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Louis Proyect wrote:
> 
> I don't know what "according to the permanent revolution" means. Trotsky 
> didn't write a formula, even though his epigones turned it into one. The 
> obligation of Marxists is to analyze capitalist society and develop 
> strategy and tactics that will help to overthrow the capitalist class. I 
> don't read Trotsky's writings from 1905 in order to understand Thabo 
> Mbeki or Nelson Mandela. I read Patrick Bond. I am afraid your argument 
> is with Trotskyism, not Trotsky.

I have read Trotsky, and he has a definite viewpoint. And I also take account 
of the applications of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution made by 
Trotskyists, such as during the Arab Spring.  I think their application of 
permanent revolution is a legitimate and straight-forward reading of the 
theory, but the theory's wrong. It goes against what's happened in the world. 
With so many different Trotskyist groups and theorists, one would have 
thought at least a few would have been able to get it right. 

Now if Trotsky was so obscure that no one know what he meant by permanent 
revolution, that's a devastating indictment of his theorizing. And it would 
make him irrelevant. But I think that many later Trotskyists did understand 
the theory and tried very hard to apply it, and it's just that the  theory 
failed.



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