Review, by Barry Biddulph of Trotsky, Trotskyism and Trotskyists, a Communist Workers Organisation Pamphlet.
The CWO acknowledges Trotsky’s insight from his participation in the Russian Revolution of 1905, that “the appearance of Soviets allowed him to foresee the possibility of a proletarian revolution in Russia”. (1) But, Trotsky always had something of Lassalle’s notion of the people’s state about his politics. It was always the revolution using the state and nationalisation, rather than a revolution against the state. So even though “Trotsky led the Soviet, his theory of Permanent Revolution never led him to analyse the Soviet and draw from it what Marx drew from the Commune”. (2) Instead, in 1905, Trotsky reached the conclusion that in the future revolution, unemployed and locked out factory workers would not limit themselves to the capitalist Republic, but would demand state intervention from a workers government.
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