Quotes from book
The Permanent Revolution

Name: The Permanent Revolution
Author: Leon Trotsky

The Permanent Revolution is a political theory book by communist leader Leon Trotsky. Its title is the name of the concept of permanent revolution advocated by Trotsky and Trotskyists in opposition to the concept of socialism in one country as advocated by Joseph Stalin and Stalinists. It was first published by the Left Opposition in the Russian language in Germany in 1930.

“The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to Socialist measures and to war against reaction from without; that is, a revolution whose every successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only in the complete liquidation of class society.”

Leon Trotsky book The Permanent Revolution

The Permanent Revolution (1929)

“The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable.”

Leon Trotsky book The Permanent Revolution

The Permanent Revolution (1929)

“The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and, very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.”

Leon Trotsky book The Permanent Revolution

Source: The Permanent Revolution (1929), Ch. 10

“With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.”

Leon Trotsky book The Permanent Revolution

Source: The Permanent Revolution (1929), Ch. 10