As well as the obvious failure of the Russian Revolution (see section H.6), the limitations in Bolshevism can be seen by the various oppositions to the mainstream of that party. That Bolshevik politics are not a suitable instrument for working class self-liberation is expressed in the limited way opposition groups questioned Bolshevik orthodoxy -- even in the case of the opposition to the rising Stalinist bureaucracy.
All were based on standard vanguardist positions, as discussed in section H.5, such as a privileged position for the party, reflected in the aim for party power and, inevitably, the Bolshevik monopoly of power. This meant their opposition was focused on seeking reforms in areas which did not question the role and position of the party (such as economic policy) or sought to strengthen it (against the bureaucracy). This does not mean that the various oppositions did not have valid points, just that they shared the key assumptions of Bolshevism which undermined the Russian revolution either by their application or their use to justify specific (usually highly authoritarian) practice.
We will not cover all the various oppositions with the Bolshevik party here (Robert V. Daniels' The Conscience of the Revolution discusses all of them in some detail, as does Leonard Schapiro's The Origin of the Communist Autocracy). We will concentrate on the "Left Communists" of 1918 (in section 1), the "Workers' Opposition" of 1920-1 (in section 2) and the Trotsky-led "Left Opposition" of 1923-7 (in section 3) . Each opposition is a pale reflection of the one before it and each had clear limitations in their ideas which fatally undermined any liberatory potential they had. Indeed, by the time of the "Left Opposition" we are reduced to simply the more radical faction of the state and party bureaucracy fighting the dominant faction with the aim of securing a benevolent state capitalist dictatorship.
As noted, certain elements of these oppositions were undoubtedly correct. So, for example, the (correct) arguments of the "Left Communists" against Lenin's policy of "one-man management" were echoed by the "Democratic Centralists" at the Ninth Party Congress (an opposition we do not cover here). One member of this grouping (which included such former "Left Communists" as Osinsky) argued against Lenin's position in favour of appointed managers inside and outside the party as follows:
"The Central Committee finds that the [local] party committee is a bourgeois prejudice, is conservatism bordering on the province of treason, and that the new form is the replacement of party committees by political departments, the heads of which by themselves replace the elected committees . . . You transform the members of the party into an obedient gramophone, with leaders who order: go and agitate; but they haven't the right to elect their own committee, their own organs.
"I then put the question to comrade Lenin: Who will appoint the Central Committee? You see, there can be individual authority here as well. Here also a single commander can be appointed." [Sapronov, quoted by Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 114]
Obviously a man ahead of his time. As Stalin proved, if "one-man management" was such a good idea then why should it not be practised in the Council of People's Commissars?
So these oppositions did identify real problems and many of their policies had elements of real solutions within them. Yet, as discussed in section H.3.5, placing certain libertarian ideas within an overall centralised vision or system will not undermine its wider authoritarian nature. Most obviously, the Bolshevik preference (at least before embracing party dictatorship after 1917) for centralised "democracy" effectively hollowed out the real democracy at the base which makes it more than just picking masters and created the structures and social relationships which made further degeneration inevitable -- the very problems the oppositions themselves raised but whose real roots evaded them.
Here we indicate the positive ideas of the various oppositions but also indicate their limitations, which flow from the fact these are Bolshevik oppositions and so shared a similar set of prejudices and vision of (centralised) socialism.
Finally, to contrast these fake "oppositions" with a genuine opposition, we will discuss (in section 4) the "Workers' Group" which was expelled from the Communist Party of 1922-3 and repressed under Lenin and Trotsky. This grouping stood for traditional socialist values, including many of the principles the Bolshevik party claimed to support before it seized power (such as workers' democracy) and some it did not (such as workers' self-management of production). We do so to indicate the limited nature of the previous oppositions and how the repression of a genuine dissident working class group within the Communist Party shows how deeply unlibertarian and so anti-socialist the real Bolshevik tradition is.
The first opposition of note in the party to the Leninist mainstream was that of the "Left Communists" in early 1918. This was clustered around the Bolshevik leader Bukharin and was focused around opposition to the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany and Lenin's advocacy of "state capitalism" as the means of both building socialism and getting Russia out of its economic problems. Here we focus of the latter issue, namely their critique of Lenin's economic policies and its limitations. In addition, we will discuss the flaws in their political ideas.
