Editing Trotskyism (section)

=== International revolution ===
Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism. According to [[classical Marxism]], a revolution in peasant-based countries such as Russia ultimately prepares the ground for capitalism's development since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers, and traders. This leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

Trotsky agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a country like Russia would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world and the internal pressures of its backward economy.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} Trotsky argued that the revolution must quickly spread to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution that must spread worldwide. In this way, the revolution is "permanent", moving out of necessity first, from the bourgeois revolution to the workers' revolution and from there uninterruptedly to European and worldwide revolutions.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

An [[Proletarian internationalism|internationalist]] outlook of permanent revolution is found in the works of [[Karl Marx]]. The term "permanent revolution" is taken from a remark of Marx in his March 1850 Address: "it is our task", Marx said: {{Blockquote|text=[...] to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.|sign=Karl Marx|source=''Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League''<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |last2=Engels |first2=Friedrich |author2-link=Friedrich Engels |date=March 1850 |title=Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm |access-date=6 June 2016 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>}}

His biographer, Isaac Deutscher, has explicitly contrasted his support for proletarian internationalism against his opposition to revolution by [[military]] [[conquest]] as seen with his documented opposition to the [[Polish–Soviet War|war with Poland]] in 1920, proposed armistice with the [[Allies of World War I|Entente]] and temperance with staging [[British foreign policy in the Middle East|anti-British revolts]] in the Middle East.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=472–473}} Historian [[Robert Vincent Daniels]] believed that the practical differences, in the domain of [[foreign policy|international policy]], between the Left Opposition and other factions had been exaggerated and he contended that Trotsky was no more prepared than other Bolshevik figures to risk [[war]] or for the loss of [[trade]] opportunities despite his support for [[world revolution]].{{sfn|Daniels|2008|p=195}}