The reissue of Tony Cliff's classic text (1963), which you hold in your hands, takes place in the spring of 2011 and this is not a random choice. 2011 is the year of the return of revolution in the Arab countries. Regimes of the so-called "Third World" that remained unshaken for decades were overthrown in a few weeks. The social forces that unfolded during the revolutionary process proved to be much stronger than the armies, the police, and the para-state mechanisms.

But how, from Nasser's "Free Officers" in Egypt, to the guerrilla movements of Fidel and Che in Cuba, to Mao's popular rural army in China, did we reach today's regimes? In fact, what character did the regimes that emerged from the national liberation and anti-imperialist movements of the '50s and '60s have?

The working class is more numerous and more powerful today all over the world. However, this alone cannot determine the outcome of the battle. The most important point made by Tony Cliff, as he delves into Trotsky's Permanent Revolution and criticizes some aspects of it, is that the revolutionary process in a peripheral country can lead to socialism only if the working class manages to take the lead of the revolution.