The Theory of the Permanent Revolution
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- Опубликовано: 29 май 2017
- In April 1917, Lenin returned to Russia and politically re-armed the Bolshevik Party with the slogan "all power to the soviets".
In doing so, Lenin was affirming Leon Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution: the analysis that the capitalist class in the colonial countries, arriving late onto the scene of history in an epoch of imperialism, had long ceased to play any progressive role and could not carry out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution and national liberation.
The conclusion: that socialists and revolutionaries in Russia could not give any support to the liberal Provisional Government, but must call for the working class to take power through its own democratic organs, the soviets.
In this talk from a recent Socialist Appeal day school, Alan Woods (editor of In Defence of Marxism) explores Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution and how it has been vindicated throughout history - both in the positive sense, by the Russian Revolution, and in the negative, by the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27.
Was suffering fron Sleep Apnea for a very long time. Then my doc recommended this video. Thank you Alan!
dammit comrade alan why is your voice so relaxing
Lol. He’s Welsh.
Partly it’s the lyrical Welch accent but mostly his own love of his subject and storytelling ability.
y a b o i a l a n w o o d s
Actually, Marx and Engels did write about the possibility of the revolution beginning in Russia.
"If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development" - The Communist Manifesto, preface to the Russian edition, 1882
I learned so much from this. I've watched it several times and I always learn something different - especially how brilliant and courageous were Trotsky and Lenin. Combine this with Trotsky's autobiography...very moving.
I still don't knwo what permanent revolution theory is though.
@@DF-jm6dq Probably because he did not explain it if it is explicable at all.
Spark Ishkra Lenin hates Leon! Cope with it
D G nor do trots mate
John Ruddy Lenin preferred Trotsky over Stalin at least 🤷🏻♂️ stop being a history revisionist
This is my favourite one to go to sleep too - great voice and pace
Same but for different reasons lmao
Thanks a lot for this video. Now I'll wait for the transitional program one.
Excellent explication. Lucid style and detailed content.
Deep insight Comrade
good work
I could listen to comrade woods speak all day. But that was the most serpentine talk ever. It barely touched on Trotsky's theory. Enjoyable nonetheless.
There’s a reason why your so called comrade didn’t and never touches on what he says he will touch upon (watch his lectures and read their headlines and see if he ever touches upon them!) Trotskyism is cancer and Trotsky was a paid rat of several intelligence agencies and never worked a day in his life all the while being financed by Britain in New York to the time of $500 a lot of money in 1917 while being chauffeured around in a brand new limousine and attending dinner parties fine restaurants and trips to broadway all while being a lowly writer to a paper that didn’t sell well at all! He was a rat his letters (most of them hidden by Trotskyists at Harvard university until the late 90’s) prove this
Alan's insights are always captivating! I'd love to see more content from him in the future. This historical analysis was particularly engaging. To reach a wider audience, especially younger comrades, I would love to see shorter, bite-sized videos. With shorter attention spans, digestible content like highlights or key takeaways could be a great way to introduce the RCI to the "TikTok generation." Perhaps these already exist and I just have missed them....
holding my little red book up like a cross to a demon
A freaking hour long ramble and still I haven't got the slightest idea of what is supposed to be the permanent revolution and what's so incredible about it. Is it me who doesn't understand it or it's the theory that is plainly stupid? I have genuine interest in knowing.
Dear Martin, the best way is to read the original book of trotzki. you can find it perhaps on marxists org in the internet. But by the way: Trotzki wrote this after studying Marx and after studying world economy. May be you can understand a lot but it lacks you on basics to get a real deep understanding. excus my bad english knowledge :-)
Well Karapana, I did already eyed a little bit of the book and it didn't clue me in the slightest of the point. I get that Trotsky was against collaborating with the Provisional Democratic Government of Russia and that he thought that only the proletariat could lead the revolution, but it comes to me like mostly he's just taking the credit for the development of the Russian Revolution given that he wrote the book in 1929 and he mostly make references to his past works published around 1905, and says "see? I already predicted that this would happen!". And this is only worsen by the fact that when I tried to look for those past works I couldn't find any (so I couldn't know if he really said what he said then, or how he said and in what context), and the one that I found was a work that he claimed to have co-written with Lenin, yet there was a historian note in the translation that said that it was impossible to know if they were really the authors of the works; and most importantly, what was written in that text had nothing to do with what Trotsky claimed that it was about!
