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A political revolution, in the Trotskyist theory, is an upheaval in which the government is replaced, or the form of government altered, but in which property relations are predominantly left intact. The revolutions in France in 1830 and 1848 are often cited as political revolutions.

Political Revolutions are contrasted with social revolutions in which old property relations are overturned.

The Trotskyist movement advocates political revolution, as opposed to capitalist counter-revolution, in the countries with deformed workers states. Such political revolutions are envisioned to overthrow undemocratic governments of bureaucratic privilege, replacing them with governments based on workers' democracy while maintaining state owned property relations.

While the Trotskyist movement does not recognize any political revolution to have occurred against the deformed workers states, it saw a strong possibility for that potential in the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the Czechoslovakian Prague Spring of 1968, both crushed by Soviet invasion. Another uprising seen to have the possibility of sweeping in political revolution were the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, crushed by the Communist Party of China.

Unlike the movements that led to capitalist counter-revolution such Yeltsin's 1991 coup in the USSR and Lech Wałęsa's Solidarnosc in Poland, these previous movements were not seen as having stated capitalist goals and were not seen as hostile to socialism. As such the Trotskyist movement opposed the 1956 invasion of Hungary, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Tiananmen Square massacre as the crimes of Stalinist governments.

While there is general agreement among Trotskyists on these questions regarding Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and China, there is disagreement on questions regarding capitalist counter-revolution. Some Trotskyist groups cheered the fall of the Stalinist governments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, even under the leadership of pro-capitalist forces. These groups included Socialist Action (US), Fourth International (ICR), and the International Socialist Organization^{[citation needed]}. Arguments put forward by some of these groups included the idea that the mobilizations and political space created by smashing the Stalinist bureaucracy could bring about the ability of the working class to carry out the political revolution as a step towards creating a truly democratic and egalitarian socialist society.

The Spartacist League (modern) held onto the historic position of Leon Trotsky in advocating only Political Revolution against Stalinism while also standing for the defense of the deformed and degenerated workers' states from imperialism and internal capitalist counter-revolution. They argue that their position has been proven correct by the drop of the standard of living of the people of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe including the lack of medical care and jobs and the rise in racist terror unleashed by neo-fascist thugs. Internationally they point to the strengthened hand of U.S. Imperialism with the fall of the Soviet Union as a major cause of war, including the Anglo-American war in Iraq. Other groups that agree with this outlook include the League for the Fourth International, International Marxist Tendency and Liberation News (Internationalist).

Today these debates continue regarding what some Trotskyists consider the deformed workers states of the Republic of Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the People's Republic of China.

• Degenerated workers state
• Bureaucratic collectivism
• State Capitalism
• New class
• State socialism
• Statism
• Coordinatorism