Revolutionary theory is judged by analyzing internal forces, not predicting dates.
Evidence
In My Life , pp. 157-58, Trotsky wrote: “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. … The defeat of the revolution blanketed all prospects not merely those which I had been expounding. 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
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Connects to the permanent-revolution debate that Gramsci engages against Trotsky throughout the Notebooks; relevant background for how Gramsci’s own concept of hegemony develops as an alternative to permanent revolution.