The first issue of their theoretical journal Kommunist was published in April 1918 and it argued vigorously against Lenin's advocacy of "one-man management" and "state capitalism" as necessary and immediate steps for the new regime. It warned of "bureaucratic centralisation, the rule of various commissars, the loss of independence for local Soviets and in practice the rejection of the type of state-commune administered from below" if Lenin's policies were continued to be followed. The second issue saw an article by Osinsky which correctly predicted that "for the construction of the proletarian society by the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by the Ukases of the captains of industry . . . If the proletariat itself does not know how to create the necessary prerequisites for the socialist organisation of labour, no one can do this for it and no one can compel it to do this. The stick, if raised against the workers, will find itself in the hands of a social force which is either under the influence of another social class or is in the hands of the soviet power; but the soviet power will then be forced to seek support against the proletariat from another class (e.g. the peasantry) and by this it will destroy itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism and socialist organisation will be set up by the proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all: something else will be set up -- state capitalism." [quoted by Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. 39]
Lenin reacted sharply, heaping insult upon insult on the "Left Communists" and arguing against their ideas. Rather than see self-management (or even workers' control) as the key, he argued forcefully that "economically, state capitalism is immeasurably superior to our present economic system." He linked this with his previous writings, correctly noting his "'high' appreciation of state capitalism" had been given "before the Bolsheviks seized power" in, amongst other works, his State and Revolution and so it was "significant that [his opponents] did not emphasise this". For Lenin, "Socialism is inconceivable without large scale capitalist engineering" and "without planned state organisation, which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution." Thus "our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it." [Collected Works, vol. 27, p. 339, p. 341, p. 354, p. 339 and p. 340]
For Lenin, as long as a workers' party held political power, the working class need not fear "state capitalism" and the lack of economic power at the point of production. Ignoring the awkward fact that it was the Bolsheviks rather than the proletariat who held political power, Lenin failed to realise that without economic power working class political power would be fatally undermined. Unfortunately, Lenin's arguments carried the day (see section H.3.14) and, in practice, the net effect was simply to hand over the economy to the state bureaucracy and create the social relationships which Stalinism thrived upon. As such, the merit of the "Left Communists" can be seen.
However, the "Left Communists", while correct on socialism needing workers' economic self-management, were limited in other ways. The major problems were three-fold.
Firstly, by basing themselves on Bolshevik orthodoxy they allowed Lenin to dominate the debate. This meant that their more "libertarian" reading of Lenin's work could be nullified by Lenin himself pointing to the authoritarian and state capitalist aspects of those very same works. Which is ironic, as today most Leninists tend to point to these very same democratic sounding aspects of Lenin's ideas while downplaying the more blatant anti-socialist ones. Given that Lenin had dismissed such approaches himself during the debate against the "Left Communists" in 1918, it seems dishonest for his latter day followers to do this.
Secondly, their perspective on the role of the party undermined their commitment to true workers' power and freedom. This can be seen from the comments of Sorin, a leading member of the group, who argued that the "Left Communists" were "the most passionate proponents of soviet power, but . . . only so far as this power does not degenerate . . . in a petty-bourgeois direction." [quoted by Ronald I. Kowalski, The Bolshevik Party in Conflict, p. 135] For them, like any Bolshevik, the party played the key role for it was the only true bastion of the interests of the proletariat and, as such, the party "is in every case and everywhere superior to the soviets . . . The soviets represent labouring democracy in general; and its interest, and in particular the interests of the petty bourgeois peasantry, do not always coincide with the interests of the proletariat." [quoted by Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p. 182]
Thus soviet power was limited to approval of the party line and -- as with Lenin -- any deviation from that line could be denounced as "petty bourgeois" and, therefore, ignored. "Ironically," Kowalski summarises, "Sorin's call for a revived soviet democracy was becoming vitiated by the dominant role assigned, in the final analysis, to the party." [Op. Cit., p. 136] Thus their politics were just as authoritarian as the mainstream Bolshevism they attacked on other issues:
"Ultimately, the only criterion that they appeared able to offer was to define 'proletarian' in terms of adherence to their own policy prescriptions and 'non-proletarian' by non-adherence to them. In consequence, all who dared to oppose them could be accused either of being non-proletarian, or at the very least suffering from some form of 'false consciousness' -- and in the interests of building socialism must recant or be purged from the party. Rather ironically, beneath the surface of their fine rhetoric in defence of the soviets, and of the party as 'a forum for all of proletarian democracy,' there lay a political philosophy that was arguably as authoritarian as that of which they accused Lenin and his faction." [Kowalski, Op. Cit., pp. 136-7]
"According to the "Left Communists", therefore," notes Richard Sakwa, "the party was the custodian of an interest higher than that of the soviets. Earlier theoretical considerations on the vanguard role of the party, developed in response to this problem, were confirmed by the circumstances of Bolshevism in power. The political dominance of the party over the soviets encouraged an administrative one as well. Such a development was further encouraged by the emergence of a massive and unwieldy bureaucratic apparatus in 1918 . . . The "Left Communists" and the party leadership were therefore in agreement that . . . the party should play a tutelary role over the soviets." Furthermore, "[w]ith such a formulation it proved difficult to maintain the vitality of the soviet plenum as the soviet was controlled by a party fraction, itself controlled by a party committee outside the soviet." [Op. Cit., p. 182 and p. 182-3]
This position can be traced back to the fundamentals of Bolshevism (see section H.5 on vanguardism). With this ideological preference for party power and the ideological justification for ignoring soviet democracy, it is doubtful that their (correct) commitment to workers' economic self-management would have been successful. An economic democracy combined with what amounts to a party dictatorship would be an impossibility that could never work in practice.
