A backward nation can pass directly from bourgeois to socialist revolution.

Evidence

Writing afterward in the inexact and slovenly manner which is peculiar to him, Lunacharsky described my revolutionary concept as follows: ‘Comrade Trotsky held in 1905 that the two revolutions (the bourgeois and socialist), although they do not coincide, are bound to each other in such a way that they make a permanent revolution. After they have entered upon the revolutionary period through a bourgeois political revolution, the Russian section of the world, along with the rest, will not be able to escape from this period until the Social Revolution has been completed. It cannot be denied that in formulating this view Comrade Trotsky showed great insight and vision, albeit he erred to the extent of fifteen years.’ … The question was not of the dates of revolution but of the analysis of its inner forces and of foreseeing its progress as a whole. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2303

Categorization

• DEFINE: Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’ names the doctrine that the bourgeois and socialist revolutions, though distinct, are bound together so the first cannot close until the second completes.
• XREF: A founding term in the Marxist vocabulary of stage-skipping development, which Gramsci’s own theory of hegemony is built in argument with.