Trotskyism for dummies

Trotskyism appeared around 1906 when Trotsky published his book Results and Prospects.

His fundamental theory was called "Permanent Revolution". The Permanent Revolution is an uninterrupted revolution. Indeed, Trotsky refused the idea of intermediate stages foregoing a socialist revolution. From 1905 to his death, Trotsky defended the same theory: the Dictatorship of the proletariat should complete, by its own means, the bourgeois democratic revolution. His theory can be summarized with the following motto: "No Tsar, but a workers' government."

Lenin disagreed with this formula. He believed that, before establishing a socialist system, a compromise, a class alliance, with the bourgeoisie (In Russia : the peasantry as a whole) was necessary. This was called the Democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. This dictatorship was democratic because it didn't represent the power of the sole proletariat, but of the whole society against the remnants of the aristocracy. The aim: a bourgeois republic.

According to Lenin, this historical compromise became reality during the Russian revolution. The february 1917 revolution opened the period of "dual power", i.e. the coexistence of Kerensky's government with the Soviets. The Soviets, popular assemblies, were still not dominated by the Bolsheviks. Lenin considered these assemblies to be a particular embodiment of the democratic dictatorship, a compromise between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Lenin was convinced that the proletariat was numerically too weak for an immediate socialist revolution. There was a rural proletariat of course, i.e. poor landless peasants. But they were not independent from the kulaks. However, through a "democratic dictatorship", society would soon modernize, and a time would come when the rural proletariat would separate itself from the kulaks. The path would be open for a socialist revolution.

Lenin, of course, never disowned this theory. After the October Revolution in 1918, he wrote: "We have said it hundreds and thousands of times since 1905, and we have never attempted to skip this necessary stage of the historical process or abolish it by decrees [...] Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning."