https://journals.scientia.international/SIJHuman

Scientia International Journal for

Human Sciences

Vol. 1, 1 (2026)

Type: Research Article | DOI: 10.56365/9gs0y759

Open-access article under a CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).

The Interrupted Revolutions in Latin America: The Approach of

Adolfo Gilly and Florestan Fernandes

Ricardo Scopel Velho

Federal Institute of Santa Catarina, Rio do Sul, Brazil

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9868-0099

ricardo.velho@ifc.edu.br

Abstract

This article aims to engage with the works of Adolfo Gilly and Florestan Fernandes regarding the relevance of the concept of

“interrupted revolution” and the concept of “permanent revolution” to the capitalist realities of Latin America. A brief

description of the processes of bourgeois revolution in Mexico and Brazil is presented, illustrating Gilly’s concept of “interrupted

revolution” and Fernandes’s concept of “permanent counterrevolution.” The article also discusses some strategic approaches

derived from diverse understandings of the capitalist transition in the region. Finally, the paper raises some questions regarding

the relevance today of the categories of permanent revolution, interrupted revolution, and autocracy for analyzing the realities of

21st-century Latin America.

Keywords: Dependent capitalism; permanent revolution; interrupted revolution.

Article details | Open peer review

Edited by:

Michel Goulart da Silva

Reviewed by:

Daniel Campos Ruiz

Yván Pozuelo Andrés

Citation:

Velho, R. S. (2026). The interrupted revolutions in Latin America: the approach of

Adolfo Gilly and Florestan Fernandes. Scientia International Journal for Human

Sciences, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.56365/9gs0y759

Article History

Received: March 10, 2026

Reviewed: April 10, 2026

Accepted: April 10, 2026

Published: April 20, 2026

Scientia International Journal for Human Sciences 2 of 17

Introduction

The transformations in global capitalism have always preoccupied social scientists, especially those

who, beyond their academic concerns, have also produced critical and militant work. This article aims to

explore the incorporation of Leon Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolution into the theoretical work of two

such committed authors: Adolfo Gilly and Florestan Fernandes.

Gilly actively participated in revolutionary activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, and, finally,

Mexico; Fernandes became involved in a Trotskyist organization while still a young man and established

himself as a militant educator of the Brazilian revolution. Both analyze the transformations that occurred in

the 20th century from a critical perspective—that is, from a viewpoint concerned with the purpose of the

event under analysis. As intellectual militants, they raised theoretical questions that could help elucidate the

contradictions experienced by Latin American societies—in particular, the characterization of the bourgeois

and proletarian revolutions and the more or less rapid transition from one to the other. The various ways of

understanding this transition were the subject of the most profound controversy within 20th-century Marxism

and gave rise to disputes over distinct political strategies.

Among the controversies and issues raised by the thinkers discussed, priority will be given to the

question of the concept of revolution and its implications in a Latin American class society.

Origin of the Concept of Permanent Revolution

To address this issue, it is necessary to revisit the tradition of revolutionary theory rooted in Marxism.

This conception views conflicts between material interests as the driving force of history. To this end, it is

essential to investigate which contradictions are fundamental and which are secondary at different moments

in human history. At times of change in modes of production, certain social sectors rise to become the

protagonists of the political struggle to advance their material interests; and when these clash with other

interests, a period of conflict begins.

In the 1850 text “Message to the Central Committee of the Communist League” by Marx and Engels

(2010), the developments surrounding the transition from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist

mode of production are analyzed. For this reason, this work is essential to our discussion. In it, members of

the Communist League—a revolutionary party of the time—discuss the actions of the proletariat in the midst

of a bourgeois revolution. The authors’ historical interpretation indicates that the contradiction between the

level of development of the productive forces and the social relations of production placed the “key” to

political resolution in the hands of the bourgeoisie, since it already possessed economic power created by the

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process of commodification of social life —not due to any preestablished determination, but rather due to the

set of variables involved in that struggle, in that social formation. In this work, Marx and Engels outlined

scenarios in which the political struggle would unfold, charting a political-revolutionary strategy for the

proletariat. They did not do so based on their own will, but rather on an objective interpretation of reality.

Both were communist activists and knew that they were not in the midst of a socialist revolution, but rather

a bourgeois revolution.