As such, the fact that Bukharin (one time "Left Communist") "continued to eulogise the party's dictatorship, sometimes quite unabashedly" during and after the civil war becomes understandable. In this, he was not being extreme but rather expressing the orthodoxy, for "Bolsheviks no longer bothered to disclaim that the dictatorship of the proletariat was the 'dictatorship of the party'" for "class immaturity was not a peculiarity of the Russian proletariat, but a characteristic of proletarian revolutions in general." [Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, p. 145 and p. 142] So by 1921, all the leading Bolsheviks had argued this position for some time (see section H.1.2, for example). Bukharin even went so far as to argue that "the watchword" taken up by some workers ("even metal workers"!) of "For class dictatorship, but against party dictatorship!" showed that the proletariat "was declassed." This also indicated that a "misunderstanding arose which threatened the whole system of the proletarian dictatorship." [contained in Al Richardson (ed.), In Defence of the Russian Revolution, p. 192] The echoes of the positions argued before the civil war can be seen in Bukharin's glib comment that proletarian management of the revolution meant the end of the "proletarian" dictatorship!
Thirdly, while correctly stressing the need for workers' management and participation the "Left Communists" placed it within a centralised institutional context which nullified it. Incorrectly proclaiming that anarchists aimed at turning all workplaces into the property of their workforce, the "Left Communists" argued for a typically Marxist (centralised) alternative:
"It was Bukharin who developed this theme most cogently. In the final analysis, the basic distinction between Communists and Anarchists, he argued, was not their attitude to the state and its power. While they disagreed regarding the role it was to play in the transition period -- the Communists ascribed to it a vital role -- both sought its ultimate extinction. Rather, what fundamentally divided them was that Communists were convinced that only a centrally-planned economy, in which large-scale production was predominant, would be able to provide the material basis of abundance, on which alone socialism could be founded." [Kowalski, Op. Cit., p. 111]
Ignoring the akward anarchist advocate no such thing -- see section I.3.8 -- we will simply note that this typically Marxist position would lead to a new class system. So while Osinskii argued that workplaces would be run by boards elected by workers, but not composed of a majority of workers employed in a given enterprise, these would elect regional economic councils, which in turn would create a central economic council and it is the higher bodies which would have the power to affirm or veto those bodies below them: "in the final analysis the authorities at the lower levels would have to be overridden. Osinskii and his fellow-thinkers were compelled to assign the ultimate power of economic decision making to the centre, as their conception of the economics of socialism demanded." In short, they "did not comprehend that their conception of central planning was incompatible with the devolution of authority to the shop floor that they aspired to" and so it is hard not to conclude that the "ideological preconceptions of the Left Communists would have spawned a centralised, bureaucratic system, not an emancipated society in which power was diffused to the workers." [Kowalski, Op. Cit., p. 113, p. 186 and p. 188]
This is unsurprising, given the fact that the "Left Communists" were Marxists, with a vision of socialism inherited from Marx based on a centralised plan. Thus we find Osinskii in 1918 defining his vision as "state socialism, i.e. a centralised system of socialised production, monopolised product distribution and planned utilisation of labour." [quoted by Silvana Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism 1918-1921, p. 297] Like other Marxists, they seemed unaware of the bureaucracy needed to gather and process the necessary (overwhelming) data to create a plan as well as the means of implementing it. As we discuss in section H.3.13, such a system would be the very state-capitalism the "Left Communists" correctly railed against: "we are by every means -- by nationalisation, by centralisation -- strangling the forces in our country. The masses are being cut off from living creative power in all branches of our national economy." [Lomov, quoted by Carmen Sirianni, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy, p. 155] Combine this with the privileged role of the party and all the conditions were there to ensure a similar outcome to that created by the Leninist mainstream -- even if, ironically, the "Left Communists" were the most vocal in denouncing the inevitable bureaucratic inefficiencies and abuses of the centralised system they both shared.
