the Versailles people in terror, etc., etc.

[Die Neue Zeit]

CyM, isn't the only "difference" between Lenin and Trotsky's position on the matter that Lenin only changed his view on the subject in 1917 while Trotsky had the same view on the subject since 1905?

I don't know if Lenin changed his view, because by 1920 he (thankfully) reverted back to "revolutionary democracy." If and when our user group gets going, the RDDOTPP will be the very first topic for discussion in our user group forum. :)

[R_P_A_S]

The permanent revolution is not about developing Capitalism, but rather completing the tasks that the bourgeois revolutions of old once did, under the control of the working class.

I don't know if you are talking to me. but OK, I knew this.



This includes the redistribution of land and the building up of the means of production, as well as liberating the country from the yoke of foreign powers, something that clearly cannot be done by a native bourgeoisie, as they are automatically pawns of foreign capital. The differences between this and two stage theory, or "Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Three Represents" is that one says workers must control the country and surpass the bourgeois tasks immediately into building socialism, while the other says that workers should wait until the bourgeois revolution is complete. If they don't like that, off to the gulags with them.

got it...I guess what I was asking is that you can have both. obviously.. wait for the right conditions (2 stage theory) and then BAM! Permanent Revolution?..


Two stage theory is a Menshevik and Stalinist deformation. The unfortunate thing about stages is that history, and the working class, have an annoying habit of not recognizing them, being impatient, and going ahead and having revolutions anyways. This is what happened in Russia, and the permanent revolution meant the revolutionaries had to try to link up with the revolution in Germany and elsewhere and try to bring industry up to speed through workers' control and a planned economy.

Why do they opt not to wait? because they figured they could create the conditions if they "sped up" things?


Stalinist bureaucrats used the two-stage theory, the failure of the German revolution (their own doing), and "socialism in one country" to strangle workers' democracy and establish themselves as the ruling caste.

why were they waiting for a German Revolution per say? was it in the works? Are you saying that the Soviets did not plan on "socialism in one country" they just fell into it because of failures abroad?


In Spain, they helped destroy the revolution and hand power to the Fascists because, while they were fighting the Fascists, their top priority was drowning the workers' collectives in blood as Spain wasn't ready yet for socialism. First it needed "democracy".

Who is they? I was always under the impression that the Republic was not on a path towards socialism??


In China, they told the Communist party, a magnificent party with a mass base in the working class, that China needed a national bourgeois revolution first, so they should disarm and merge with the nationalist Kuomintang party to fight the Japanese occupation. This they did, and then were promptly subjected to mass slaughter. Mao survived, and went on to build his deformed Communist party, with no connection to the workers, and based on the peasantry.

again who is "They"? The Soviets??? Why did Mao exclude the workers?


This is the history of two-stage theory, and the ridiculous idea - prevalent on revleft - that workers should just wait and let the bourgeoisie finish their business first.

Is their business finished in Venezuela for say?


The world is ready for socialist revolution, this is as far as Capitalism will go, and the revolutions have already begun to erupt. This is will be another era of wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions, much like the beginning of the 20th century. We can't fuck it up again by continuing to imagine that workers will wait another hundred years, till Capitalism is ready to die. The moment workers have the power to kill it, we have no choice but to be a part of that revolution, calling for the revolution to continue striking harder and harder until Capitalism itself is abolished. Or else the workers will revolt without us, and we will have a choice to make.

I agree.


There is one last example of the two-stage theory in action. Germany itself, where the workers rose up time and again, expropriating the factories under workers' control, building soviets across the country, and arming themselves in democratic militias. The Social Democratic Party, the party of Engels, the party whose basis was still claimed to be Marxism, decided the country was not ready for revolution. They had decided that Marx meant for the revolution to occur after a stage of full Capitalist development, that socialism had to be introduced gradually at a later stage.

When was this? what time period?

[Red Economist]

permanant revolution assumes the continious transformation of one revolutionary epoch to the next from bourgeosise democratic to socialist- although not nessacarily at a constant rate. sometimes it is swift and other times it is slow.

where as two stage theory is much more simplified- it assumes a 'simulatanous' transformation of one situation in to another. a sudden 'burst'. it is build on simple observation- "I can see a crowd demanding bourgeosise democracy.... but then there is a pause.... then I see a crowd demanding socialism"

two stage theory is the basic idea- permanant revolution, it's more advanced and indepth explanation. two stage theory examine the surface changes, whilst permant revolution the internal dynamics.

they are the same to my knowledge.