From this concrete historical situation, communist leaders and social theorists identified the

fundamental elements of a preliminary theory of revolution. According to Marx and Engels (2010), these

elements are:

1. It is necessary to objectively analyze the nature of the revolution;

2. The proletariat needs an autonomous and independent organization;

3. It needs its own program;

4. It requires both legal and clandestine activities;

5. We must build a dual armed power; and

6. Establish a permanent revolution with an international character.

This last element—the permanent revolution—is essential to understanding the logic of revolution as

a constant element in humanity’s social production. It was this element that sparked debate among various

theorists and revolutionary leaders. The “Message to the Central Committee...” was a call for permanent

revolution because many of the mistakes made by the proletariat in the defeat of the 1848 revolution stemmed

from a lack of class autonomy and independence. In the words of Marx and Engels, the proletariat was left

trailing behind the democratic bourgeoisie. These authors draw from French revolutionary literature the term

en permanence—that is, that the revolutionary class must maintain the pace of transformation, without

interruption, until final victory. This did not happen in the French Revolution, due to the Restoration, nor did

it happen in Germany in 1848 due to the bourgeoisie’s betrayal—which was already expected—and the

proletariat’s lack of independence.

From this historical context emerged the perspective of permanent revolution as part of a

revolutionary strategy for the working class. It is well known that the permanent revolution is a powerful

concept in the work of another author in the Marxist tradition. Leon Trotsky made extensive use of it to

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counter the mechanistic interpretations of the Second and Third Internationals. Three fundamental aspects of

Trotsky’s (2007) elaboration are highlighted here:

1. The continuity of the bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution without the need for

intermediate stages;

2. In the event that the proletariat seizes power, the socialist transition must also proceed without

interruption;

3. The proletarian revolution must be international; otherwise, it will regress or wane.

Leon Trotsky (2007) draws on the Paris Commune as a historical comparison to analyze the Russian

situation amid the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.

The theory of permanent revolution is already present in Marx and Engels’ letter, but it is through the

experience of the Russian Revolution of 1905 that it gains historical objectivity. The Russian bourgeoisie,

the product of capitalist development from the outside in—that is, carried out by French, Belgian, British,

German, American, and other companies—materialized as a class that was economically weak and lacked

political vitality. The convergence of interests among this local bourgeoisie, the international bourgeoisie,

and the agrarian aristocracy found in the tsarist state a political form compatible with joint action. Thus, the

typical aspects of this social formation embody the universal elements of the capitalist mode of production

in a unique way. On the one hand, in the major cities, industry is the foundation of the emerging world; and

in the rest of the vast country, the old traditional forms of backwardness in the Russian countryside prevail.

This conceptual synthesis is captured by the category of the unequal and combined development of Russian

capitalism. Hence, Trotsky’s contribution to the assessment of the workers’ defeat in the Paris Commune and

in 1905 in Russia lays the foundation for a strategic formulation far more powerful than that previously

accepted by the labor movement.

The hegemonic strategy of the Second International was based on a non-dialectical understanding of

the need for the expansion of capitalist relations prior to a socialist rupture. Trotsky’s interpretation imposed

a new perception of the class struggle, in which the proletariat must assert its revolutionary essence from the

very outset of the struggles and not delude itself with the idea of a common struggle with the bourgeoisie

against the old regime. These categories will be essential for Gilly and Fernandes in their interpretation of

Latin America.

That said, we return to the fundamentals of the six elements identified by Marx and Engels in the

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“Message.” Therein lies an outline of a theory of revolution. The six basic elements have been addressed by

the proletarian movement and by the authors themselves in very different contexts, from 1850 to the present

day. Marx, for example, after writing the “Manifesto,” spent the rest of his life studying economic n politics

and developing a critique of political economy, which culminated in his work *Capital* (1867). In it, he

provides us with the key concepts that explain the prevailing mode of production. It is in this work that the

foundations of a comprehensive theory of revolution with an anti-capitalist character are laid. Without

incorporating the universal theoretical concepts for grasping the logic of capital, it is impossible to formulate

a victorious revolutionary strategy.

In many cases, the proletarian movement based its interpretations solely on the rough outlines of the

defeated experience of 1848–1850 and failed to delve deeper into the analytical concepts regarding the

different social formations presented in that seminal work, which interprets the capitalist mode of production.

