ABSTRACT
This chapter describes each of the core elements of Trotskyist doctrine followed by critical commentary, exploring some of the problems and contradictions inevitably implicated in the construction of Trotsky's world view. It draws on existing biographies and studies such as Deutscher, Knei-Paz, Le Blanc and Swain and secondary sources on the Russian Revolution such as Cohen, Figes and Fitzpatrick as well as Trotsky's own history. In Results and Prospects, written shortly after the 1905 revolution and again in The Permanent Revolution, Trotsky advanced a radically different prognosis, the theory of permanent revolution. Trotsky and other Comintern leaders developed the idea of the 'united front', an agreement between communists and social democrats to engage in joint struggle around specific, immediate issues. Trotsky always insisted that so long as the means of production were owned by the state rather than capitalist firms then the USSR was a workers' state.