Also it seems to me like not even Trots know the "Permanent Revolution" is about, some stress the idea that it was about not collaborating with the Provisinal Government, other say it's about being "international" to avoid being stuck with the national bourgeoisie, but all of them fail in explaining what is the strategy derived from it and how to implement it! Also it irritates me how Trots seem to be so focused in trying to elevate Trotsky's figure to Lenin's or to make them look like die hard buddys.
So I just want that someone who understands the Permanent Revolution summarizes it's main points in a straight to the point manner, instead of how I've seen until now which is rambling and retelling all the history of the Russian Revolution, making a couple of assertion on what the Permanent Revolution actually is about and doing the custom lashing on Stalin and co.
look here:
www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/index.htm
"results and prospects" and also "the year 1905" in marxists.org available.
You can look at his prediction of China. A proletarian party can not be united by a bourgeois party. He is right Like the Chinese Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party.
jhon S
But wasn't he also for factionalism inside the party? What's the point of wanting a united worker party if he's going to split it how he sees fit?
Thank you comrade for the profound insights and explications!
Revolutionary greetings from Germany
Never knew bill gates knew so much about spcialism
''The latest crowd of reptiles lurking the University halls!" ;) Too damned funny LOL!! Allen is fantastic!!
Has explained each and every other point on earth except the point that had to be explained… Classic Alan Woods!
Much Solidarity from Germany!
What about the NEP?
The NEP was used because unlike trotsky, Lenin and the bolsheviks saw the missing productive forces, and, regrettably, implemented state capitalism, but very regulated, so it doesn't spiral out of control. So basically NEP was used to gain productive forces, so socialism could be implemented (russia was semi-feudal in that time).
How do I join a military academy?
marxist.com
Beautiful historical lesson, but still cannot grasp the concept 😥
I might just start reading Trotsky's Writings
His polemics against national socialism are the best ever written
“We must raise the question of applying much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field. We must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system.” - Lenin
Skip ahead to 8:00...
You're welcome.
Thank you!! This was very clear 👌
Alan Woods speaks of the need to study the history of revolutions to learn lessons. But one thing we can't study are examples of revolutions within technically advanced capitalist countries. Revolutions in undeveloped or feudal societies there have been. But not in industrialized countries like England, France, Germany or the USA. English and French revolutions happened before England and France became technologically advanced capitalist countries. If even ONE advanced capitalist country had undergone a successful revolution, there would be something you could study that might be more directly relevant to challenges facing revolutionaries in western Europe, North America or Japan.
the German revolution didn't happen then? There was a great period of class struggle following 1917/18. The revolutionary potential was clearly there and Marxists have analysed these at great length.
@@sidtheragali1447It did but was put down and its leaders killed. A successful revolution in Germany would have been a different matter. If I'm living in the USA a revolution in a country like Germany (which would have prevented Hitler) might be more educational than a successful revolution in feudal Russia of 1917 or France of 1789. This is not to deny that the history of the French and Russian revolutions can instructive. But a successful revolution in Germany or modern capitalist France or England might be more instructive if I'd to help make a revolution in the USA.
@Thomas Garman In the USA, racism was an integral part of the foundation of American capitalism. People of color, especially (but not only) the Blacks, are the most economically depressed and super-exploited section of the American working class. Thanks to racial slavery (which early capitalism gave rise to) racism is so integral to the foundations of American capitalism that it is literally impossible to effectively challenge capitalism in America without fighting racism. For historical reasons the African American population has been (as a group) further to the "left" than the general population. While Black conservatives and reactionaries exist they are relatively marginal within the political culture of Black America. No right wing movement has ever succeeded in winning popular support even within the black petit bourgeoisie, let alone the mass of the Black poor and proletariat. The important thing is to get Americans (Black Americans included) to see that racism cannot be definitively crushed in the USA without vanquishing capitalism. He who seeks to defeat racism without fighting capitalism, or to overthrow capitalism in America without fighting racism, has set himself on a fool's mission.
@Thomas Garman Basically, it's the American ruling class who've used racism to divide the people, and racism has served as a bulwark of American capitalism. My biggest concern is not whether Blacks will revolt at all, but whether such a revolt can organize itself effectively, independently even from the black elite strata, and develop a consciously revolutionary perspective that can spread through the rest of America like a wildfire. One difficulty is that the US government, through its police, FBI (and sometimes CIA) suppressed the revolutionary organizations which once had popular support among the Black poor, and even among some within the Black petit bourgeois....and which had a certain influence among whites, Latins and others. I'm thinking specifically of the Black Panther Party which with about 3000 members and a newspaper, a SOCIALIST newspaper, with a circulation of about 250,000 (sometimes even being read by black troops in Vietnam), had succeeded in winning the support of 25% of the African American population, with that support growing when the government decided to stamp it out. In order for revolts to have a chance of success there must be effective organizing. And since we're only 13% of the population, we obviously cannot bring down the capitalist power structure by ourselves even if 99% of us were revolutionary. There must multiracial solidarity against the ruling class and for a new cooperative society, The current uprisings in America , while beginning in the black ghetto of Minneapolis and spreading to other Black communities, have also become MULTIRACIAL at a level far exceeding what happened in the 1960s. That's GOOD sign. But it MUST organized itself. Spontaneous rebellions cannot be maintained indefinitely. Even a revolutionary uprising, if such should happen, will run out of steam or be suppressed if it's not effectively organized.