This shortcoming of the labor movement led to an ahistorical conception of revolutions and created a radical-

bourgeois version of class struggle that did not transcend the limits of the democratic order.

It seems that Florestan Fernandes and Adolfo Gilly attempt to overcome this limitation, drawing

largely on the tradition of the permanent revolution as articulated by Marx and Engels, but also directly from

Trotsky.

The Bourgeois Revolution in Mexico—According to Gilly

Adolfo Gilly, an Argentine activist and researcher, spent time in Bolivia, Guatemala, Cuba, and

Mexico. In Mexico, he was imprisoned in the 1970s. While in prison, he wrote a book on the Mexican

Revolution. According to this author, the events in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century are linked to

two concurrent transformations:

1. primitive accumulation; and

2. capitalist accumulation.

At the same time that a class of large landowners linked to agrarian businesses was expropriating the

peasants, this class was transforming itself into a bourgeoisie that accumulated wealth through industrial

enterprises. In the classical bourgeois revolutions, this occurred over a period of time, due to the long process

of the incubation of truly bourgeois relations still within the feudal mode of production. The bourgeoisie in

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the classical revolutions had to confront the obstacles of the old regime, which led to violent conflicts before

the new mode of production could take hold. In late capitalist transformations, sectors linked to the world

market—such as slave owners, merchants, bankers, etc.—gradually became bourgeois. In this sense, the

conflict did not take on the same original character. Such bourgeois revolutions leave a trail of violence

against those at the bottom—social sectors not economically and politically integrated into the new situation.

In Mexico, at the beginning of the 20th century, Porfirio Díaz, the former leader, and Madero, a

representative of the new bourgeois generation, sought reconciliation from above and attempted to put an end

to the revolution that had erupted into mass movements since 1910. However, Zapata, a peasant leader, did

not lay down his arms and continued with the Plan of Ayala: “First, divide the land; then, discuss.” The

peasants and workers, amid a mix of interests and contradictions, found a way to express their class

consciousness. Note: it is the impossibility of reaching a compromise with the bourgeoisie that drives them

to continue the struggle, since the program is not anti-capitalist. But the political intensity of the conflict

escalates into a civil war.

A revolutionary period then begins. According to Mignon (2020), Gilly explains that “revolution is

the product of specific, historically defined social relations between human beings and the material forces of

production that constrain their actions” (Mignon, 2020, p. 771).

Thus, understanding social changes in the midst of a civil war can only be explained through a

complex web of actors and actions. Hence, a mechanistic and linear perspective fails to capture reality in its

contradictory movement.

The nature of the revolution in Mexico is unclear, as the transformation of large landowners into

bourgeoisie proceeds at a slow pace, which is not the same among peasants and workers. For this reason, the

new bourgeoisie does not seize power with the ouster of Porfirio Díaz, while the armed peasants, led by

Zapata and Villa, hesitate to take power. From this situation emerges a historical pattern of bourgeois class

action in Latin America: the brutal repression of those who have the potential to set a different civilizational

course for the process of economic, social, and political transformation on the continent.

However, the changes did not proceed with sufficient depth and scope. The military’s actions and the

rebels’ hesitation ultimately brought the revolution to a halt—a key moment in Gilly’s analysis. Reflecting

on the origins of his interpretation of the interruption of the Mexican Revolution, this activist and theorist

states:

In Trotsky’s view … Cardenism was a “sui generis” form of Bonapartism, which

sought to rise “above the classes,” making concessions to the workers in order to

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secure a certain degree of maneuvering room against foreign capital (Gilly as cited in

Mignon, 2020, p. 781).

It is not the purpose of this article to delve deeply into the Mexican revolutionary process, but merely

to point out that the interruption of the revolution at a bourgeois-democratic stage produced a typical “ ”

pattern of social formation in that country. It is also important to emphasize that while there are negative

aspects to this interruption, there are also positive ones, since it was preceded by a violent class struggle

between the ruling and ruled classes—for example, the experience of a disciplined military organization

committed to the revolution. Such political education can be seen in the tradition of Mexican popular, labor,

and indigenous organizations to this day.

