What is the "Permanent revolution" theory ?

OP wrote:

Of course you are right, comrade Dagoth Ur, when you say that the proletariat in the only truly revolutionary group. But you are making, like many Trotskyists, a « leftist » mistake : you forget that a revolution must be conducted step by step : today the necessary democratic alliance of the « whole people » against autocracy, tomorrow the fight of the proletariat for socialism. A purist, non-dialectical analysis leads to some reactionary positions, the idea that the proletariat should lead alone in any condition. Lenin explains : « The revolutionary-Democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry is unquestionably only a transient, temporary aim of the Socialists, but to ignore this aim in the period of a democratic revolution would be downright reactionary.

Trotsky wrote:

3. Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.

4. No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist Party. This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the democratic revolution.

OP wrote:

Before the war, Trotskyists refused the « Popular front » against fascism, they didn't understood that fascism was much more dangerous than bourgeois democracy. During the war, Trotskyists refused to enter the Resistance, because they applied the very old Zimmerwald's outilne. They thought that the war was a simple imperialist war between equal forces, and that the workers should prefer « revolutionary defeatism ».

Engels wrote:

Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes – at opportune times – a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites.

Trotsky wrote:

At the moment that the "normal" police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium -- the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat -- all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.

From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the co-operatives. When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance the patterns set by Mussolini -- the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role -- but it means first of all for the most part that the workers' organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat.

Trotsky wrote:

Foreign policy is an extension and development of domestic policy. In order to understand correctly the Kremlin’s foreign policy, it is always necessary to take into account two factors: on the one hand, the position of the USSR in capitalist encirclement and, on the other, the position of the ruling bureaucracy within the Soviet society. The bureaucracy defends the USSR. But above all it defends itself inside the USSR. The internal position of the bureaucracy is incomparab1y more vulnerable than the international position of the USSR. The bureaucracy is merciless against its disarmed adversaries inside the country. But it is extremely cautious and sometimes even cowardly before its well-armed external enemies. If the Kremlin enjoyed the support of the popular masses and had confidence in the solidity of the Red Army, it could assume a more independent position in relation to both imperialist camps. However, reality is different. The isolation of the totalitarian bureaucracy in its own country threw it into the arms of the nearest, the most aggressive and therefore the most dangerous imperialism.

Already in 1934 Hitler said to Rauschning: “I can conclude an agreement with Soviet Russia whenever I wish.” He had categorical assurances on this account from the Kremlin itself. The former chief of the foreign GPU agency, General Krivitsky, revealed extremely interesting details of the relations between Moscow and Berlin. But, for the sensitive reader of the Soviet press, the Kremlin’s real plans have been no secret since 1933. Above all Stalin was afraid of a great war. In order to escape it, he became an irreplaceable aid to Hitler.

However it would be incorrect to conclude that the five-year campaign of Moscow in favor of a “united front of the democracies” and “collective security” (1935-39) was a pure swindle as is represented now by the same Krivitsky who saw from the quarters of the GPU only one side of the Moscow policy, not perceiving it in its entirety. While Hitler spurned the extended hand, Stalin was compelled to prepare seriously the other alternative, that is, an alliance with the imperialist democracies.

OP wrote:

Trotskyists didn't want to see Stalin win anymore than they wanted to see Hitler win », except that some trotskyists really sided with Hitler (I gave the expample of the MNR).,

Trotsky wrote:

We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production of the USSR: that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.

OP wrote:

The "Third period", that we also call the "class against class" period, is different from the Popular Front that was initiated by the French Communist Party.

OP wrote:

Stalin said to comrade Thorez : "you found new keys to open the doors to the future". But during the "Third period", the official tactic was the "United Front" - If I make no mistake, it is called "front unique" in French. Trotsky explains that the "United Front" is the worker's front, and nothing more.

OP wrote:

I was speaking about the war, not about Trotsky's position on Stalin's international policy. Trotsky has a very clever theory about fascism, but we should discuss it in another topic.

OP wrote:

What said Trotsky about the war ? He said that only a "socialist revolution" could crush fascism...This is the proof that Trotsky was analyzing the war as a simple imperialist war, that workers needn't to make a choice between democracy and fascism, USSR and fascism, but between revolution and fascism.

Trotsky wrote:

The present war, as we have stated on more than one occasion, is a continuation of the last war. But a continuation does not signify a repetition. As a general rule, a continuation signifies a development, a deepening, a sharpening. Our policy, the policy of the revolutionary proletariat toward the second imperialist war is a continuation of the policy elaborated during the last imperialist war, primarily under Lenin’s leadership. But a continuation does not signify a repetition. In this case too, continuation signifies a development, a deepening and a sharpening.

OP wrote:

But his "revolution" was just a trotskyist idea without any social background. In his so-called analysis, USSR had no role, it was the treator that had to be saved in the meantime by the socialist revolution ! (Trotsky, defence of USSR, 1940). He said, exactly as the lambertist treators : "Hitler's soldiers are German workers and peasants" (On the Future of Hitler's Armies (1940), "The German soldiers, that is, the workers and peasants, will in the majority of cases have far more sympathy for the vanquished peoples than for their own ruling caste. The necessity to act at every step in the capacity of 'pacifiers' and oppressors will swiftly disintegrate the armies of occupation, infecting them with a revolutionary spirit."