I've never understood the contradictions in the theory of permanent revolution. One the one hand if you have a revolution in an undeveloped country, you have to push on to socialism, but if you do that it won't work without other revolutions in other more advanced countries.
It's garbage, in other words.
I've never talked to a fellow anarchist who denies the importance of leadership, but rather we question if they are worthy and just leaders and don't just blindly accept them. Speaking as an anarcho-communist, we use decentralized and democratic means to decide who's a leader in their respective areas. We don't accept nepotism, favoritism or wealth as a reason to put a person in a leadership role.
Anarchists individually are capable of great things. Anarchists collectively are useless.
Marxists don't blindly follow their leaders either, we use democratic means to decide and reject nepotism, favouritism or wealth, I'm not sure how you believe (or maybe have been told) Marxist organizations are run but it's not contrary to anything you've said.
Alan woods the guy in the video is a leading figure in a group known as the IMT, despite that his words (however much weight and respect they rightfully carry) aren't law and statements he's made aren't beyond questioning, actually comrades are encouraged to come forward with any criticisms they may have of anything he or any other member or any communist no matter how senior has said or written.
we had our UK national conference last month and both our perspectives document (how we understand the situation in the UK) & organizational resolution (goals & procedures for the following year) were voted on with amendments tabled, freely discussed and also voted on, the conversations weren't dominated by senior members and were lead by the group as a whole (which was nice for me to see as a new member)
we also have regional & local leadership which again is democratically decided, democracy & delegation isn't some anarchist invention it's a necessary part of any large democratic organization
as for wealth there's no process within the IMT to try and buy your way into a role, the IMT is incredibly averse to taking funding from the wealthy and capitalists, as i found out recently when i had it explained to me why we wouldn't be seeking funding from the lush grant
if you're interested in the real differences between Marxism and anarchism there's no better source than the man himself, state & revolution has a lot of good quotations from Marx & Engels even if you aren't interested in Lenin's commentary
@@afgor1088 I may not have worded this statement well. I wasn't implying communists did use nepotism or despots, etc. However, most who are to the right of us on the political spectrum (which obviously includes centrists) do use those things. I simply meant it is a an incorrect view that we promote leaderless chaos. We also believe in leadership when necessary and to suggest otherwise is simply untrue. We just want to choose and not have it chosen for us. If I am with a mechanic and our car breaks down, I voluntarily yield to his or her expertise in the matter, and will follow their lead until the car is repaired. When it's all over, I do not continue to follow the lead of this person. I know about survival tactics and gardening, therefore in that situation it would be wise for the hypothetical mechanic, who doesn't know about these things, to voluntarily follow my lead.
I strongly support solidarity between us, and videos with misinformation about us is as frustrating to us as the false propaganda videos are to our communist comrades when our mutual enemies spread misinformation. If a person is going to make a video, make sure it is accurate. That is reasonable.
I appreciate your response. I'd encourage you to look at state and rev or a video the IMT has done on Marxism and anarchism.
Engels explains that you need authority with something like navigating a ship. While at sea you need a chain of command to handle situations as they arise, without that then everyone could perish.
That's not to say we don't support democratic election of leadership, just that when they are elected, they are the leadership and should be followed to get the job done. And really how do you know if a leader is good or not before the next time to choose leadership if you don't give them a chance to do what they were elected to do. I think most working class people understand this and that you need this kind of discipline to win.
The best of the anarchists join the Bolsheviks and this will happen again. We have the same goal. In my mind though anarchists take the bad leadership they see around us in capitalist society to a point of incorrect principle which leads them to not being able to build the organization needed to lead the working class to victory.
@@Marxwasright580 That is not the case at all. We do understand the bad leadership in capitalism and how it is different, however there has also been very bad leadership in state communism with devastating results and actually become counterrevolutionary, and this is often the case. The reasons are the same. This is because the Proletarian are not give the freedom to vote to remove them since they are protected by the state over which they rule. Parties protect their own no matter which parties they happen to be or if they're in the wrong, because they want to maintain power and so do their subordinates. This is the point in which they are similar.