The Bourgeois Revolution in Brazil—According to Florestan Fernandes

From a very young age, sociologist Florestan Fernandes was challenged to understand Brazilian

society. He had to work to survive starting at the age of six; at 20, he decided to enroll in the then-newly

founded University of São Paulo (USP) to study social sciences. At the same time, he began his political

activism in the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR), a Trotskyist organization and member of the Fourth

International (Silva, 2024). In 1946, Florestan Fernandes translated Karl Marx’s *Contribution to the

Critique of Political Economy* into Portuguese for the first time. These biographical details are necessary to

contextualize the dual role played by the author: that of a social scientist and that of a revolutionary activist.

From his earliest works, the São Paulo sociologist sought to explain the transition from the old

colonial regime to a class-based society. His research on the Tupinambás, on the integration of Black people,

and on folklore in São Paulo are works that, in different ways, reveal the economic, political, social, and

cultural characteristics of Brazilian social formation. At a certain point in his career—after the 1964 military

coup and, especially, after his forced retirement in 1969—he waged a relentless war against the autocratic

nature of the Brazilian bourgeoisie.

One of his fundamental contributions lies in his explanation of the bourgeois revolution, which

broadly resembles Gilly’s understanding. For Fernandes, there is a capitalist transformation in countries with

a colonial past that differs from classical bourgeois revolutions. In the latter, the driving force behind this

economic transformation comes from outside; therefore, they are heteronomous societies. In the latter,

economic forces originated from within; that is, they possessed an internal driving force of capitalist relations

and class conflict, and were thus hegemonic societies.

With the increasing complexity of the world market that emerged following the European

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industrialization process, the colonies became the focus of the expansion of capitalist relations. Fernandes

(1975) categorizes the patterns of external domination as follows: 1. Colonialism: in which the subjugation

of host societies occurred through political and legal mechanisms of domination. This was the era of

domination by the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain; 2. Neocolonialism: subjugation is now economic in

nature, yet it occurs through the incorporation of the social sphere into the metropolis via market mechanisms

in the process of simple commodity exchange; 3. Imperialism: This is a form of economic, political, and legal

domination in which imperialist countries impose rules on host countries, which, in turn, adopt the relations

of production typical of the capitalist mode of production. England, France, and the United States are

examples of this type; 4. Total imperialism: the most complete form of capitalist domination. It is in this form

that nations gradually cease to be the organizational foundation of subjugation, paving the way for the active

role of large corporations. These corporations begin to create and recreate relations of authority and

dependence at all levels of society.

Note that the forms of external domination are a characterization of capitalist relations in motion—

that is, they transform according to the material conditions of each historical period. Added to this

characterization is the conceptualization of the formation of the bourgeoisie in countries undergoing a

colonial-neocolonial-dependent transition. The author points out that, in Latin America, there are varying

degrees and forms of capitalist development, with some countries still being neocolonies and others already

dependent.

The concept of dependent capitalism is also of central importance at this point in the discussion. It is

on this basis that Fernandes constructs his explanation of the specific bourgeois revolution in dependent

capitalist countries, including Mexico and Brazil. For him, capitalist transformation was not coupled with the

creation of a competitive social order; rather, archaic traditions of authoritarianism persisted within a new

mercantile economic base. In other words, the old slave-owning society gradually ceased to exist due to the

universalization of the labor market, yet it continued to coexist with surviving hybrid elements of those

colonial relations. External pressures for the expansion of the capitalist market—demanding the end of

slavery, the rationalization of the legal system, and the organization of state administration on a market-based

foundation—are felt by the elite managing the new global economic situation. At the same time, these archaic

domestic sectors become bourgeois as they come into contact with import and export schemes linked to the

world market.

For Fernandes, what matters is the “combination of internal and external influences, which has

calibrated (and continues to calibrate) the dynamics of class society in accordance with the requirements of

patterns dependent on capitalist development” (Fernandes, 1975, p. 75).

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Thus, even during the neocolonial transition period, external influences are received and managed

internally by a bourgeois class that reinterprets them and acts in accordance with its material basis of interests.

These interests involve capital accumulation determined by its place in the international division of labor.

