The theory of Permanent Revolution is associated with Leon Trotsky, although Marx is well known to have originated the term in his Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in March 1850. In this address he proclaimed that for German workers ‘their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.’
Marx called for this revolutionary strategy even though he noted that the situation was one in which ‘the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development.’ They were to be comforted by the knowledge that ‘this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated.’
Their task was not one of immediate revolt but ‘must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organised party of the proletariat.’
Today, we are not in a situation in which the German or any other section of the working class is going to come to power, and ‘a protracted revolutionary development’ is required. This is not admitted by many calling themselves Marxist but is imposed on them anyway. The price paid is that they can’t consciously adjust their theoretical or strategic framework to adapt appropriately.
Today, we are again called upon to support ‘democracy’: for a ‘democratic’ Ukraine against autocratic Russia and to ‘defend the right of self-defence’ of the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. The protests by students in US universities against the genocide carried out by this democracy is said by Antony Blinken to be a ‘hallmark of our democracy’ just as the students are attacked and locked up. The ‘hypocritical phrases’ of the democratic bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie are thus louder now than they were when Marx called for their rejection 175 years ago, making his remarks as apposite now as they were then.
Unfortunately, much of the left has forgotten what it means to inform workers ‘of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible’ and ‘by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases’ of democracy. Calls for national self-determination of Ukraine or Donbass simply become the hypocritical phrases by which to justify rallying behind Ukraine, because it is a ‘democratic’ capitalist state, or behind Russia, because it is fighting Western imperialism.
The capitalist character of both is rendered irrelevant by talking about ‘Ukraine’ or ‘Russia’ or the ‘people of Ukraine’ etc. while ignoring the need for the working class to ‘achieve the realisation’ of its ‘own class interests’ by ‘taking up their independent political position as soon as possible.’
On one side the Ukrainian capitalist state and Western imperialism are supported as defenders of these interests and on the other the Russian capitalist state is supposed to play the same role. Neither can point to any independent role for the working class itself or even the existence of its own organisations that are not totally subordinated to, or in support of, their respective states. In doing so it almost becomes superfluous to accuse them of abandoning Marxism.
The cognitive dissonance involved in defending a corrupt capitalist state, defending the massive intervention of western imperialism, and a war that continues only because of this intervention, can be seen in three defence mechanisms often employed to avoid accepting the patent contradictions: avoiding, delegitimising and belittling.
So, we get the avoidance of the implications of the points just raised and the commitment to a more straightforward campaign in support of the Palestinian people. The arguments against support for the Ukrainian state are delegitimised by aping the propaganda of the mainstream media for whom opposition to Western imperialism and its proxy war can only equate to support for Russia. Since this Left starts from opposition to the Russian invasion, its inability not to default immediately to support for Ukraine and the West reveals the utter irrelevance of any declared adherence to socialist politics separate and opposed to both.
Finally, the cognitive dissonance is limited through the importance of the war also being strictly circumscribed. So, opposition to Russia becomes opposition to Russian imperialism while support for Western imperialist intervention is dismissed as the latter doing the right thing for its own reasons – without this having any significance for what it is actually doing. The existence of a proxy war that defines a global conflict is also rendered irrelevant by the primary and over-riding issue being argued as the right to self-determination – of an independent capitalist state that had already determined its own future by allying with Western imperialism against its rival next door: not a very clever thing to do and a very reckless one for the interests of the Ukrainian working class. The obvious danger of escalation of the conflict to a world war is also minimised but is implicit in the absolute priority given to the victory of the Ukrainian state and thereby, necessarily, of Western imperialism.
To claim that the invasion should not have taken place and is wrong. That it should be opposed and the invaders blamed for the actions they have carried out, and for which they are responsible, is all very well but hardly constitutes an understanding of why it happened, what should be done about it, and by whom. If you are a socialist, this socialism should have some role in answering these questions. As has been stated many times on this blog, if you find yourself coming up with the same explanations and same policy as Western imperialism you need to deal with a lot of dissonance. How could you start from a socialist position and end up with a policy indistinguishable in all essential and practical respects from Western imperialism?
It is therefore relevant to look again at the ideas involved in permanent revolution to see how these should guide a socialist view of the current conflicts.
Back tom part 1
Forward to part 3
Sráid Marx 
The basic distinction between the one state solution and two state solution, for the “Left” does come down to which set of bourgeois enemies o the working-class they see as their immediate champion, the agent of their moral imperative. Those that do look to western, “democratic imperialism” as their saviour, for example in Ukraine (most notably the AWL) also do see it as their saviour in Israel/Palestine (just as they saw it as their saviour in Libya, where they argued that it, along with the feudal Gulf Monarchies (!) were the means by which bourgeois democracy was being introduced [you had to read this at the time to believe it came out of the mouth of supposed Trotskyists]).
The problem for them is that the experience of that in Afghanistan (where they were left bemoaning that US imperialism should not have left before having established bourgeois-democracy, as they argued in Northern Ireland, in relation to British troops, and in Iraq and Libya, has been appalling. What is more, US imperialism, and its European subordinates has shown no interest in actually intervening in Israel/Palestine to bring about a bourgeois-democratic transformation, based upon national self-determination.
So, those that see western democratic imperialism, rather than the proletariat as the historical agent of change, cannot openly say we want the US to intervene with boots on the ground etc., instead, they advocate the two state solution, which is just another way of saying that without actually saying it! The only way a two-state “solution” could come into existence is if the US enforced it. It would require that the US threaten to cut off support to Israel unless it allowed it to be put in place, and if the US put large-scale finance and military support behind a Palestinian state, in the same way it has done behind Israel for the last 70 odd years, when it took over from Britain and France, as the main imperialist power in the region.
But, the US has never had any interest let alone intention of doing that, and its paper support for two states, was always just a means of fobbing off western liberals like the AWL, and the Palestinian and Arab bourgeoisie.
Likewise, those that advocate a single Palestinian state, which given the existence of the Zionist state, let alone its backing from the US, means a war against that state by the surrounding Arab states, simply transfer the agent of change to this even more reactionary social force, the Arab bourgeoisie, usually in the form of reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalists, pretty much as the same kinds of elements did in throwing their support behind the reactionary, petty-bourgeois, Catholic nationalists of PIRA.
But, just as the bourgeois Irish state had no intention of supporting the agenda of PIRA, as it cosied up to US, UK and EU imperialism, and became ingrained in it, so the bourgeois Arab states have no intention of supporting any such war against Israel, as repeated events have shown. But, even if they did, any such war would be thoroughly reactionary, implying the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of workers on all sides, if not an inevitable expansion into a global imperialist war.