Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/12

 Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution, which maintained that the victory of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia was only possible "with the state aid of the working class in the more highly developed countries," Lenin pointed out repeatedly that the proletariat of the highly developed capitalist countries already become the strongest allies of the victorious proletariat in the backward countries even before the establishment of their own dictatorship. Not only the "state aid" but the very revolutionary struggle for the seizure of power in the capitalist countries renders the consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship possible and the development of socialism in the existing Soviet Republics.

When applied to the perspective of the European, especially of the Central European and primarily the German revolution, the Leninist theory requires the correct estimate of the role of the American proletariat and consequently the establishment of a revolutionary mass Party in America as a decisive factor in gaining and defending the dictatorship of the proletariat in Germany. The development of imperialism after the first world war made America the metropolis of the capitalist world. Germany and a constantly increasing number of other European states which formerly were amongst the older and dominant capitalist countries, sink to the level of economically and politically backward countries, to industrial colonies of American finance capital. Although these countries had already accomplished the bourgeois revolution a long time ago, they