Note that the manner in which the market emerged and expanded in Latin America did not pit a new, profit-

hungry class against another class that violently defended its interests. Here, what occurs is a reconciliation

from above—a non-classical bourgeois revolution. There is a very peculiar nascent society, where changes

in the economic base facilitate an accommodation among the sectors “at the top.” In summary:

Labor relations of colonial origin served as the foundation for the type of primitive

accumulation of capital that would fuel the emergence of the modern capitalist

market, direct integration into the world market, and the production-export-import

scheme that both presupposed (Fernandes, 1975, p. 62).

Furthermore, a rearticulation of the system as a whole takes place, and what appears “archaic” is in

fact updated, serving as a foundation for the modern, whereby the modern seems to lose that character,

revitalizing its opposite or generating socioeconomic forms that blend pre-capitalist accumulation with

specifically capitalist accumulation” (Fernandes, 1975, p. 62).

The excerpt above is a strong indication of the influence of Trotsky’s thought on Fernandes’s

formulation. The logic of uneven and combined development is evident, and without it, it is not possible to

grasp the particularity of Latin American social formations.

In contrast, in the case of the United States, there was a bourgeois revolution accompanied by

nationalizing autonomization that pitted archaic sectors against modern ones. The War of Independence

served to historically advance the capitalist transformation and, at the same time, created a competitive social

order marked by the specific legacy of the Civil War—the deep scar of racism. In Latin America, these

transformations were deprived of the very modernity that propelled a conquering bourgeoisie onto the stage

of history. On the subcontinent, the pattern was the interruption of progressive changes at a stage prior to the

political socialization of marginalized sectors and those newly incorporated into the market. Thus, Black

people, Indigenous peoples, and poor whites were left on the margins of history-making, left only to suffer.

A dividing line can be discerned in this brief description: on one side, the countries and classes capable

of acting autonomously—in this case, the United States; on the other, the countries and classes that are

heteronomous or dependent. This is due to the historical context of social formation in which they developed,

being determined not only by their own interests but also by negotiations over their positions of power as

dependent economies. The bourgeois classes in these societies are weak externally but very strong internally.

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According to Fernandes (1975, p. 69):

The “privileged classes” (that is, the “upper” and “middle” classes) face structural

limitations generated directly by the dual pattern of original capital accumulation and

by the resulting mode of distributed appropriation of the national economic surplus

(Fernandes, 1975, p. 69).

Fernandes explains the specific form of the dependency relationship through the mechanism of dual

appropriation of the economic surplus. This means that the resources produced by this society are partially

drained out of it, preventing primitive accumulation capable of propelling the bourgeoisie toward autonomy.

Thus, the material base of these dependent bourgeoisies is weak and discontinuous, as it lacks full decision-

making capacity. The dualist explanation—which proposed an alliance between popular sectors and the

national bourgeoisie to limit imperialist power—failed to take into account the objective co-optation to which

the local bourgeois class was exposed. The practical implication of this framework is the impracticality of an

alliance with any bourgeois sector to carry the revolution forward.

This understanding clashes with the explanations of the Third Communist International, which in

1928 defined the guidelines for a broad front against fascism. From a political standpoint, the Third

International lacked a theory capable of explaining the particularities of capitalist development in the

periphery. We have seen thus far that Gilly and Fernandes run counter to the communist movement led by

Stalinist orthodoxy.

Fernandes (2015) engages in a debate with those sectors of the left that ground their strategy for social

change in a misguided understanding of decolonization. The São Paulo sociologist asserts that the theory of

internal colonialism—marked notably by the Brazilian Communist Party’s interpretation at the time—raises

“the banners of the struggle against ‘feudalism,’ archaic structures of production, and, above all, anti-

imperialism” (Fernandes, 2015, p. 100). However, Fernandes predicts: “something is better than nothing”

(Fernandes, 2015, p. 100). His reflection stems from his opposition to critical theories that fall within the

spectrum of bourgeois radicalism and reformist nationalism. His understanding of the evolution of capitalist

transformation in countries with a colonial past compels him to revisit the classic questions regarding the

evolution of the world economy. Fernandes frames the issue as follows: “History did not repeat itself because

there was no reason for it to repeat itself. It was a different history—the history of capitalism in countries

with a colonial past” (Fernandes, 2015, p. 92).

Fernandes’s social theory is further complemented by a perceptive theory of the state within this

dependent capitalism. For him, the state is the political form capable of uniting the various “bourgeois

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islands” that emerged from the neocolonial transition to dependent capitalism. Using the German and

Japanese revolutions as benchmarks—which utilized the state as a concentrator of political power to

compensate for those countries’ late entry into imperialist competition—Fernandes asserts that the state in

dependent capitalism enables the unification of bourgeois action to confront conflicts with those “from

below.”

