Right opposition

[28350]

Where can I learn about Bukharin, the right opposition, and the international communist opposition?

[Zanthorus]

Thanks for bringing this up, I don't think I have quite the answer your looking for but this is something I'm also interested in. Loren Goldner mentions Bukharin and the Right Opposition in his text on Bordiga:


While his faction had totally supported Trotsky in the faction fight of the 20's, largely for reasons related to Soviet/Comintern foreign policy, the Bordigist analysis took its distance from the super-industrialization strategy of the Left Opposition, for ultimately "Bukharinist" reasons. He felt after 1945 that only something like Bukharin's strategy had any hope of preserving the international revolutionary character of the regime, (which to Bordiga was more important than Russian industrialization) because it would not destroy the Bolshevik party. Bukharin said in the 1924-28 faction fights that the implementation of Trotsky's leftist "super-industrialization" strategy could only be carried out by the most elephantine state bureaucracy history had ever seen. When Stalin stole the left's program and put it into practice, he completely confirmed Bukharin, as Trotsky himself acknowledged in a backhanded way after most of his faction in Russia had capitulated to Stalin.

The footnote to this quotes Bukharin on the potentiality of the Left Opposition's economic policies for the creation of a gigantic state bureaucracy:


For a distilled discussion of Bukharin's critique of Preobrazhensky, cf.Bilan d'une revolution, pp. 139-140. Against the super-industrializers of the left, Bukharin said that the working class would be "obliged to construct a colossal administrative apparatus ... The attempt to replace all the petty producers and small peasants by bureaucrats produces an apparatus so colossal that the expense of maintaining it is incomparably greater than the unproductive expenditures resulting from the anarchic conditions of petty production: in sum, the whole economic apparatus of the proletarian state not only does not facilitate but actually hinders the development of the productive forces. It leads directly to the opposite of what it is supposed to do." (ibid)

Whether this insight was actually Bordiga's is another question, I can't find any texts confirming it, and Goldner does rely a bit too much on secondary sources and makes a couple of invalid or unwarranted inferences in the piece (The user Noa Rodman on libcom pointed out that there isn't anything in the French translation of 'Avanti Barbarati' that would warrant Goldner's interpretation of that text). The International Communist Party (Il Programma Comunista) does have a text 'Why Russia isn't Socialist (http://www.sinistra.net/lib/pro/whyrusnsoc.html)' which covers the mid-20's debates between the Right, Centre and Left of the Russian party. It does say that it considers both the Right and Left Marxist factions whereas the Centre are regarded as a group of gangsters more interested in the defence of the Russian state than International Socialism:


During the internal struggles which preceded the definitive victory of Stalinism in 1929-30, none of the economic measures over which the party factions clash claim to be free from the framework of capitalist production relations; none of them have the right to declare themselves Socialist. In the picturesque formulation of the «scissors» crisis, the problem keeps worsening with all the resultant economic and social consequences, with all its corresponding effects on the state of industrial productions and the social balance of forces. Trotsky's left maintains the principle of a preliminary industrialisation as a precondition for the development of agriculture, sanctioning at the same time support for the poor peasant. Bukharin's right (though names are given here as points of reference only) counted on the enrichment of the middle peasant and on the increase of his working capital, thinking towards its eventual confiscation. Stalin's centre doesn't have a position, being content to pilfer from the right and the left anything that allows it to keep at the helm of the state, and it is for this reason therefore that its polemics do not show a clear demarcation between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries. Thus the Stalinist centre, able to use any old measure, whether inspired by the «right» or the «left», has in the last analysis one function: saving and reinforcing the Russian state. By forcing the double revolution into an anti-feudal, and therefore capitalist, pigeonhole, it is completely anticommunist.

Both faithful to Lenin, the right and the left know that everything depends, in the end, on the International Revolution, that it is a matter of holding out until it triumphs, and if there are violent conflicts between them, it is on the respective efficacy of the various measures that are proposed for that purpose. The centre is preoccupied with other things however; it has already broken with the International Revolution and has therefore only one political point of view: to eliminate those who still pursue the International Revolution. The way in which Stalin finally triumphs illustrates this clearly. First of all he supports the right from which he adopts the programme of support for the middle peasant, meanwhile showering Trotsky with abuse and accusing him of sabotaging the infallible «Leninist» alliance of peasantry and proletariat. Next, in the face of the failure of thins policy, and panic stricken by the threat of the kulaks, he dismisses the right and engages in mud slinging at Bukharin who he accuses - wrongly - of expressing the interests of the rural bourgeoisie. The manoeuvre succeeds so well that Bukharin, when he would have attempted a rapprochement with Trotsky, fails to convince him that the right is Marxist whilst the centre isn't; in fact, certain of Trotsky's supporters will even consider Stalin borrowing some of their positions, for his own interests, as a step of the centre towards the left.

The text does mention the 'undesirable bureaucratic consequences' which Bukharin foresaw in Trotsky's industrialisation policy:


In Trotsky's eyes, who saw salvation only in a thorough industrialisation, Bukharin - traitorously used and defended by Stalin - appeared to be defending the rich peasant. For Bukharin, prioritising industrialisation was full of undesirable bureaucratic consequences, and it seemed better that the accumulation of capital be confined to a rural bourgeoisie with which we would eventually «settle accounts».

But from a quick skim read the view of the text seems to be neutral between Bukharin and Trotsky, and actually seems to take the view that they should have formed some kind of Marxist alliance against the real danger represented by Stalin's Centre.

[Android]

Where can I learn about Bukharin, the right opposition, and the international communist opposition?

Robert Alexander's The Right Opposition; The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition is the definitive history of the Right Opposition / International Communist Opposition in English. Although I have the book I have not read it yet. It seems the ICO had groups right across the world not just in Russia, Germany, USA and that they were larger then the ILO.

Can't really add much more since I have not read the book.

[graymouser]

Stephen F. Cohen's Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (Amazon link here (http://www.amazon.com/Bukharin-Bolshevik-Revolution-Political-Biography/dp/0195026977)) is the main sympathetic treatment of Bukharin and his ideas. Evidently Robert J. Alexander, known for his massive treatise International Trotskyism, also wrote a book on the Right Opposition called The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930's (Amazon link to ridiculously priced book here (http://www.amazon.com/Right-Opposition-Lovestoneites-International-Contributions/dp/0313220700) but a few copies seem to be at reasonable prices). I haven't read either but the Cohen book enjoys a good reputation as far as covering Bukharin himself goes.