Nikolai Bukharin, The Theory of Permanent Revolution. December 13, 1924

In the "scissors crisis" debates, Bukharin defended the NEP premise that Soviet power rested on a worker-peasant alliance, not coercion against the countryside. Against Trotsky's harsher remedies, he argued for narrowing the gap between industrial and agricultural prices by encouraging peasant production—insisting that socialism in Russia could not be built without the consent of the peasant majority.

Original Source: Za Leninizm (Moscow: Gos. izd-vo, 1925), pp. 347-51, 353, 367.

For Comrade Trotsky the posing of the question was extremely simple: there can only be a proletarian revolution in Russia, but this proletarian revolution in a petty-bourgeois country is condemned to perish unless governmental aid on the part of the victorious proletariat of Western Europe is provided for it ...

Comrade Trotsky began by failing to understand the peculiar course of our revolution, which consists of the unique binding together of a peasant war against the landlord and the proletarian revolution. Comrade Trotsky did not understand the peculiarity of the initial stage of this revolution, the essence of which consists of liberation from feudal ways and the destruction of landlord property-holding ...

Comrade Trotsky furthermore did not see those special international conditions which-even without governmental aid from the victorious West-European proletariat-permit our socialist revolution to sit it out, become stronger, grow, in order that it may finally be victorious together with the victory of the working class of other countries.

Comrade Trotsky has here reasoned schematically: either a bourgeois revolution or a proletarian one; either the classical proletarian revolution-and a firm victory, or a half-breed proletarian revolution-and death. Either there is governmental aid from the Western proletariat-and salvation, or there is no such aid-and no such salvation.

But in fact life has completely refuted these schemes and has given altogether different answers. Both bourgeois and proletarian (one flows into the other); no state aid from the proletariat, but nevertheless aid on the part of the proletariat, and on the part of the colonies (and even aid on the part of the capitalists, who by their internecine fighting assist proletarian states); no classical proletarian revolution, but nevertheless not death but life, etc. Reality has proven to be much more varicolored that the dry schemes of the carefully drawn diagrams of "permanent revolution."

Trotsky's political impotence stems from the fact that he did not see reality ...

The disputes which we have been having can be reduced to a considerable degree, as we know, to the question of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, and of the hegemony of the proletariat in this "alliance" or "bloc." ... Only now has this question assumed its vast full magnitude. For, in essence, we are speaking here not only about the problem of the worker-peasant smychka in our Soviet republics, but also about a vast and in a certain sense decisive problem of the international revolution. For such a burning question of the present like the question of the colonies, which is a question of life and death for capitalism, is from the point of view of world revolution none other than the question of the smychka between the West-European and American industrial hand and the colonial peasantry on the other.

If we ask the question how things will be in the framework of the world economy when the workers conquer power, just this question of the relation of the victorious proletariat to the colonial peasantry will come before us. Insofar as we ask why the European Social Democrats have completely failed to understand the significance of the peasant question, have paid it so little attention, and have failed to pose the problems which are so characteristic for us, the matter does not at all reduce to the fact that we have a peasant country and there the countries are industrialized. They have also had their "agrarian complement," but it is not in the metropolitan country but in the separate periphery. And the fact that the European Social-Democrats have paid insufficient attention to the peasant question is unconditionally linked to the circumstance that they have a careless attitude toward the revolutionary posing of the question of the colonies ... When Comrade Trotsky, carried away by his "Europeanism," repeatedly underscored the Asiatic-peasant character of the ideology of the "immature proletariat (and just thus did he evaluate the Bolsheviks), in this Europeanism there was something of the contemptuous attitude of the Social Democrats toward the peasant and colonial question, although Comrade Trotsky personally devoted rather much attention to the colonial question.

From this general context regarding classes, from "European" evaluation of their role, stemmed Trotsky's quite concrete presentation of the idea that the revolution in Russia will inevitably perish if there is no governmental support on the part of the victorious proletariat ...

The classical proletarian revolution is one where proletariat is the only "popular" class. In other words, only in a society where there is no peasantry could this revolution occur.

However, this "ideal" presentation completely fails to conform to reality. If we take the world economy, we see that the proletariat in the real sense of the word constitutes an insignificant minority of the population ...

Before the seizure of power the working class must have the support of the peasants in the struggle against capitalists and landlords ...

The proletariat after its victory must get along with peasantry no matter what, for it is the majority of the population with great economic and social weight ... It is necessary, accordingly, to understand that the proletariat has no choice here; it is compelled, in building socialism, to get the peasantry behind it; it must learn how to accomplish this, for without this its regime will not last ...

If a conflict between the proletariat and the peasantry were unavoidable, inevitable, then it would be unavoidable inevitable even with the world victory of the proletariat. Peasants are the overwhelming majority on our planet. If the proletariat does not have the means to get this majority behind it, then: either the international revolution is doomed to collapse, or it must be postponed until the when the proletariat becomes a majority on the earth. We cannot hope to burst our terrestrial boundaries" and expect aid from purely proletarian heavenly forces, in "governmental form" besides! ...

Trotsky's mistake is to consider the conflict between the proletariat and the peasantry inevitable, when it is only possible. And this is not one and the same thing. It is inevitable only in the event that the proletarian regime proves to be less advantageous for the peasantry than a bourgeois regime, if the peasantry slips out from under the leadership proletariat. But this is not at all bound to happen, and will not, if the party of the victorious proletariat makes care for supporting and strengthening the worker-peasant bloc its main policy.

It is perfectly natural that when Comrade Trotsky on his errors we must say: if now when the country is again in a state of crisis they raise the question of the peasantry in its full scope, raising the question of the permanent revolution; when they continue to take the point of view of permanent revolution and want to turn the whole party onto this road-we cannot take this path, because we do not want to give up the Leninist position, because without this position we will destroy our cause. Therefore, we must ideologically liquidate Trotskyism and conquer the party under the Leninist banner no matter what, for the question of the worker-peasant bloc is the central question, it is the question of all questions.

Source: Robert V. Daniels, ed., A Documentary History of Communism (New York: Vintage, 1960), pp. 261-265.