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Permanent Revolution’ Introduction The Historical Origin of the Expression ‘Permanent Revolution’ There is a story, possibly apocryphal, which says that Chou En-Lai (Prime Minister of China from 1949 to 1976) was once asked to comment on the long-run effects of the French Revolution. He is said to have replied that ‘It is too soon to tell.’ Those who debated the possibility of revolution in Russia from 1903 onwards certainly shared the same conviction, for they made continuous references to the French Revolution of 1789, often measured their own prospects by comparison with it, and adopted much of its political vocabulary, including the concept of permanent revolution or ‘révolution en permanence’. On 17 June, 1789, the representatives of France’s Third Estate proclaimed themselves to be the National Assembly since they represented the overwhelming majority of the nation. King Louis XVI ordered the hall of the Estates-General to be occupied by armed men, forcing the people’s representatives to meet in the Tennis Court of Old Versailles street where they adopted the following decree: The National Assembly, considering that it has been called to establish the constitution of the realm, to bring about the regeneration of public order, and to maintain the true principles of monarchy; that nothing may prevent it from 2 • Introduction continuing its deliberations in any place it is forced to establish itself; and, fi nally, that the National Assembly exists wherever its members are gathered; Decrees that all members of this assembly immediately take a solemn oath never to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the realm is established and fi xed upon solid foundations; and that said oath having been sworn, all members and each one individually confi rm this unwavering resolution with his signature.1 The Tennis Court Oath denied the king’s authority to dissolve the National Assembly and set a precedent for the Berlin and Frankfurt National Assemblies in 1848. After a reactionary Ministry had been formed in Prussia by royal order on 21 September, 1848, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, edited by Karl Marx, cited a letter by a deputy that stated: We have just learned beyond doubt that an entirely counter-revolutionary Government has been formed. At tomorrow’s session this same Government will read out a royal message wherein the prospect of the disbandment of the Assembly will be held out. The result of this is a declaration of permanence which will probably lead to a new and very bloody revolution. All parties of the National Assembly are consulting permanently in their usual premises.2 Half a century later, this expression reappeared in Franz Mehring’s introduction to his anthology of writings by Marx and Engels in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Mehring described how, though the Prussian guard had been defeated by the Berlin proletariat in a fi erce street battle on 18 March, 1848, the Frankfurt pre-parliament ‘shrank before its own strength and failed to declare itself permanent [sich für permanent zu erklären] or to set up an armed force for its own defence’.3 This reference has a linguistic connection with the theory of permanent revolution developed by Marx and Engels, but the class content is entirely different: in the case of Prussia in 1848, at issue was the permanence of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, whereas, for Marx and Engels, ‘revolution in permanence’ meant going beyond bourgeois democracy to the proletarian socialist revolution. 1 Source: Gazette Nationale, ou Le Moniteur universel, trans. Laura Mason in Laura Mason and Tracey Rizzo, eds., The French Revolution: A Document Collection (New York: Houghton Miffl in, 1999), pp. 60–1. 2 Marx and Engels 1848b, p. 448. 3 Franz Mehring (ed.) 1902, p. 6. .
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