From this arises a pattern of class struggle that is extremely harsh and cruel toward the working

masses. Fernandes (2005) characterizes this political action as a true bourgeois autocracy, and the state as a

bourgeois autocratic . It serves

as a springboard for counterrevolutionary political, military, and police measures that

have tied the national state not to classical bourgeois democracy, but to a technocratic

version of restricted democracy, which could be accurately described, in technical

terms, as a bourgeois autocracy (Fernandes, 2005, p. 313).

From his reflections on autocracy and dependent capitalism, the Brazilian thinker develops a key

category for the class struggle: that of “permanent counterrevolution.” In the author’s view, the bourgeoisie

has learned from historical experiences; the proletariat has not yet.

Permanent Revolution versus Interrupted Revolution

The theoretical elaborations of Gilly and Fernandes draw heavily on Leon Trotsky’s concept of the

process of permanent revolution and its ramifications. To analyze these ramifications, one must understand

that the Mexican and Brazilian realities undergo a metamorphosis to incorporate the capitalist market

mechanisms stemming from imperialist expansion. These social formations did not witness a struggle by the

bourgeoisie against the dominant strata of the old regime, but rather an alliance among the dominant sectors.

From this first characteristic stems the second, related to the interruption of the revolution.

According to Gilly, in Mexico, the revolution was underway when workers and peasants took up the

struggle to implement Zapata’s Plan of Ayala. However, the leadership of the popular movement was

peasant-led, which is said to have prevented it from making significant progress on radical demands. On the

other hand, the interruption is said to be related to the insufficient political and programmatic organization

of the rebellious masses.

Another theoretical element brought to light by the Mexican experience—and its interruption—is the

historical particularity that becomes explicit in contrast to certain universalities of how revolutions function.

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This means that, within the capitalist mode of production, and in the labor pains of bringing it into the world,

certain events necessarily occur. These universalities form the basis of Marxist thought and are present in the

conceptual framework of Marx’s *Capital* (2017). But there are also particularities, which can only be

understood through a concrete analysis of the social formations generated by the world market. Both Marx

and Trotsky always took into account the internationalism of capital and, consequently, the necessary

internationalist action of the working class. Thus, interpreting the universal and the particular at each

historical moment is fundamental to formulating a revolutionary, , and strategic approach. Different

understandings of reality give rise to different practical-political propositions.

According to Gilly, interpretations of the Mexican Revolution can be divided into three categories:

1. The bourgeois conception, shared by reformist socialism:

which asserts that the revolution, from 1910 to the present, is a continuous process—

with phases that are faster or slower but uninterrupted—that is gradually perfecting

itself and fulfilling its objectives under the guidance of successive “governments of

the revolution” (Gilly, 1994, p. 397).

2. The petty-bourgeois and centrist socialist conception, which “maintains that the 1910 revolution

was a bourgeois-democratic revolution that achieved its objectives only partially or very partially” (Gilly,

1994, p. 397). According to this conception, another revolution is necessary.

3. The proletarian and Marxist conception, which asserts that

the Mexican Revolution is an interrupted revolution. With the emergence of the

peasant masses and the impoverished petty bourgeoisie, it initially developed as an

agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution and, in the course of its development,

acquired an empirically anti-capitalist character (Gilly, 1994, p. 397).

For Gilly, the lack of proletarian leadership and a program led to the interruption of the revolution at

two points: first in 1919–1920, and then in 1940. Based on these experiences, Gilly states: “It is therefore a

permanent revolution in the consciousness and experience of the masses, but one interrupted at two historical

stages in the objective progress of its achievements” (Gilly, 1994, p. 398).

This synthesis of the differences between the strategies carries a powerful theoretical and political

critique on the part of the Argentine author. He situates the formulations according to the class position of

their historical subjects. Thus, the bourgeoisie attempts to mystify its own incapacity by emphasizing the

continuity of the revolution—therefore, it would never have been interrupted. This interpretation is shared

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by a large portion of proletarian organizations, insofar as it does not presuppose the necessary break with the

existing order. This continuity-oriented formula of the revolutionary process resembles the Russian

Menshevik and German Social Democratic elaborations—from Kautsky and Bernstein to Martov and

Plekhanov. Those who would challenge this interpretation at the beginning of the 20th century were Trotsky

and Lenin, who, having taken different paths, met in May 1917 in the midst of revolutionary Petrograd.