Finally, how this conflict within the party was resolved is significant, given that the banning of factions (which is generally seen as a key cause in the rise of Stalinism) occurred in 1921 (a ban, incidentally, Trotsky defended throughout the early 1920s). As one historian notes:
"The resolution of the party controversy in the spring of 1918 set a pattern that was to be followed throughout the history of the Communist Opposition in Russia. This was the settlement of the issues not by discussion, persuasion, or compromise, but by a high-pressure campaign in the party organisations, backed by a barrage of violent invective in the party press and in the pronouncements of the party leaders. Lenin's polemics set the tone, and his organisational lieutenants brought the membership into line." [Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 87]
Indeed, "[s]oon after the party congress had approved the peace [of Brest-Litovsk in the spring of 1918], a Petrograd city party conference produced a majority for Lenin. It ordered the suspension of the newspaper Kommunist which had been serving as a Left Communist organ . . . The fourth and final issue of the Moscow Kommunist had to be published as a private factional paper rather than as the official organ of a party organisation." Ultimately, "[u]nder the conditions of party life established by Lenin, defence of the Opposition position became impossible within the terms of Bolshevik discipline." [Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 88 and p. 89] So much for faction rights -- three years before they were officially prohibited in the 10th Party Congress!
In addition, the "Left Communists" were not defeated by those with superior ideas winning the debate. Rather, Lenin's arguments "evinced caricatured distortion of their positions, evasiveness, and bitter invective more than principled confrontation and clarification of opposing positions.". For example, "[b]y selectively quoting Osinsky's article so as to make it appear that the Left Communist opposed all labour discipline, he was able to avoid confronting their concrete proposals for work norms and self-discipline by democratically elected workers organisations." Lenin "caricatured" other ideas, so "[c]ompletely misrepresenting" them while in other cases "not a word" was uttered in reply to their critique. [Carmen Sirianni, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy, pp. 149-50] A similar response befell the other oppositions discussed here -- whether under Lenin or under Stalin.
In this, though, Lenin was hardly being original. In May 1907 Lenin had defended himself within the party for the rhetoric he had used against a group of Mensheviks, arguing that the "wording is calculated to evoke in the reader hatred, aversion and contempt . . . Such wording is calculated not to convince, but to break up the ranks of the opponent . . . to destroy him . . . to evoke the worse thoughts, the worst suspicions about the opponent." This was part of a struggle to "struggle to destroy the hostile organisation, destroy its influence over the masses of the proletariat." [Collected Works, Vol. 12, pp. 424-5 and p. 427]
Should we be surprised that such techniques should be utilised within the party when necessary? Ultimately, as well as exposing how Lenin's economic ideas helped build the bureaucratic state capitalism Stalinism was born from, the saga of the "Left Communists" shows how the polemical and organisational techniques of Stalinism also did not fall from the sky.
The next major group of party dissidents were the "Workers' Opposition" of late 1920 and early 1921 (not to be confused with the opposition of actual workers to the regime -- see section H.6.3). Lead by Alexandra Kollontai and Alexander Shlyapnikov, this grouping is better known than other early oppositions simply because it was the focus for much debate at the tenth party congress in March 1921 and its existence was a precipitating factor in the banning of factions within the Communist Party. Also, the manifesto Kollontai wrote for the group was translated by council communists in Britain and elsewhere.
