412 SCIENCE & SOCIETY

A Maverick in European Social Democracy:

Trotskys Political Trajectory Between 1905 and 1917
JOHN MAROT
It is good that Richard Day and Daniel Gaido brought together a collection
of articles, written by leading European Social Democrats between 1902 and
1907, on the nature of the coming revolution in Russia (Day and Gaido,
2011). It is even better that Lars Lih has decisively intervened to set the re-
cord straight, by forcefully reaffrming what has generally and traditionally
understood to be the uniqueness of Trotskys permanent revolution theory,
that is, his appraisal of the driving forces, and the fnal political result, of that
forthcoming revolution (Lih, 2012). Gaido and Day, however, deny Trotskys
originality in this matter, claiming that Kautsky, Ryazanov, Luxemburg, Parvus
and Mehring anticipated Trotskys scenario of permanent revolution an
incorrect conclusion, as Lih shows. My aim in this brief comment is to add
to Lihs intervention what I believe to be the chief explanation for Trotskys
political isolation in the period 19071914 and, arguably, up to 1917.
Trotskys permanent revolution theory clearly set him apart from all
Social Democrats, as Lih rightly reaffrms. However, Trotskys singular theory
need not have led to his political isolation in practice, as Lih appears to
imply. The reason Trotsky stood alone politically is one that few on the left,
and even fewer in the Trotskyist tradition, are willing to entertain: Trotsky
privileged theory over practice, at least in this instance. The kissing cousin to
doctrinarism in theory is sectarianism in politics: Trotsky deliberately walked
into the political wilderness after 1907 and deliberately walked out of it
only in 1917, under the impulse of mighty events. This assessment does not
accord with Gaido and Days reverential defense of the visionary Trotsky,
but it does, I believe, accord with the facts, to which I now turn.
Lih shows how all Social Democrats, including Trotsky, agreed that
the material premises for socialism were not present in Russia: 100 million
small-propertied peasants would have no interest in collectively organizing
production. Notwithstanding the disinterest of the overwhelming majority
of the population in socialized production, Lih restates the commonly held
and correct view that only Trotsky thought the dynamics of the bourgeois
democratic revolution would inevitably lead the proletariat to seize power
and make a socialist revolution, shattering the bourgeois limitations of the
democratic revolution. The peasants would support such a revolution, not
Science & Society, Vol. 77, No. 3, July 2013, 412415
G4192.indd 412 5/9/2013 12:22:35 PM
PERMANENT REVOLUTION 413
because it would bring socialism but because it would bring land redistri-
bution and a swift end to gentry rule in the countryside. Though Russian
Social Democrats differed in their assessments of peasant political capaci-
ties, Trotsky, Lih writes, arrived at the same practical goal of some sort of
worker/peasant revolutionary government advocated by Lenin, thus put-
ting Trotskys views on the peasants in the democratic revolution squarely
into the Bolshevik wing of Russian Social Democracy (455, emphasis added).
Indeed, Trotskys ideas about the democratic revolution itself were practical
politics up to at least 1917, Lih avers (459, emphasis added).
Nevertheless, should the working-class seizure of power in Russia fail to
trigger socialist revolutions in the heartlands of capitalism, it was Trotskys
prediction of inevitable confict between the proletariat and its class ally, the
peasantry, that isolated him among Russian Social Democrats, writes Lih,
because Social Democrats were then trying to enlist the peasantry in the
democratic revolution to overthrow Tsarism. For this reason alone, what-
ever its merits as predictive analysis, the Trotsky scenario was unacceptable
as a party program (460). Lihs analysis raises the following issues.
Does the theory of permanent revolution contain within it the requirement
that all Russian Social Democrats accept it as part of the program of the RSDLP?
Lih does not ask this question because explaining Trotskys political trajectory
is not the main object of his intervention; it is mine. Nevertheless, if the ques-
tion were posed, I believe Lih would fnd no textual evidence that the Social
Democrats mandatory programmatic adoption of the theory was in the theory.
What then prevents Trotsky and the Bolsheviks from making common
cause at this juncture, given their agreement that the peasantry must pres-
ently be considered an ally in the democratic revolution leading up to the
overthrow of Tsarism? After all, the concluding part of Trotskys scenario is
scheduled to take place only after the overthrow of Tsarism, not before. It
follows that since the confict between Bolshevism and Trotsky in the pre-
1917 period on this question is only theoretical and latent, not practical
and active, it seems that it is Trotsky who has isolated himself and not the
Social Democrats who have isolated him by apparently insisting that So-
cial Democrats accept the entirety of his scenario, including the concluding
part, which has no practical political relevance in the here and now an