The difference between communist leadership and anarcho-communist leadership is that we (also) elect leaders whenever necessary (preferably through consensus democracy and not majoritarianism) but we can also vote them back out when needed since they answer solely to the Proletarian and not those whom the leaders installed in their state and thus "owe them". This removes favoritism and nepotism and keeping the wrong person from being put in charge. This is why we never end up with powerful dictators, unlike both capitalism and state communism. If a leader has a state controlled by them and them alone, they will always install it with friendlies who will protect them, even if the People... The workers, want them removed. This is how tyranny may remain in state communism just as easily as capitalism.
For instance, in the example you gave for the captain of a ship, for us, each decentralized area (engineering, cooks, those who control the inventory, those who load and unload shipments, etc) all choose who is the voice of their particular group. They can then carry their concerns to the captain, as well as to keep each of their respective areas organized, functioning and working within a synchronized network to other areas of the ship.
As I said, they also carry the voice and concerns of their areas to the elected captain when needed, who has his own small group which is directly under his command to help him or her maintain this function, and even keep an eye on the captain to keep him or her honest and honorable, in case they become corrupted. This is what we call a *just hierarchical structure* and it is strictly voluntary. We aren't against hierarchy, we are against unjust hierarchies, and you should be too. This is one of the areas where this video goes very wrong. It is also a justifiable hierarchy because the crew retains the power to remove the captain/leader if he or she becomes tyrannical or turns out to be incompetent.
I have read plenty of Engels and I was a communist before I was an anarcho-communist. He never solved the problem of how a state will always protect itself once a leader is established within and empowered with absolute impunity. They simply no longer answer to the Proletarian. We have seen the results many times throughout history. Under anarcho-communism, the Proletarian always retain the Power of the collective.
Respectfully, it is the content creator who needs to read more about how anarcho-communism works before making such videos, as this video is misleading and filled with misinformation.
The more I study, the more I admire the socialist character--at least that of those much immersed and practically applying Marxian theory... Nonsense is regularly avoided as pertains to antagonistic comments and/or empty/misinformed historical references. The Marxist school is on the offense rather than the defense, with regard to the current political "arena," as it were, representing as magnets of conscience rather than laughing hyenas.
“ The workers have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the worker’s right to elect representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert it’s dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of worker’s democracy!” - Leon Trotsky on the demands of the Kronstadt sailors and workers.
"A revolution which is inspired by state socialism and adopts this form even 'provisionally' and 'temporarily' is lost : it takes a wrong road down an ever steeper slope. All political power inevitably creates a privileged position for those who exercise it.
Having taken over the revolution, mastered it, and harnessed it, those in power are obliged to create the bureaucratic and repressive apparatus which is indispensible for any authority that wants to maintain itself, to command, to give orders, in a word : to govern.
All authority seeks to some extent to control social life. It's existence predisposes the masses to passivity, it's very presence suffocates any spirit of initiative. 'Communist' power is a real bludgeon. Swollen with 'authority' it fears every independent action. Any autonomous action is immediately seen as suspect and threatening, for such authority wants sole control of the worker. Initiative from any other source is seen as an intrusion upon it's domain and an infringement of it's prerogatives and, therefore, unacceptable."
- Volin
what is Authority?
@50:00 finally states the concept of the permanent revolution
Thanks.
@the capitalist1 our concern is not to live in comfort but to live with respect to one another and to our environment. Capitalism doesn't kill? Capitalism doesn't censor? Capitalsm doesn't fuck up our respect towards minorities? Right... ;)
good shit!
I was hoping for an explanation of the "theory of permanent revolution" and its application and I'm still waiting. I was hoping for a more consistent lecture by an objective approach to the most general positions put forward and its correctness as well as its errors by the Russians.
You talk up and down, left and right, this and that, ho and ha, but you never penetrate thoroughly into the subject-matter by explaining how revolution became successful in Russia and through which ideas.
For example, one of the most important development in the preparation for the revolution, the question of organisation and its principles, and the way this question was raised and solved, eventually determined the course of the Russian Revolution. You go over it as if everyone at the time of the split was in a drunken and confused state, "Lenin was confused" even poor "Trotsky was confused", because it was all mighty confusion that Trotsky sided with the mensheviks, that he further on spent most of his career fighting Lenin and being outside of the Bolshevik party up untill the Octoberrevolution, and afterwards continued fighting the Soviet Union and its leadership. Yes! But, he had good arguments! Most things you talk about seems to be divorced from practice, as if the argument itself is wrong or right without further practical qualification.
There were most definitely mistakes within the party or state apparatus of the Soviet-Union and during its development, but in the end they were trying to build a socialist country, which Trotsky was eagerly fighting. His ideas in practice almost amount to nothing, which all Trotskyist organizations proof over the world.
That's a crude misrepresentation of Trotsky.
Great talk, but the permanent part I still don't get
permanent as in continuing the revolution beyond the democratic bourgeoisie task(distribution of land, abolish particularities of feodal landlords, the enactment of democracy governance etc.) to a socialist revolution(abolishing private property, nationalisation of the means of production etc.) and all these task need to be accomplished by the proletariat and the peasantry together. so the revolution is not stopping in just democratic revolution but need to be permanent surpassing the democratic task to a socialist task.
@@bismarachman9691 makes sense
Just a couples points: about "backwards Russia," as Trotsky himself pointed out, this doesn't mean purely agrarian. Indeed, by 1914, Russia was more industrialized, (by GDP,) than France, but it was confined to places like Tula & St. Petersburg. I've also encountered estimates of industrial workers as low as the 3 million mentioned, but also estimates 5-7x greater, w/ the lack of accurate census & civil war making it mostly impossible to quantify.
And, while i understand what Mr. Woods means by saying the bourgeoisie never played a revolutionary part, i think he may be conflating social movements & ideology.
Indeed, by his definition, no class but the workers ever played a revolutionary role. Caesar could not end the Republic w/o legions of plebeians. But that isn't Marx's point, as the lower classes by their numbers, always constitute the engine of history.
As the class that possessed the means of production, but not the power to fulfill its potential, the bourgeoisie created the political framework & ideology that would allow their rise. This is why lawyers played as central a role as landowners & merchants.
The Liberalism that ended feudalism was revolutionary in 1791. It enabled productive potential to expand, at great cost, & was strictly a bourgeois conception. It rules over us today, but now constrains productive potential, risking the future survival of our planet.
Thank you for preserving & distributing important lectures, and thank you, Mr. Wood.
You can’t be serious. None of the Bolshevik leadership from Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamanev , Bukharin, etc had any proletariat blood in them AT ALL! That’s pure BS.anyone saying that the Russian Revolution was led by some blue collar manna from heaven. One only needs to look at Venezuela . One of the oil rich countries in the world. Now run by so called socialist. People are breaking into food stores because there starving now under the current socialist leadership or trying to get to the other countries that border Venezuela , which are very poor to begin with but at least have food for their people. Yeah I know it’s all a capitalist lie don’t believe a word of it , huh. This guy sounds like a broken record. How many times have I heard this diatribe throughout the decades , almost word for word and how wrong it’s all been.. Workers of the world go to work, get laid and remember life was never meant to be entirely fair or equal.
I’m sure he agrees. I think he was just asserting that the bourgeoisie haven’t played a revolutionary role as a means of combatting the idea some “Marxists” put forth that the working class can see the bourgeoisie as allies.
Somewhat like how Marx and Engels are misunderstood as vulgar materialists because they had to overemphasize the materialist aspect of their philosophy as a means to combat idealism, so much so to the point it almost seems like they’re asserting humans have absolutely zero autonomy over their own existence.
I'm really surprised Woods goes on to speculate on a Muslim socialist super state, when he should know better that an Islamic caliphate is by it's very foundation anti socialist. If any one group would hold out against socialism, it's an Islamic caliphate. That topic could make for a very interesting lecture.
I like falling asleep to this
Lenin and Trotsky all intellectual all theories. The serfs would never understand mark or Engels.
is it? really? after all the heroic action of many peasant, many proletariat, many poor shop keeper in the history of the world after marx, engels, lenin, trotsky, rosa luxemburg and many intellectuals after them. i think your statement came from your petty bourgeoisie prejudice. and it is wrong. you just need to look around to comprehend the facts
@@bismarachman9691 any political systems are not perfect, find faults in anything and never the good,same with people.
@@frederickanderson1860 hmm...yeah...now you are off the topic...
@@bismarachman9691 never trust any historical narratives. No historian is unbiased in their sources.
I'm not sure I got what "permanent revolution" is from this. In my ignorance I think of permanent revolution as when you achieve power you self-critically replace what you have accomplished with a new restructuring of your own accomplishment, ever anew, because all meaning degrades into mere stale fact and must be re-juv-enated. As Heraclitus said: Some things stay the same only by changing. But I am ignorant.
I support Trotsky's theory of Permanent (continual-until-world-capitalism-is-abolished) Revolution, but this speaker made a patently untrue statement right at the beginning (well half of it patently untrue): "Wars and revolutions are rare events." Revolutions are rare events (now), but wars are common, because they result from socio-economic systems that are based on a super-rich minority dominating a relatively poor (and at the lowest levels, absolutely poor) majority (this speaker's reference to "Class War"). So, he had all the 'dots', but couldn't join them up! Also, revolutions only became rare after Stalin's murder (and deportation in Trotsky's case) of enough of the original Bolsheviks, especially the original leadership. Up until Lenin's death, there were many revolutions AND Bolsheviks throughout Europe: Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and some Central Asian countries, but they were all crushed by foreign (capitalist intervention), and after Stalin consolidated his infiltration of the headquarters of Revolutionary Marxism, even the attempts dried up. Revolutions were also common throughout Europe for most of the 19th Century.
Trotsky's ideas are confused to say the least: push forward to socialism, which is impossible to achieve. In the case of the USSR, where Trotsky thought socialism was impossible without revolutions in Germany and western Europe, he endlessly attacked the leadership for failing to achieve...socialism!
i think you are pointing a psuedo problem. and i think alan is not completely wrong. we see war when capitalism is in crisis, and in this late stage the crisis is more frequent. i think it is just a problem of scale. in fact, we don't experience war everyday in our day to day life. but it is true that war is permanent under capitalism. it is the location that shifts around the world. but the scale of war that prepare the russian revolution and the national revolution against colonialism is a large scale war that involved many imperialist actor that the scale of impact is so large it affect the large portion of the world, and it is true that we don't see it every day. i see no problem in Alan statement
@@mikemurray2027 do you even listen to this video or read Trotsky. don't be a dishonest communist, comrade. dishonesty doesn't bring us anything
@@bismarachman9691 I am not being dishonest, I am expressing my opinion. Trotsky's Permanent Revolution is inconsistent and incoherent. He said socialism was not possible in the USSR - which went against Lenin - but then attacked Stalin for failing to achieve socialism! All the while organising terrorism in the USSR to make sure it failed!
@@mikemurray2027 do you read Lenin? do you even watch the video. no, Trotsky attack the Stalin's socialism in one country. the soviet union is not a fully developed socialist society, they still had markets and trades. even Lenin said it, Socialism of Russia will be isolated if the western countries don't have their revolution.and even Lenin, to be fair with reality, admited that USSR is state capitalism. it is dishonesty to brush the reality and call USSR had achieved socialism, like what Stalin did. and it it wrong to think that socialism can be achieved in just one country. it is a theory that doesn't fit with any nation because in this modern day of world market, there is no chance that one countr can survive with its resource alone. so think, comrade, think. try to read Trotsky. try to read Revolution Betrayed. try to read and comprehend the idea instead of judging from your Stalinist prejudice. like i said. dishonesty doesn't bring us anything.
"The state as an institution is designed to protect and enforce oppressive class relations such as that of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, not erode them. Allowing the state to continue to exist will not assist in dissolving such relations, only in perpetuating them in new and equally destructive forms . Without the state , such classes will be unable to enforce their will on the populous, and thus will not be able to continue their existence." - Nestor Makhno
what is State?
Piolet
damn, france predicted a year and a half in advance at ~12:40
How can you even say that it was a workers revolution, when these people were still peasants and only a generation removed from Alexander’s serfdom reforms, and they had just flooded to the cities for work due to a foreign capitalist intervention? You can’t. This was still a peasant revolution; the workers were still “peasant” in their level of education, religiosity and certainly in their behaviors. They hadn’t “really” left their roots in serfdom, yet. And even then, it matters not whether such a revolution was “proletarian” or not, for it was guided by foreign “bourgeoisie,” which fled once the seeds had been planted and set in motion, who inauspiciously came on the heels of the western capitalists. These same “bourgeois” killed the Tsar and his family. This was a foreign-imported revolution from Western Europe if their ever was one, but that gets ignored.
@JK Anderson it’s unclear what you are even arguing here. Deal with the argument made.
Such a wild comment.
First of all, yes, the small proletariat that grew in the big cities of Russia, in the Urals etc came from the peasantry. But that doesn't mean that they hadn't become workers. They had materially left their roots - they worked for a wage, and produced in workplaces owned by (mostly foreign) capitalists. They were NOT peasants.
It is called proletarisation.
Second, I'm guessing your second argument is based on the fact that the germans led Lenin freely through Germany to Russia from his exile, because they thought he would disrupt the russian war effort. This is true from Germanys part, but it is also heavily distorted. Lenin was Russian, not foreign. He was in exile because of his revolutionary activities. He didn't collude with the germans, they tried to use him and didn't realize that he would succeed in leading the working class to victory.
