The Left Opposition

[El_Revolucionario]

The Left Opposition was formed in Russia 1923 in response to the rising tide of Stalinism. The opposition was labelled as Trotskyist (because Trotsky was the defacto leader of the opposition), while the right side of the party was referred to as Stalinist (because Stalin was the defacto leader). Both sides stressed that their position was the continuation of Bolshevism.

One of the primary disputes was on the possibility of sustaining a Socialist revolution without world wide revolution. The left opposition supported the permanent revolution theory, while the right supported Socialism is one country. [...]

In 1927 the members of the Left Opposition were expelled from the Soviet Communist party (CSPU), and forced to leave the Soviet Union. Shortly thereafter the International Left Opposition was created.

Nearly every party member who followed or supported in anyway the Left Opposition was executed during the Moscow Trials (1936-38)

[SonofRage]

What I find a lot more interesting in USSR history is the Workers Opposition (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/w/o.htm#workers-opposition)

[Lamanov]

'workers opposition'
yea, check this out: Alexandra Kollontai, Worker's Opposition (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1921/workers-opposition/index.htm)

[Severian]

That link on the Workers' Opposition is pretty tendentious to the point of being inaccurate, or at least leaving out important facts....

E.g. "The Workers Opposition had substantial support among the members of the Communist Party, however the major leaders of the party refused its platform." And so did the majority of the membership.


At the 10th Party Congress (March 1921) the positions of the Workers Opposition were rejected, its ideas condemned, and it was ordered to disburse. Its members refuse to be deterred, and continued to agitate for their beliefs,"

And the party recognized their right to agitate (as individual members) those ideas, though you'd never know it from this article. And more accurate than "ordered to disburse" would be to say that all organized factions were banned...

[quote]At the 11th Party Congress (March-April 1922), the Workers Opposition would essentially be crushed. The Communist Party, recognizing that their former order to disburse was not adhered to, made a motion to expel the leaders of the Workers Opposition from the party — however the Workers Opposition still had too much support from the rank-and-file membership of the party, and the motion failed. To silence their dissent, the Congress was able to censure the group and forced them to curtail their activities.

So a motion to censure - a verbal condemnation - means they were "crushed"?? No. Crushed is when a faction's members are expelled from the party, then executed or imprisoned. It's a grotesque thing to say here, given that the Left Opposition actually was crushed, with great violence, only a few years later.


In 1926, the remaining members of the Workers' Opposition briefly joined the Left Opposition led by Trotsky, who had by now began to struggle against the growing Soviet bureaucracy and the lack of Soviet democracy. Only Kollontai would survive, in virtual exile, from Stalin's mass trials and executions of dissidents.

Which is a fairly tortured way of avoiding the reality that Kollontai supported the Stalin faction. Since she was one of the two most prominent leaders of the Workers' Opposition, that'd seem like an important exception to the statement that "the remaining members of the Workers' Opposition briefly joined the Left Opposition led by Trotsky." Perhaps there were others...does the author of this article really know?

The article's not so bad on the issues in dispute, but leaves out the reason the party majority gave for insisting on party control....not because of a love for bureaucracy, but because all the most conscious elements of the working class were in the party. The article gives a lot more space to the views of one side of this complex controversy than any others.

The Encyclopedia of Marxism is pretty uneven in quality, as you'd expect given that it has a lot of different (volunteer, basically anonymous) authors.

El Revolucionario wrote:

Both sides stressed that their position was the continuation of Bolshevism.

An important point to keep in mind: the Left Opposition, in Russia and internationally, did not set out to found some new, "Trotskyist", movement; but to continue the communist movement despite the apparatchik counterrevolution.

[Lamanov]

"Which is a fairly tortured way of avoiding the reality that Kollontai supported the Stalin faction."

I didn't know that... hmm... so one of the first oppositionaries [Kollontai] who was against any further bueraucratization, and who supported views that some called to be "syndicalist" in time switched sides and started to support the stalinist usurpation. So how did this happen?



p.s


An important point to keep in mind: the Left Opposition, in Russia and internationally, did not set out to found some new, "Trotskyist", movement; but to continue the communist movement despite the apparatchik counterrevolution.

I agree.

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ-[email protected] 18 2005, 09:19 AM
I didn't know that... hmm... so one of the first oppositionaries [Kollontai] who was against any further bueraucratization, and who supported views that some called to be "syndicalist" in time switched sides and started to support the stalinist usurpation. So how did this happen?
Well, there's nothing about syndicalism that necessarily guards against bureaucratization; unions are often heavily bureaucratised y'know.

I don't mean that it necessarily leads to Stalinism either though; and very possibly Kollontai just had some individual motives as far as not wanting to get sent to Siberia or whatever.

[Lamanov]

I've red an article on Kollontai [from http://www.yu.marksist.com/index2.htm] and the author states that "who ever wants to be competent for the critique of the stalinist dictatorships they must find their starting point at the visionary views of Alexandra Kollontai" The same article states that she symphatised with Trotsky and the L.O. [after the Stalinist usurpation], "but she was too far away from the contact with the Soviet reality", and thats why - I suppose - she took no direct hit from Stalin himself.

I've also glanced at her article [Worker's Opposition] which was banned two months after being published in "Pravda". Not only that she asks the first question as: "Individual or Collective Management?", but she directly attacks the "...deviations of our Soviet policy from the clearly expressed class-consistant principles of the communist programme", and that just a beginning... I suggest reading it.


Well, there's nothing about syndicalism that necessarily guards against bureaucratization; unions are often heavily bureaucratised y'know.

I agree, but this seems different though.