insistence expressed in Trotskys political behavior, if not in his speeches
and texts; in his practice, if not in his theory. That, in this instance, Trotsky
chose to privilege his theory over practical cooperation with the Bolsheviks
cooperation, moreover, that contained within it the potential to modify
or infect the Bolshevik attitude toward Trotskys ideas is, in my view, a
telling sign of Trotskys political infexibility.
This conclusion seems to be further strengthened when we examine
Bolshevism and Menshevisms opposed attitudes toward the liberal bourgeois
G4192.indd 413 5/9/2013 12:22:35 PM
414 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
opposition. More precisely, it is Trotskys striking summary assessment of
those opposed attitudes that I wish to spotlight, an assessment Lih does not
integrate in his intervention. In 1909 Trotsky wrote:
Whereas the Mensheviks, proceeding from the abstract notion that our revolution is
a bourgeois revolution, arrive at the idea that the proletariat must adapt all its tactics
to the behavior of the liberal bourgeoisie to ensure the transfer of state power to that
bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviks proceed from an equally abstract notion democratic
dictatorship, not socialist dictatorship and arrive at the idea of a proletariat in
possession of state power imposing a bourgeois democratic limitation upon itself. It
is true that the difference between them in this matter is very considerable; while the
anti-revolution aspects of Menshevism have already become fully apparent, those of Bolshevism
are likely to become a serious threat only in the event of victory. (Trotsky, 1905, 31617,
emphasis added.)
Thus, Trotsky writes about how the counter-revolutionary traits of Men-
shevism had become apparent in the aftermath of the defeat of the 1905
Revolution, because experience had shown that the bourgeoisdemocratic
revolution would never reach victory if the working class followed Menshevik
leadership. On the other hand, the counter-revolutionary traits of Bolshe-
vism would become apparent only in case of a proletarian victory led by the
Bolsheviks, because the Bolsheviks would then insist on maintaining the
revolution within its bourgeoisdemocratic limits avoiding confict with
the peasantry but reversing the proletarian victory.
1
Clearly, in light of his own assessment of the Mensheviks, Trotskys
opposition to them was immediate, direct, active and practical, excluding
any political rapprochement with them. Equally clearly, and on the same
grounds of effective politics, Trotsky should have joined the Bolsheviks long
before 1917, trying at the same time to convince them of the correctness
of his permanent revolution theory but prepared to split with them in
1917 if they proved unwilling to lead the working class beyond the limits
of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution. Trotsky refused to follow this
course. In this matter and it was not a small one! Trotsky proved to
be incorrigibly doctrinaire right up to 1917, when the Bolsheviks came
around to the theory of permanent revolution entirely independently of
Trotsky, by adopting Lenins April Theses to guide their political activity.
1 The leading role of the proletariat was part of the Social Democratic consensus about the
Russian democratic revolution writes Lih (440). Actually, as Trotsky shows, there was no
consensus. Consensus broke down in 1904, when the Bolsheviks developed their views on
the leading role of the working class, views they clearly counterposed to those then being
put forth by the Mensheviks in Iskra, which the Mensheviks had placed under their editorial
control as part of their campaign ignoring certain decisions of the Second Party Congress,
held the previous year. The key text here is Lenins The Zemstvo Campaign and Iskras
Plan (Lenin, 1961, 497516).
G4192.indd 414 5/9/2013 12:22:35 PM
PERMANENT REVOLUTION 415
Even then, Trotsky still did not formally join the Bolsheviks until months
later, in July 1917.
Finally, it is not just Trotsky who foresaw an antagonism of interests
developing between the property-loving peasantry and the working class
in case of a working-class victory: all Social Democrats did, and Lih readily
recognizes this. However, no Social Democrat correctly grasped the actual
nature of this confict.
2

Department of History
Keimyung University
Daegu, Korea
jemarot@aol.com
REFERENCES
Day, Richard B., and Daniel Gaido, eds. and trans. 2009. Witnesses to Permanent Revolu-
tion: The Documentary Record. Leiden, Amsterdam: Brill.
Lenin, V. I. 1961 (1904). Collected Works, 4th English edition, Vol. 7. Moscow: Progress
Publishers.
Lih, Lars. 2012. Democratic Revolution in Permanenz. Science & Society, 76:4 (Oc-
tober), 433462.
Marot, John. 2012. The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect: Interventions in
Russian and Soviet History. Leiden, Amsterdam: Brill.
Trotsky, Leon. 1972. Our Differences. Pp. 316317 in 1905. New York: Vintage.
Originally published in Rosa Luxemburgs Polish Marxist journal, Przeglad social-
demokratyczny.
2 I study this in detail in The Peasant Question and the Origins of Stalinism: Rethinking the
Destruction of the October Revolution (in Marot, 2012).
G4192.indd 415 5/9/2013 12:22:35 PM