Unlike the "Left Communists" (see the last section), their support for party dictatorship was more than logically implied, it was taken for granted. Their manifesto fails to mention political democracy at all, instead discussing exclusively economic and party democracy. Thus it was expressing the "basis on which, in its opinion, the dictatorship of the proletariat must rest in the sphere of industrial reconstruction", for the "whole controversy boils down to one basic question: who shall build the communist economy, and how shall it be build?" [Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, p. 161 and p. 173]
Kollontai was right to state that the working class "can alone be the creator of communism" and to ask the question of "shall we achieve communism through the workers or over their heads, by the hands of Soviet officials?" The answer was correct, arguing for the former and "see[ing] in the unions the managers and creators of the communist economy." This would be "a system of self-activity for the masses" for "the building of Communism can and must be the work of the toiling masses themselves." In short: "it is impossible to decree communism." [Op. Cit., p. 176, p. 174, p. 182, p. 200 and p. 199]
Economically, then, the "Workers' Opposition" had much to recommend it for it raised ideas long argued by anarchists. Yet, as with the "Left Communists", these positive ideas are undermined by a typically Marxist centralised institutional framework in which industrial unions "elect the central body directing the whole economic life of the republic." [Kollontai, Op. Cit., p. 176] As such, the arguments raised in the previous section apply, namely that the centralised regime within which these ideas would be applied would nullify them and end up producing a new class system around the bureaucrats such a system requires.
Likewise with their political ideas. The group did not seek actual workers' democracy for the "task of the Party at its present crisis" is to "lend its ear to the healthy class call of the wide working masses" but "correction of the activity of the Party" meant "going back to democracy, freedom of opinion, and criticism inside the Party." The struggle was "to destroy bureaucracy in the party and replace it by workers' democracy": "for establishing democracy in the party, and for the elimination of all bureaucracy". [Kollontai, Op. Cit., p. 172, p. 192 and p. 197] Its demands were solely concerning the internal regime of the party, not a call for wider democratic reforms in the state or society as a whole:
"The arguments of Kollontai were . . . strictly limited in their appeal to the communist party . . . Nor did they in any form criticise the domination of the communist minority over the majority of the proletariat. The fundamental weakness of the case of the Workers' Opposition was that, while demanding more freedom of initiative for the workers, it was quite content to leave untouched the state of affairs in which a few hundred thousand imposed their will on many millions. 'And since when have we been enemies of komitetchina [manipulation and control by communist party committees], I should like to know?' Shlyapnikov asked at the Tenth Party Congress. He went on to explain that the trade union congress in which, as he and his followers proposed, all control of industry should be vested would 'of course' be composed of delegates nominated and elected 'through the party cells, as we always do.' But he argued that the local trade union cells would ensure the election of men qualified by experience and ability in place of those who are 'imposed on us at present' by the centre. Kollontai and her supporters had no wish to disturb the communist party's monopoly of political power." [Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, p. 294]
Thus they "sought to preserve the Bolshevik monopoly of power, condoning the use of terror whenever necessary to accomplish this. They limited their demands to internal party reforms, and never advocated sharing political authority with other socialist organisations." Indeed, Kollontai "declared that the Workers' Opposition were among the first volunteers to go fight the [Kronstadt] rebels", who had raised the demand for soviet democracy (see appendix "What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?" for more information). [Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, pp. 182-3]
Even this extremely limited demand for more economic democracy was too much for Lenin. In January 1921, he argued that the Bolsheviks "have now added to our platform the following: We must combat the ideological discord and the unsound elements of the opposition who talk themselves into repudiating all 'militarisation of industry', and not only the 'appointments method', which has been the prevailing one up to now, but all 'appointments', that is, in the last analysis, repudiating the Party's leading role in relation to the non-Party masses. We must combat the syndicalist deviation, which will kill the Party unless it is entirely cured of it." Indeed, "syndicalist deviation . . . leads to the collapse of the dictatorship of the proletariat." [Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 53 and p. 86] Maurice Brinton correctly notes that by this Lenin meant that "working class power ('the dictatorship of the proletariat') is impossible if there are militants in the Party who think the working class should exert more power in production ('the syndicalist deviation')." Moreover, "Lenin here poses quite clearly the question of 'power of the Party' or 'power of the class.' He unambiguously opts for the former -- no doubt rationalising his choice by equating the two. But he goes even further. He not only equates 'workers power' with the rule of the Party. He equates it with acceptance of the ideas of the Party leaders!" [The Bolsheviks and Workers Control, p. 76]
