Editing Trotskyism (section)

=== The key role of the proletariat ===
Trotskyists differ on the extent to which this is true today. However, even the most orthodox tend to recognise in the late twentieth century a new development in the revolts of the rural poor: the self-organising struggles of the landless, along with many other struggles that in some ways reflect the militant united, organised struggles of the working class, which to various degrees do not bear the marks of class divisions typical of the heroic peasant struggles of previous epochs. However, orthodox Trotskyists today still argue that the town- and city-based working-class struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist revolution linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They argue that the working class learns of the necessity to conduct a collective struggle, for instance, in trade unions, arising from its social conditions in the factories and workplaces; and that the collective consciousness it achieves as a result is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of society.<ref>Many would put, for instance, the Committee for a Workers' International in this category of orthodox Trotskyists. See for instance {{Cite web |title=Che Guevara: A revolutionary fighter |url=http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2007/09/27che.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013213331/http://socialistworld.net/eng/2007/09/27che.html |archive-date=13 October 2007 |access-date=7 October 2007}}</ref>

Trotsky himself argued that only the [[proletariat]] or working class were capable of achieving the tasks of that bourgeois revolution. In 1905, the working class in Russia, a generation brought together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life, saw the result of its labour as a vast collective effort, also seeing the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective effort, forming workers councils ([[Soviet (council)|soviets]]) in the course of the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued: {{blockquote|text=The factory system brings the proletariat to the foreground [...] The proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous masses, while between these masses and the autocracy there stood a capitalist bourgeoisie, very small in numbers, isolated from the "people", half-foreign, without historical traditions, and inspired only by the greed for gain.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source=''Results and Prospects''<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |title=Results and Prospects |date=1962 |publisher=New Park publications |pages=183 |author-link=Leon Trotsky |orig-date=1931}}</ref>}}

For instance, the [[Kirov Plant|Putilov Factory]] numbered 12,000 workers in 1900 and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |title=The History of the Russian Revolution |date=1977 |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |volume=2 |pages=519 |chapter=July Days: Preparation and beginning |author-link=Leon Trotsky |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch24.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

Although only a tiny minority in Russian society, the proletariat would lead a revolution to emancipate the peasantry and thus "secure the support of the peasantry" as part of that revolution, on whose support it will rely.<ref name="Results 204–205" /><ref group="note">Trotsky adds that the revolution must raise the cultural and political consciousness of the peasantry.</ref> However, to improve their conditions, the working class must create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish the bourgeois revolution and establish a workers' state.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}