Myasnikovists

Would modern-day adherents to Myasnikov's politics (and those of the Workers' Group) be considered a part of the Communist Left? If so, why? I ask because it seems like they had some fundamentally different positions than the Dutch, German and Italian Lefts. I'm seriously interested in an analysis of the WG's politics and how they fit (if at all) into the broader Communist Left.

I know, and I've been reading through your book on the Russian Communist Left, as well as following the series in IR.

It seems to me that Myasnikov was not quite as hard on issues like running candidates in elections, supporting a kind of united front (the "revolutionary united front") or working to reform unions -- that he saw them more as tactical questions, not ones of principle. Now, maybe I'm confusing his views toward those kinds of tactics in the USSR with a more general platform, and if I have missed something in the book, please feel free to point it out.

I'm asking these questions because we've been having a long discussion about Myasnikov and the Workers' Group internally, and we're finding a lot of agreement with his analysis (and especially the logic behind it). The WPA is reaching a consensus that combines Myasnikov and De Leon as the two most influential communist thinkers on our politics after Marx and Engels. I especially thought that his concept of transforming labor unions in a workers' republic into the workers' inspectorate (thus taking it out of the hands of the state), while the workplace committees have control of production, was the cutting of a Gordian knot in our strategy of revolutionary industrial unionism -- and in communists' relations to labor unions after the revolution.

I don't think anyone in the WPA at this point would have any qualms about considering ourselves a part of the Communist Left, if that's where our discussions lead us. That's why I'm raising this here.

I was reading through the Manifesto of the Workers' Group again, and found the relevant passages that brought me to ask my question here. I'll go ahead and post their view and our view, and then we can proceed from there.

1. Unions, strikes and labor struggles:

The historical mission of the proletariat is to save humanity from the barbarism it has been plunged into by capitalism. And it is impossible to accomplish this by struggling for pennies, for the eight-hour working day, for the partial concessions that capitalism can grant. No, the proletariat must organize itself firmly with the aim of a decisive struggle for power.

In such a time, all propaganda in favor of strikes to improve the material conditions of the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries is a malicious propaganda that keeps the proletariat in illusions, in the hope of a real improvement in its standard of living in capitalist society.

Advanced workers must take part in strikes and, if circumstances permit, direct them. They must propose practical demands where the proletarian mass still hopes to be able to improve its conditions by following this path; such an attitude will increase their influence within the proletariat. But they should state firmly that this is not a path to salvation, to improving conditions of life of the working class. If it is possible to organize the proletariat with a view to the decisive struggle by supporting all its conflicts with capital, this should not be rejected. It is better to get to the head of this movement and propose demands that are bold and categorical, practical and understandable to the proletariat, while explaining to it that if it does not take power, it will not be able to change its conditions of existence. Thus, for the proletariat, each strike, each conflict will be a lesson that will prove the necessity for the conquest of political power and the expropriation of the expropriators. (Section IV: The Principal Tasks for Today)

Our view: This was a position we had evolved to on our own before reading the Manifesto, and it has guided our work in the business unions for some time. It is not for communists to be the "best builders" of reformist movements or struggles; it is our responsibility to take to the platform provided by unions in struggle to point out that the partial demands of capitalism's loyal labor lieutenants (the union officials) will not change the fact that we as workers are exploited and robbed on a daily basis. Where we move away from the WG position is in our strategy of revolutionary industrial unionism, which reinforces the necessity of organizing workers for a concentrated political struggle through the building of a base at the point of production that serves as the launching pad for the creation of workplace committees, and also the development of worker-controlled inspection and quality control.

2. Bourgeois Elections:

Here the communists from all countries must adopt the same attitude as towards parliaments — they do not go there to make a positive work for legislation, but with a view to make propaganda, to work towards the destruction of these parliaments by the organized proletariat. (ibid.)

Our view: I think we're actually a little harder on this question than the WG was. We reject auto-electoralism (the view that an organization should perennially run candidates for public office), seeing such work as only acceptable under certain conditions (those conditions do not exist today). In a situation where we would see a need for running a candidate, it would be done: a) as an extension of other political work, meaning that the campaign is not an end in itself; b) on the basis of a revolutionary platform, including the advocacy of workplace committees and workers' councils, and the overthrow of capitalist rule; c) with the understanding that any candidate elected would be a proletarian-revolutionary agent operating in the enemy camp; and d) with the goal to use that platform to destabilize, demoralize and otherwise disrupt the "orderly" work of these bourgeois institutions.

3. The "United Front":

The experience of a concrete epoch with goals and tasks is automatically transported to another that has particular features of its own, which leads inevitably to the imposition, on communist parties around the world, of an opportunist tactic of the “united front.” The tactic of a “united front” with the Second International and the Two-and-a-Half International completely contradicts the experience of the Russian Revolution and the program of the RCP (B). It is a tactic of agreement with the open enemies of the working class.

We must form a united front with all the revolutionary organizations of the working class who are ready (today, not one day or another) to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat, against the bourgeoisie and its fractions. ("Conclusion," No. 5)

Our view: There is no variation between the view of the WG and that of the WPA on this point. This is actually something we brought over with us from the Communist League.

I'll leave it to you comrades to take it from here.

I think Android is correct that individually those positions would not, historically at least, have been enough to place an individual group outside of the Communist Left, however I have to wonder, if we accept people who hold all of those kinds of positions together as part of the Communist Left, what real meaning does the term have any more?

I guess that's sort of a question I have in all this, too. All of this seems like elementary, ABCs of communism, and that there is no need for the "Left" designation at all.

How can your organization continue to be "multi-tendency" when historically the Communist Left has been anything but multi-tendency?

In the same way that we've been multi-tendency hitherto when historically the broader self-described communist movement has been anything but multi-tendency.

Despite the Communist Left consisting of two Polar opposite tendencies?

I thought it was much more than two, especially in the years when the Communist Left was at its height. Did it all really boil down to the Dutch and the Italians?