The "Workers' Opposition," asserted Lenin was a "syndicalist and anarchist deviation" produced partly by "the influx into the Party of former Mensheviks, and also of workers and peasants who have not yet fully assimilated the communist world outlook." Their ideas on economic reform were "radically wrong in theory, and represent a complete break with Marxism and communism, with the practical experience of all semi-proletarian revolutions and of the present proletarian revolution." [Lenin, Op. Cit., pp. 245-6] Significantly, the "basic arguments of the Opposition were not dealt with in any depth" at the tenth party congress. "What argument -- as distinct from invective -- there was, was often confused," Maurice Brinton summarises. "For instance, apart from being (a) 'genuinely counter-revolutionary' and (b) 'objectively counter-revolutionary', the Workers' Opposition was also 'too revolutionary'. Their demands were 'too advanced' and the Soviet Government still had to concentrate on overcoming the masses' cultural backwardness. According to Smilga the extreme demands (of the Workers' Opposition) disrupted the Party's efforts and raised hopes among the workers which could only be disappointed. But, most important, the demands of the Workers' Opposition were revolutionary in a wrong (anarcho-syndicalist) way. This was the ultimate anathema." [Op. Cit., p. 79]
For Lenin, the idea of industrial democracy was a nonsense. In this he was simply repeating the perspective he had held from the spring of 1918. As he put it, it was "a term that lends itself to misinterpretations. It may be read as a repudiation of dictatorship and individual authority." Industry, he argued, "is indispensable, democracy is not" and "on no account must we renounce dictatorship either." Indeed, "[i]ndustry is indispensable, democracy is a category proper only to the political sphere". He did admit "[t]hat [the opposition] has been penetrating into the broad masses is evident", however the "bidding for or flirtation with the non-Party masses" was a "radical departure from Marxism." "Marxism teaches," he stressed, "and this tenet has not only been formally endorsed by the whole Communist International in the decisions of the Second (1920) Congress of the Comintern on the role of the political party of the proletariat, but has also been confirmed in practice by our revolution -- that only the political party of the working class, i.e. the Communist Party, is capable of uniting, training and organising a vanguard of the proletariat . . . . that alone will be capable of withstanding the inevitable petty-bourgeois vacillation of this mass . . . Without this the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible." [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 82, p. 27, p. 26, p. 197 and p. 246] In other words, "Marxism" teaches that workers' democracy and protest (the only means by which "vacillation" can be expressed) is a danger to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" -- see section H.5.3 on why this position is the inevitable outcome of vanguardism.
In a way, Lenin was correct for economic democracy combined with political dictatorship would be a contradiction. Trotsky recognised this contradiction at the Tenth Congress when attacking the "Workers' Opposition": "Formally speaking this [the creation of factory committees] is indeed the clearest line of workers' democracy. But we are against it. Why? For a basic reason, to preserve the party's dictatorship, and for subordinate reasons: management would be inefficient." [quoted by Alec Nove, "Trotsky, collectivization and the five year plan," Socialism, Economics and Development, p. 100] In terms of his "subordinate" reason, it should suffice to note the waste and inefficency in the economy which occurred after he and Lenin imposed "one-man management" and the "militarisation of labour" (see section H.6.2).
It should be stressed that this opposition and the debate it provoked occurred after the end of the Civil War. The Whites under Wrangel had been defeated in November 1920 and the Russian revolution was no longer in immediate danger. As such, there was an opportunity for constructive activity and mass participation in the rebuilding of Russia. The leading Bolsheviks rejected such demands, even in the limited form advocated by the "Workers' Opposition". Lenin and Trotsky clearly saw any working class participation as a danger to their power. Against the idea of economic participation under Communist control raised by the "Workers' Opposition", the leading Bolsheviks favoured the New Economic Policy (NEP). This was a return to the same kind of market-based "state capitalist" strategy Lenin had advocated against the "Left Communists" before the outbreak of the civil war in May 1918 (and, as noted, he had argued for in 1917). This shows a remarkable consistency in Lenin's thoughts, suggesting that claims the policies he advocated and implemented in power were somehow the opposite of what he "really" wanted are weak.