After the revolution, the Bolsheviks did everything they could to expose the imperialists and spread the revolution to overthrow the German state in the name of socialism and democracy. They succesfully countered the imperialist attacks during the civil war when they invaded!
It wasn't ''foreign imported'' lmao. It was the bolsheviks as a leading organisation that helped the working class lead the peasant masses to victory together over the landlords and the bourgeosie - which was the only way out for Russia.
@@smalbeaste he was a paid German agent, who had Jewish ancestry. He also had well over a decade residing in European nations cultivating his revolutionary ideas. He was conveyed to Russia by German assets, and he got the Russians to capitulate in WW1 with Brest-Litovsk, so the Germans could push their expansionist plans more successfully in Eastern Europe later in Operation Barbarossa. Which is why it was no wonder why Stalin took over to block Lenin’s revolution for his own. You are just wrong about so many things, and have been force fed a version of history that smacks of memorizing talking points, but isn’t consequential in contemplation.
@@Baczkowa78
This is the dumbest, most reactionary conspiracy theory shit comment I've ever seen. You just broke all records.
German agent? Jewish ancestry? Operation Barbarossa was planned in 1918 BY LENIN?
Well, there's no point talking to a lunatic. My fault for not realizing what an idiot you were.
This is my last comment and I hope that was yours aswell.
@@smalbeaste Lenin German agent check Lenin Jewish ancestry check operation Barbarossa to recover German colonization project check. And I am talking to someone with little to no historical knowledge triple check. Oh, and ad hominems get you no where, in case you missed that in K-6 education.
How did these people sit through this? I was wilting after 5 minutes.
"No good ideas have cone from the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie" that's just obviously wrong. Marx was a part of the petty bourgeoisie. Most who contributed to socialist theory were.
"The bourgeoisie played very little or no role in the French and English revolutions." According to who? If they played no role, then the general reasoning behind permanent revolution is non-existent. I.e. if the bourgeoisie were not driving the revolutions then their betrayal would be inconsequential.
"Cromwell was not Bourgeois, he was just a small farmer." What is this revisionism? Its as if he wants to whitewash certain figures's class positions to exhonerate them from anti-proletarian actions. Cromwell was bourgeois, and slaughtered the Irish peasantry.
Great history and power to the people, etc... None of it works, but economic populism could be an excellent replacement.
How did Trotsky treat Alexander Shlyapnikov? Maybe you need to study this? New research has revealed the disgrace of how the worker opposition was silenced when they attaced the lack of freemom inside the party, the rise of the beuracracy's power. The fate of the Worker Opposition was the later destiny of Trotsky himself! Do you learn from history? Maybe not yet.
For a guy complaining about western slander against Marxism, he sure does swallow western slander against the USSR pretty hard.
3:18
Anarkiddies BTFO yet again
+ Michelle Sola,
I'm not confusing , conflating, obfuscating anything.
I know the difference between an economic system and a political system.
All im saying is there are no Capitalist countries, there are no Socialists countries just like there are no Communist countries, all economic systems are hybrids, you either have a free market economy , which doesn't exist, you have mixed market economies which exists which exists in 93% of the world some countries are more freer than others and you have state run markets.
Last I checked only 9 countries in the world that doesn't have a stock exchange, if you include Cuba .
The USSR had state run economies and it collapsed, North Korea is a hell hole, China introduced freer markets in the Deng Xiaoping era, and Cuba well that is just another hell hole,shall we talk about some of the african countries?
Marxism doesn't work, because the system doesn't allow the workers to be in charge, its always run by intellects and revolutionists and for whatever reason they don't want the workers to share power.
First!
Second!
Great Alan wood my teacher great marxist
workers of the world Unite 🚩🚩
Good old Alan Woods. Takes 45 minutes to get to the point, then doesn't quite make it.
yep
Typical of Trotskyists
Trotsky's distain for the peasantry doesn't 'develop' any part of Marx's idea of revolution in permanence. The idea that Trotsky is credited also for the "theory of permanent revolution" is laughable. You can read what Marx said about permanent revolution in Marx's address to the communist league in March of 1850, and Trotsky contributes nothing to it. Trotsky only stole this idea from Marx, and also Lenin and Stalin, and other Marxists don't disagree with this idea. It's just for the situation in Russia at the time it was either to just sit and wait for the revolution in Germany, which never came, or to at least try to build socialism in one state, and they went for the latter.
