Editing Trotskyism (section)

=== Passivity of the bourgeoisie ===
Trotsky argues that countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionary [[bourgeoisie]] which could play the same role, and the working class constituted a tiny minority. By the time of the European revolutions of 1848, "the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power."{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

The theory of permanent revolution considers that in many countries that are thought under Trotskyism to have not yet completed a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class opposes the creation of any revolutionary situation. They fear stirring the working class into fighting for its revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by capitalism.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} In Russia, the working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant-based society, was organised in vast factories owned by the capitalist class and into large working-class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements such as the essentially feudal landlords and, ultimately, the existing Czarist Russian state forces. This was to protect their ownership of their property—factories, banks, etc.—from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

Therefore, according to the theory of permanent revolution, the capitalist classes of economically backward countries are weak and incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. As a result, they are linked to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} Thus, Trotsky argues that because a majority of the branches of industry in Russia originated under the direct influence of government measures—sometimes with the help of government subsidies—the capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. The capitalist class was subservient to European capital.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp01.htm |title=Results and Prospects |date=1962 |publisher=New Park publications |pages=174–177 |author-link=Leon Trotsky |orig-date=1931 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>