Full lecture transcript

The Theory of Permanent Revolution and the Origins of Trotskyism

Christoph Vandreier

The following lecture was delivered by Christoph Vandreier, the national secretary of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Germany), at the SEP (US) International Summer School, held between August 2-9, 2025. It is the first part of a two-part lecture on the Origins of Trotskyism.

The WSWS will be publishing all the lectures at the school in the coming weeks. The introduction to the school by SEP National Chairman David North, “The place of Security and the Fourth International in the history of the Trotskyist movement” was published on August 13.

On Sunday, July 27, approximately 100 workers and youth attended the first public hearing held by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) as part of its investigation into the death of autoworker Ronald Adams Sr. The 63-year-old skilled trades veteran was killed on April 7 at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex when an overhead gantry crane suddenly activated and crushed him.

The meeting was held at the Marygrove Campus in the Bagley neighborhood of Detroit, where Ronald Adams grew up and where his family still lives. Among the attendees were Adams’ widow, Shamenia Stewart-Adams, other family members, and workers from the Dundee plant who braved the threat of retaliation to attend. They were joined by autoworkers from other area plants, as well as postal workers, teachers, students, and neighborhood residents.

The hearing was a powerful response by rank-and-file workers to the months-long silence from Stellantis, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and state safety officials. It concluded with the unanimous adoption of a resolution to continue and expand the investigation, support other victims of workplace hazards, and build rank-and-file committees to enforce safe working conditions as part of an international campaign to end the sacrifice of workers’ lives for profit.

In the course of this rank-and-file investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of this senior US autoworker, the WSWS has also exposed the treacherous working conditions that pervade the industrial slaughterhouses of capitalism that claim the lives of over 140,000 workers per year who die from occupational illnesses and injuries. Workers lives are wantonly sacrificed for the profits of capital. Workers must organize independently of the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy to defend their lives and safety!

Resolution adopted at the meeting: Resolution at public hearing on death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. demands “end to cover-up of ongoing industrial slaughter”

Statement by Ronald Adams Sr. widow to the meeting: Shamenia Stewart-Adams, widow of Ronald Adams Sr.: “Our family is demanding the truth”

Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24–79), known in English as Pliny the Elder (/ˈplɪni/ PLIN-ee),[1][2] was a Roman author, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.

See also Natural History

The Natural History (Latin: Naturalis historia) is a Latin work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the Natural History compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life".[2] It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger.

I was curious about the origin of the name Brassica for the genus of plants which includes cabbages and mustards. I learned that the word comes from Pliny's work.

The activity of doing your own mental work is often the worthier part of any intellectual pursuit. It is in this process of doing that we develop our personal abilities and independent insights. For this, there is no possible replacement.

Few experiences are more gratifying then the moment when the song soars off the page and sticks firmly in my ear.

I'm a thirty-some year old beginner musician (playing for a little over a year). I wish I started playing much sooner, but I'm glad that I'm learning to play now. I've often heard that learning to play music is good for your brain. To me, this has become a self-evident truth. I swear that I can feel physical changes in my brain happening in real time. The best way I can describe it is the uncanny feeling of connecting cables—the snap as the connectors lock together—inside my head.