Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky identified himself as an Bolshevik–Leninist and supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favor of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists also criticize the bureaucracy that developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Leon Trotsky believed that the regime of the proletarian dictatorship, established in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, laid the socialist basis of the state, expropriating the means of production. However, during approximately 1923-1929, the Soviet bureaucracy, according to Trotsky, carried out a coup by taking power from the ruling class - the proletariat. Trotsky and his supporters, however, did not cease to regard the USSR as a working state-in their opinion, the Soviet Union was a bureaucratically deformed or degenerated workers' state.

Leon Trotsky regards the Soviet bureaucracy as a specific caste, but not a new class. In his view, the bureaucracy has no signs of a ruling class: "An attempt to present the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of" state capitalists "certainly does not stand up to criticism. The bureaucracy has neither shares nor bonds. It is recruited, replenished, updated in the order of the administrative hierarchy, regardless of any special, inherent property relations. His individual rights to the operation of the state apparatus can not be handed down by an individual official. The bureaucracy enjoys privileges in the order of abuse. " That is why, according to Trotsky, the bureaucracy aspires to liquidate the gains of the October Revolution and the restoration of capitalism - it needs to legally consolidate its ownership rights.

In 1905, Trotsky formulated his theory of permanent revolution that later became a defining characteristic of Trotskyism. Until 1905, some revolutionaries[10] claimed that Marx's theory of history positioned that only a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to this position, it was impossible for a socialist revolution to occur in a backward, feudal country such as early 20th century Russia when it had such a small and almost powerless capitalist class.

The theory of permanent revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that in Russia only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win the support of the peasantry. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there. They would win their own revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers' state in Russia and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a result, the global working class would come to Russia's aid and socialism could develop worldwide.

According to classical Marxism, revolution in peasant-based countries such as Russia prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers and traders which leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges. Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism.

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 as well as the internal pressures of its backward economy. The revolution, Trotsky argued, must quickly spread to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution which 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.

he theory of the permanent revolution holds that in many countries in which, as often claimed, their bourgeois-democratic revolutions have not yet occurred, the capitalist class opposes the creation of any revolutionary situation, primarily because it fears that the working class will rise to struggle for their own revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by the capitalists. In Russia, the working class, although it represents an insignificant minority in a multi-million peasant society, was organized in many factories belonging to the capitalist class. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the capitalist class took on its own allies reactionary elements - feudal landowners and tsarist state power - to protect the ownership of their property in the form of factories, banks, etc. from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.

According to the theory of permanent revolution, thus, in the economically backward countries, the capitalist class is weak and incapable of carrying out revolutionary changes. It is connected and relies on feudal landowners in many respects. Trotsky further argues that, since most industries in Russia arose under the direct influence of government measures, and sometimes even with the help of government subsidies, the capitalist class was also associated with the ruling elite. In addition, the capitalist class was largely dependent on European capital