Returning to Latin America, it is worth noting that the second strategic formulation—that the Mexican

“ ” revolution was merely a bourgeois-democratic one—resembles the position of the Bolsheviks in February

1917, under the leadership of Kamenev and Stalin. At that time, they believed that the two revolutions—the

democratic and the socialist—were separated in time, just as had happened with the bourgeois revolution. It

follows from this understanding that the second revolution would only occur once capitalism had developed

and matured enough to be taken over by the workers and peasants. During this transition, leadership would

be shared among workers, peasants, and the bourgeoisie. Note that this view was nearly unanimous among

the revolutionaries of the time, with the exception of Trotsky and, to some extent, the German Spartacists,

according to Löwy (2015).

Regarding the first two approaches to understanding the Mexican Revolution, Gilly asserts that the

petty-bourgeois conception is based on a “belief that, in the era of imperialism, revolutions unfold as national

revolutions ...; that is, that revolutions are independent of one another, unique, and occur within each country

as if in a closed container” (Gilly, 1994, p. 399).

Once again, we see the strong implication of a theoretical error on practical action. When the model

of socialism in a single country was developed by Stalin and Bukharin, they had already lived through the

era of German social-chauvinism. At the start of World War I, the German Social Democratic Party voted in

favor of war credits, sending millions of workers to the battlefields to defend the Reich. After the revolution

in Russia was stifled, Stalin also did something very similar by confining political action within the borders

of a single country, thereby abandoning the continuity of the revolution.

However, in Latin America, the social upheavals could not be directed by either the bourgeoisie or

the proletarian organizations. It is therefore worth reflecting on the situation. Gilly (1994, p. 402) tells us that

the Marxist conception asserts that “the Mexican Revolution is a revolution interrupted in its course toward

its socialist conclusion. It is the application of the theory of permanent revolution to the entire revolutionary

cycle in Mexico since 1910.”

It becomes possible for it to be a permanent revolution due to the victory of the Russian Revolution

of 1917 and the creation of the Soviet state. Gilly continues his reflection by asking why the revolution is

interrupted and not defeated:

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Precisely because it is permanent. The Mexican peasantry took up arms to seize the

land. In the course of its peasant war, it was driven to turn it into a struggle for power

and to challenge bourgeois property rights. It went beyond democratic limits and

measures and implemented empirical anti-capitalist measures. Through these

measures, it developed an empirically anticapitalist content at the base of the

revolution which, due to its peasant-class limitations, it was unable to express in the

form of a conscious program and state leadership capable of exercising and

maintaining power. It therefore lacked, for this purpose, the leading intervention of

the proletariat, with its program and its party, and the worker-peasant alliance (Gilly,

1994, pp. 403–404).

However, in Fernandes’s Brazil, the discussion of the bourgeois revolution hinges on an

understanding of the peculiarity of dependent capitalism. It is from this level of grasping reality that one can

formulate tactics that transition from actions within the order to actions against the order. For this reason,

identifying the fulcrum of workers’ action is fundamental, which requires the following description:

In fact, it is linked to an attempt by leftist vanguards to gain a foothold in driving the

transformations within the existing order associated with the bourgeois revolution

(these transformations were described in Europe as “revolutions” and are what mark

the advance of the bourgeois revolution: the agrarian revolution, the urban revolution,

the industrial revolution, the national revolution, and the democratic revolution)

(Fernandes, 2015, p. 101).

Here, Fernandes points to the arc of social changes engendered by the bourgeois logic of revolution

in its classical form—that is, in the revolutions in France, England, and the United States. Thus,

distinguishing the forms and degrees of development in other countries becomes important, since historical

periods do not repeat themselves; the mechanisms of political, social, economic, and cultural organization

are different and unique. If social theory fails to grasp these realities objectively, it will fall into serious

scientific errors and, consequently, into practical errors. For the working class, this has even more serious

consequences, as these errors lead to political defeats with an incalculable human cost. In other words, critical

social theory cannot yield to bourgeois illusions.