As with the "Left Communists" of 1918, Lenin saw his opposition to the "Workers' Opposition" as reflecting the basic ideas of his politics. "If we perish," he said privately at the time according to Trotsky, "it is all the more important to preserve our ideological line and give a lesson to our continuators. This should never be forgotten, even in hopeless circumstances." [quoted by Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 147] Thus the opposition to even limited economic democracy was the lesson -- along with party dictatorship -- he wished his followers to learn:
"the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of the class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts . . . that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard . . . Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the essentials of transition from capitalism to communism . . . for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation." [Lenin, Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 21]
In short, the proletariat having economic power would undermine "the dictatorship of the proletariat":
"To govern you need an army of steeled revolutionary Communists. We have it, and it is called the Party. All this syndicalist nonsense about mandatory nominations of producers must go into the wastepaper basket. To proceed on those lines would mean thrusting the Party aside and making the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia impossible." [Lenin, Op. Cit., p. 21]
In summary, like the "Left Communists", the "Workers' Opposition" presented a platform of economic and internal party reforms rooted in the assumption of Bolshevik party domination. Such a policy would be too contradictory to be applied: either the economic reforms would remain a dead letter under party control or the economic reforms would provoke demands for political change. This last possibility may explain Lenin's vitriolic attacks on the "Workers' Opposition."
This opposition, like the "Left Communists" of 1918, was ultimately defeated by organisational pressures within the party and state. Victor Serge "was horrified to see the voting rigged for Lenin's and Zinoviev's 'majority'" in late 1920. [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 123] Kollantai complained that while officially one and a half million copies of the "Workers' Opposition" manifesto were published, in fact only 1500 were "and that with difficulty." [quoted by Schaprio, Op. Cit., p. 291] This applied even more after the banning of factions, when the party machine used state power to break up the base of the opposition in the trade unions as well as its influence in the party:
"Victimisation of supporters of the "Workers' Opposition" began immediately after the Tenth Party Congress. 'The struggle,' as Shlyapnikov later recounted, 'took place not along ideological lines but by means . . . of edging out from appointments, of systematic transfers from one district to another, and even expulsion from the party.' . . . the attack was levelled not for heretical opinions, but for criticism of any kind of party shortcomings. 'Every member of the party who spoke in defence of the resolution on workers' democracy [in the party] was declared a supporter of the Workers' Opposition and guilty of disintegrating the party,' and was accordingly victimised." [Schapiro, Op. Cit., pp. 325-6]
Thus "the party Secretariat was perfecting its technique of dealing with recalcitrant individuals by the power of removal and transfer, directed primarily at the adherents of the Workers' Opposition. (Of the 37 Workers' Opposition delegates to the Tenth Congress whom Lenin consulted when he was persuading Shlyapnikov and Kutuzov to enter the Central Committee, only four managed to return as voting delegates to the next congress.)" A similar process was at work in the trade unions. For example, "[w]hen the metalworkers' union held its congress in May 1921, the Central Committee of the party handed it a list of recommended candidates for the union leadership. The metalworkers' delegates voted down the party-backed list, but this gesture proved futile: the party leadership boldly appointed their own men to the union offices." This was "a show of political force" as the union was a centre of the "Workers' Opposition". [Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 161 and p. 157]
This repression was practised under Lenin and Trotsky, using techniques which were later used by the Stalinists against Trotsky and his followers. Lenin himself was not above seeking to remove his opponents from the central committee by undemocratic methods. At the Tenth Party Congress he had persuaded Shlyapnikov to be elected to the Central Committee in an attempt to undermine the opposition. A mere "five months later, Lenin was demanding his expulsion for a few sharp words of criticism of the bureaucracy, uttered at a private meeting of a local party cell. If he was looking for a pretext, he could scarcely have picked a weaker one." [Schapiro, Op. Cit., p. 327] Lenin failed by only one vote short of the necessary two thirds majority of the Committee.
In summary, the "Workers' Opposition" vision was limited. Politically, it merely wanted democracy within the party and did not question the party's monopoly of power. As such, it definitely did not deserve the labels "anarchist" and "syndicalist" which its opponents labelled it. As far as its economic policy goes, it, too, was limited. Its demands for economic democracy were circumscribed by placing it under the control of the communist cells within the trade unions as well as within a typically Marxist centralised economic structure.
We now turn to what is probably the most famous opposition, namely Trotsky's "Left Opposition" of 1923-7, for it spawned numerous Trotskyist sects across the globe as well as the second "Fourth International" (the first had been formed in 1922 by council communists from Germany, Holland and Britain, amongst others). Chris Harman (of the UK's SWP) can be considered typical, arguing that "there was always an alternative to Stalinism. It meant, in the late 1920s, returning to genuine workers' democracy and consciously linking the fate of Russia to the fate of world revolution." He asserts that th