Permanent Revolution (group)

Permanent Revolution is a revolutionary Trotskyist group which was formed after 24 people were expelled from the League for the Fifth International (L5I) in July 2006. It takes its name from Leon Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution.

History

The group was founded after a two year struggle against the perspectives adopted by the L5I at its 2003 Congress. It had first organised as a tendency then as a faction.

The split followed a discussion of how to assess the impact, on class politics in general and the level of class struggle, of two changes:

1. the effect of the restoration of capitalism in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1990
2. and of the defeats of the working class movement in the 1970s/80s, particularly in the USA and United Kingdom.

The group gathered together a minority which argued that, almost without exception, the international left had undertaken no serious rexamination of world perspectives and economy since a "stagnation phase" in the 1970s and 1980s. It felt that as a result, the international left had been unable to explain either the marginalisation of the left or the failure of important protest movements against capitalism (such as the anti-capitalist movement, anti-war movement and Social Forum movements) to sink significant roots into the world working-class....
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