Trotsky wrote:

Fascism in power, like Bonapartism, can only be the government of finance capital. In this social sense, it is indistinguishable not only from Bonapartism but even from parliamentary democracy...The strength of finance capital does not reside in its ability to establish a government of any kind and at any time, according to its wish; it does not possess this faculty. Its strength resides in the fact that every non-proletarian government is forced to serve finance capital; or better yet, that finance capital possesses the possibility of substituting for each one of its systems of domination that decays, another system corresponding better to the changed conditions. However, the passage from one system to another signifies the political crisis which, with the concourse of the activity of the revolutionary proletariat may be transformed into a social danger to the bourgeoisie. The passage of parliamentary democracy to Bonapartism itself was accompanied in France by an effervescence of civil war. The perspective of the passage from Bonapartism to fascism is pregnant with infinitely more formidable disturbances and consequently also revolutionary possibilities....What has been said sufficiently demonstrates how important it is to distinguish the Bonapartist form of power from the fascist form. Yet it would be unpardonable to fall into the opposite extreme, that is, to convert Bonapartism and fascism into two logically incompatible categories. Just as Bonapartism begins by combining the parliamentary regime with fascism, so triumphant fascism finds itself forced not only to enter into a bloc with the Bonapartists, but what is more, to draw closer internally to the Bonapartist system. The prolonged domination of finance capital by means of reactionary social demagogy and petty-bourgeois terror is impossible. Having arrived in power, the fascist chiefs are forced to muzzle the masses who follow them by means of the state apparatus. By the same token, they lose the support of broad masses of the petty bourgeoisie. A small part of it is assimilated by the bureaucratic apparatus. Another sinks into indifference. A third, under various banners, passes into opposition. But while losing its social mass base, by resting upon the bureaucratic apparatus and oscillating between the classes, fascism is regenerated into Bonapartism. Here, too, the gradual evolution is cut into by violent and sanguinary episodes. Differing from pre-fascist or preventive Bonapartism (Giolitti, Brüning-Schleicher, Doumergue, etc.) which reflects the extremely unstable and short-lived equilibrium between the belligerent camps, Bonapartism of fascist origin (Mussolini, Hitler, etc.), which grew out of the destruction, the disillusionment and the demoralization of the two camps of the masses, distinguishes itself by its much greater stability.

OP wrote:

This has nothing to do with the USSR, necessarily, having no role - but with dialectics. The USSR wasn't put on Earth by God to avenge the wrongs of the living, it itself is the culmination in the dialectic response of history.

The workers had to wait the "desintegration" of Nazi Germany and USSR would be saved by the socialist revolution. They must not "resist" and use violence, because nazi soldiers were "workers". This is the origin of the theory of "revolutionary defeatism", and this is criminal.

Trotsky deserved his death.

OP wrote:

I totally agree ! As trotskyists were purged from USSR and very weak, they could only rely on international solidarity to overthrown marxist-leninists.

OP wrote:

Then why did you said : Stalin dropped the idea of the United Front in favour of the "Third Period". This is false : Stalin dropped the idea of the United Front (=Third Period, worker front) in favour of the Popular Front (democratic front).

OP wrote:

In case of counter-revolutionary war against the Soviet Union, the communists will call all workers to contribute by all means and at any price to the victory of the Red Army over imperialist armies". Meanwhile Trotsky thought that only a revolution could save the Soviet union.

Trotsky wrote:

We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production of the USSR: that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.

OP wrote:

About the 1931 referendum, the communists never voted "for the nazis". This is a trotskyist lie. They voted against the SPD and called it the "red referendum" (the referendum failed), but in october 1930, they opposed the referendum in Prussia. Why ?
This is called tactics, and the strategy of the "Third Period" may have been a mistake, but this is very different from Trotskyist criminal defeatism or collaboration during the war.

OP wrote:

In his analysis of the war, Trotsky has evaded the question of fascism as he said that nazi soldiers were workers with an uniform. He was right when he said in 1931 that there is a difference between fascists and social-treators. But why didn't he said in 1940 that the communists had to take part in the Resistance ? Because he thought that "the policy of the revolutionary proletariat toward the second imperialist war is a continuation of the policy elaborated during the last imperialist war" (what I called "the very old Zimmerwald's outilne"). He does not say that the war is different in quality, but that it is "deepened". This is what I criticized, thank you for the quote.

OP wrote:

I quoted Trotsky himself, and I never said he was a Jew. This is a racist argument.

OP wrote:

I didn't pick this quote, you did. In marxist dialectics, there can be no simple repetition. Trotsky believes that the war is "deeper", so that this war is not indeed a "repetition". But if there was any qualitative difference according to Trotsky, he would not have spoken about a "continuation", he would not have said that marxists had to use a "continuation" of WWI's tactics. Of course, the war was very different. The communists had to defend USSR by any means, this is one of the big differences of the war.

OP wrote:

What is the link between your quote, and "imperialist intervention" ? He speaks about "overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy" !

OP wrote:

He thought that everything could be done with a "revolution" (overthrowing fascist "bonapartist" dictatorship and soviet "thermidorian" bureaucracy).

OP wrote:

Any marxist, Jew or not, would oppose Hitler. It is a racist argument to consider the ethnic origin of someone rather than his ideas.

OP wrote:

Trotsky only speaks about a "deeper" war so that he can't be accused of denying basic marxists principles, and in order to hide the fact that he analyses the war as the same war which requires the same tactics : revolutionary defeatism.

OP wrote:

In my opinion, the main "reset button" was the USSR, but according to Trotsky, USSR government was a bourgeois imperialist government.

Trotsky wrote:

The first concentration of the means of production in the hands of the state to occur in history was achieved by the proletariat with the method of social revolution, and not by capitalists with the method of state trustification. Our brief analysis is sufficient to show how absurd are the attempts to identify capitalist state-ism with the Soviet system. The former is reactionary, the latter progressive.

OP wrote:

Under the pen of Trotsky, the "defence of the USSR" is no more than phraseology, criminal defeatism.

OP wrote:

You can be an "hitlero-trotskyist" without promoting Hitler, if you help him objectively.