ABSTRACT
In the booklet Foundations of Leninism, the "theory of permanent revolution" is described as one which underestimates the importance of the part played by the peasantry. Lenin opposed the champions of "permanent revolution", not because they asserted the continuity of the revolution, but because they underestimated the importance of the part played by the peasantry which forms the great reserve force for the proletariat. This characterisation of the Russian champions of the theory of permanent revolution has till recently found general acceptance. This chapter focuses on the foregoing quotations, which is from an article by Lenin entitled The Attitude of the Social Democracy towards the Peasant Movement, published on October 1, 1905. Lenin was the only Marxist who accurately understood the idea of permanent revolution and developed that idea. The idea of the growth of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution is one of the modes of realisation of the Marxist theory of permanent revolution.