Intriguing . . . but . . . please do not insult the peasants. They are not as naive as you imagine. Remember, the gods hate pride.
Lenin, Trotsky, & even Stalin believed that the "revolution " would take place in a backwards agrarian country, instead of the orthodox Marxist belief of the revolution happening in an industrialized urban setting when Capitalism was fully developed.
These men thought that the urban workers & country peasants were "useful idiots ".
Commies were methodical, Anarchists were spontaneous.
@@sambradley2975 Boy were they ever wrong!!
Sam Bradley Trotsky did not think that his big hope was that England France and American workers would rise up because he hated Russian peasants
All the arguments against the anarchy were strawmen falacies.
“ Is it true that compulsory labour is always unproductive? This is the most wretched and miserable liberal prejudice : chattel slavery too was productive. Compulsory slave labour was in it’s time a progressive phenomenon. Labour, obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker, is the basis of socialism.” - Leon Trotsky misrepresenting socialism and trying to justify slave labour, including in the USSR.
what are you trying to achieve by butchering quotes and separate them from its context? what a childish attitude
56:40 - 57:15
I think this guy is 'particularly thick, particularly stupid'.
Zachary R.W. Johnson y
The way this guy discusses Marx and Lenin he sounds like a Christian fundamentalist. No new ideas, must hold to orthodoxy by our forefathers. This kind of rhetoric would find a home in fundamentalist conservative circles in America. Communist theory must evolve past the narrow minded religiosity held by Plekhanov and Lenin. He's very intelligent, and has good historical analysis, but it stops at Marx, at Lenin, at Trotsky, and hardly goes beyond it. Marxist analysis needs to move beyond Marx. Societies are complex, and bourgeois vs working class analysis is far too simple. Lenin and Trotsky were men, not prophets.
He attacks the two stage theory as an oversimplification that results in alliances with the bourgeois and the destruction of the revolution, and puts forward the eternal revolution and a no-compromise Leninist party-discipline approach as a solution. Yet it was that very party discipline and brutality against rivals that directly led from authoritarianism under Lenin and Trotsky, et al, to the nightmare of Stalinism. He can see the problem, but his proscription is far too simple.
The reality is that every political and social situation in every revolution is different, and there are a variety of approaches to unifying power and creating a new revolutionary government. Communism has few allies thanks, to a large degree, to how Lenin treated his allies, so compromise is not easy for communism as a faction to take power. Usually the most organized and disciplined faction comes out on top-this is a major advantage to Leninism, but at great cost. Capital development is needed to maintain a socialist society, but democracy (so often dismissed as bourgeois by Marxists) is needed to stave off the authoritarian nightmare.
"liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice... socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality" -Bakunin
He knows his history, but not women. His condescending attitude toward universities and women in them shows he has thing or two he still needs to learn. This is a shame because women, even those who aren’t fish wives are indispensable for instilling and perpetuating a post capitalist society.
yes
how is it condescending towards women to call for the emancipation of women and commend the women who've fought for it on a class line on an equal footing with men?
he's rightly criticizing liberal "feminism" which is not feminism at all because it has no interest in abolishing capitalism on any realistic basis, petty bourgeois "feminists" are more concerned with words than with actual change and actions that's how they come to sing praises of girl bosses and female war criminals and condemn or shun communist & working class women.
it's why they've failed so miserably in getting the working class to accept their garbage
not all women, actually. you just need to look around and be honest
Revolution was a flop.
This is extremely boring and hard to follow. The average worker is not going to sit through this. This kind of work is why Trotskyism remains out of reach for the average person..its always something like this.
What a load of crap, trots are servants of the Bourgeoisie
What do you take issue with Tim?
This man is sickeningly arrogant for being tied up in ideas that promised so much yet killed so many.
Those poor impressionable brainlets he's surrounded by don't even seem to care he's joking about them loosing their lives over this stuff at one point in this video, they just laugh right along... It's like story time with the grim reapers older British life partner who gets political when he drinks.
do you even get the jokes....oh my god. im embarassed myself reading this comment
left-communism ftw!
This is not left communism.
walruscoocoocachu26 ik
Yeah, fuck actually doing anything!
Owen Schroder ya I dont see you trots doing anything better and bordiga doesnt represent all leftcoms.
Obrero Rojo
If you don't think trots do anything you're basically admitting you haven't actually been in real life action.
You cannot claim to support both Trotsky and Lenin at the same time, not before the revolution. Lenin opposed Trotsky's theories, he in fact never came round to them even after the revolution. Trotsky opposed Lenin's ideas about a vanguard party, the basis of Lenininsm. Trotsky was more of a Menshevik.