In this regard, Fernandes makes a strong statement regarding moderate socialist propositions (in full

agreement with Gilly’s critiques) that advocate for peaceful coexistence between countries undergoing

socialist transition and capitalist countries:

Consequently, it failed to adapt the theory of social classes and class struggle to the

concrete conditions of countries in a neocolonial situation or under dependent

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capitalism; and it did a very poor job of articulating the demands of rural and urban

workers in a specifically socialist and revolutionary language. It also ended up,

therefore, into the orbit of bourgeois reformism, although one cannot underestimate

its importance in terms of the political mobilization of sectors of the poor and working

population systematically excluded from civic culture and civil society, as well as for

the nationalist and radical-democratic indoctrination of some sectors of the middle

classes or even the upper classes (Fernandes, 2015, p. 101).

Action confined to revolution within the existing order—which Fernandes believed to be a radical-

bourgeois deviation—takes on a different orientation when calibrated by his understanding of the

advancement of action outside the existing order. Note:

Taking decolonization to its ultimate consequences is a cause analogous to the

national revolution and the democratic revolution—and this demand would have to

be made in socialist terms, even if aimed at the “acceleration of the bourgeois

revolution.” It seems clear that decolonization cannot be confined within these limits

and that, in practice, rather than accelerating the bourgeois revolution, it fosters

“destabilization” and the evolution of revolutionary situations to critical points

(Fernandes, 2015, p. 102).

This clearly entails embracing the concept of permanent revolution. Beyond this acceleration—which

falls to the working classes—it is also necessary to understand that the socialist strategy in the periphery

serves to calibrate the revolutionary dynamics of the existing order through the social problems and dilemmas

that the bourgeoisie have not attempted to confront and resolve, as this is not in their class interest within the

forms of capitalist development inherent to semicolonialism and dependency (Fernandes, 2015, p. 102).

These observations point to a turning point in the development of revolutionary theory in Brazil. Until

the mid-1970s, the formulation of a permanentist strategy of a socialist character was the exception within

the labor movement.

The dialectic of a revolution within the order and a revolution against the order is part of the critical

and creative strategic formula that Fernandes pioneered in Brazil. Such a formulation has been little studied

in Marxist literature and even less incorporated into the political struggle by workers’ organizations.

Concluding Remarks

When reflecting on the prospects for revolution in Latin America, one recognizes the need to draw

upon the Marxist theoretical arsenal, particularly the concept of permanent revolution inherited from Marx,

Scientia International Journal for Human Sciences 16 of 17

Engels, and Trotsky. In engaging with the authors selected here—Gilly and Fernandes—one observes the

complexity of the situation in which Mexico and Brazil found themselves during the capitalist transformation

to which they were subjected. The “interrupted revolution,” as defined by Gilly, adopts a permanentist

perspective on revolution; that is, he places on the agenda political action of a revolutionary nature with a

socialist program. Fernandes (2005), on the other hand, uses the concept of permanent counterrevolution,

indicating that it was the bourgeoisie that utilized the theory of permanent changes inherent in dependent

capitalism to prevent the socialist revolution—thus constituting a theoretical and practical shortcoming of the

Brazilian socialist movement.

It is also worth noting, in this brief text, some questions that have arisen from the theoretical review

of these authors:

- Could the category of “interrupted revolution” explain the events surrounding the workers’ political

struggles in Mexico and Brazil in the early 21st century?

- Can the concept of “permanent counterrevolution” explain the political events that have taken place

in Latin America over the past 30 years?

- Is bourgeois autocracy still a theoretical tool compatible with the bourgeois-democratic political

form accepted by most so-called left-wing parties?

Finally, the theoretical-political task of developing a theory of revolution is urgent, but it cannot

obscure the historical necessity of systematically studying the theory of bourgeois counterrevolution. This

theory is produced with immense institutional resources and put into practice on a daily basis against the

rebellious uprisings of those “from below.”

There is much to be done, and as Professor Florestan Fernandes would say in his 1988 campaign for

a seat in the Constituent Federal Chamber of Deputies: “Against the ideas of force and the force of ideas.”

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Fernandes. F. (2015). Poder e contrapoder na América Latina. 2ª Ed. Expressão Popular.

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