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Andy is correct at least with regards to permanent revolution. The characterization by Green of Permanent Revolution is like a middle-school text book definition. The *program* of Permanent Revolution to the degree as it's advocated and not just, as many Trotskyists project, simply an analytical took to prognosticate the course of a future revolution, is closer to Andy's interpretation. All these revolutions *start as democratic ones* (struggles for actual democracy against dictatorship, land reform, national liberation,etc). All Permanent Revolution says/advocates/predicts is that in order to actually *achieve* those democratic *tasks* it will take the complete overthrow of he existing capitalist regime and the installation by the working class of Workers Government. That's it. There are none, ZERO, preconditions about who or whom to support in achieving this except that to go "all the way", again to achieve the reason people were rebelling in the first place, means to break with the capitalists *politically* who may be part of the initial phases of the revolution and keep the working class independent. But that latter point is on us, not the masses themselves. Problems of Permanent Revolution: it was poorly written. It was overly prognostic in it's structure (not unlike Lenin's writings as well in some cases). It has zero to really say about *how* to conduct a struggle for national liberation other than emphasis on the building the Communist Party. There is not enough or very little about the national liberation stage of the revolution and the tactics and strategy to be used in leading such a fight. And Trotsky did talk about 'stages'. Trotsky rejected, however, the *mechanical application of stages* implied in Lenin's writings (such as in Two Tactics for Social Democracy) but rather emphasized there is no "iron wall between stages" and one 'stage' dynamically flows into the other as dictated by the course of the revolution. It takes a revolutionary party that understands this dynamic to insure the completion of the democratic revolution by way of a working class victory. Also not talked about is the issue of Imperialist intervention because it assumes that all such struggles are anti-Imperialist and the lines are clearly drawn which, of course, is not always the case. David Walters _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
