The dangerous slogans of the Workers´ Opposition

"The Workers' Opposition" is a pamphlet originally published in Soviet Russia in 1921. The author was Alexandra Kollontai, a leader of a dissident faction within the Bolshevik Party also known as The Workers' Opposition.

The Workers' Opposition demanded that the administration of Russian industry should be handed over to the labour unions. This part of their program explains why anarcho-syndicalists and similar groups are interested in this particular dissident group. Indeed, the idea that "the entire economy" should be run by "the workers' themselves" sounds like an anarcho-syndicalist idea. The Opposition also demanded that all party officials should be elected by the membership rather than appointed from above, that all non-proletarian members of the party should be expelled (!), and that high-ranking political offices should be filled exclusively by workers. Naturally, the Oppositionists wanted to have absolute freedom of discussion within the party.

The Workers' Opposition was defeated at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921. They were roundly condemned by Trotsky, who cracked the famous words: "The Workers' Opposition has raised dangerous slogans...in the final analysis, the party is always right" (!). Still today, anarchists love to quote Trotsky on that one... Since the Bolsheviks imposed a ban on factions in 1921, the Workers' Opposition was formally dissolved, but seems to have existed as a more informal grouping for a few more years. Ironically, the Workers' Opposition later merged with the Left Opposition (led by Trotsky) and then perished in the Gulag.

But not Kollontai. She made her peace, first with Lenin and later with Stalin, and even managed to survive the Great Purges, perhaps because she was too well known internationally for Stalin to have her executed. However, Kollontai's main claim to fame internationally wasn't her syndicalist deviation, but rather her "feminism" and call for free love. She also became the first female ambassador in the world, serving in Norway, Mexico and Sweden. Of course, she had to peddle the propaganda lies of Stalin, claiming that all was well in her homeland.

If only.

As a teenager, I was very impressed by "The Workers' Opposition". It may have been one of the first political documents I ever read. Today, I consider Kollontai's proposed program problematic, to the point of being amateurish. For instance, it hardly ever mentions the peasantry. Kollontai seems to disdain the peasants (the absolute majority of the Russian population at the time) to the point of claiming that the peasants are better off than the workers. But what should be done about the peasants? This was one of the most important issues in 1921, and the Bolsheviks solved it by launching the New Economic Policy (NEP), in effect a kind of "market socialism" which, they hoped, would benefit the peasants economically and hence make them stop their constant resistance against Bolshevik power. The increased productivity of the peasantry would led to larger revenues for the Soviet state, and hence indirectly finance the (state-controlled) industrialization of Russia. On this, Kollontai's pamphlet has nothing to say. Nor does it say anything about the international situation. And no, this cannot be brushed aside by saying "well, it's a document about domestic issues". Communism was a world movement, more or less directed from Moscow. Besides, the working class is international according to Marxist theory. Kollontai still claimed to be a Marxist. Wouldn't the syndicalistic program of the Workers' Opposition have international consequences for the Communist and working class movements?

When the Kronstadt sailors rose in rebellion, also during the Tenth Party Congress in 1921, the Workers' Opposition supported the Bolshevik regime (and Trotsky), which promptly suppressed the rebels. This has confused the anarchist admirers of the Opposition ever since, since they support the Kronstadt mutineers. However, the program of the Kronstadt uprising was not particularly similar to that of the Workers' Opposition. Rather, it was a populist program typical of the aspirations of Russian peasants. I don't think the Workers' Opposition's rejection of the Kronstadt rising was a co-incidence. While the Bolshevik leadership smashed the Kronstadters simply because they challenged one-party rule, Kollontai and her associates probably disdained them as rough peasants with ideas inimical to those of true proletarians. Ironically, the "libertarian" oppositionists thus ended up on the same side as the "authoritarian" Bolshevik regime they were criticizing! Note also the equally ironic fact that Lenin, while crushing peasant rebellions, nevertheless decided to make concessions to the economic demands of the peasantry, while keeping political power firmly in the hands of the party. The Workers' Opposition, in effect, took the opposite position: weaken the ruling party, while opposing economic concessions to the peasantry. Lenin (as usual) was a purveyor of Realpolitik, while Kollontai simply buried her head in the sand, refusing to see the real problems...

Who were the Workers' Opposition? What interests did they represent? My guess is that the Opposition represented a section of the Bolshevik labour union apparatus. One of their leaders, Shlyapnikov, was a labour union boss and for a time even People's Commissar for Labour. This social base in the union apparatus would explain a lot of things. The opposition was sensitive to rank-and-file working class unrest, but insensitive to the interests of the peasantry, while never planning a clean break with the Bolshevik regime. In a strange way, the position of the Workers' Opposition is thus analogous to that of labour union apparats in capitalist nations! Their opposition to Lenin and Trotsky expressed a sectionalist, workerist or labourite discontent, which Kollontai attempted to generalize into a political program.

Even as an anarcho-syndicalist program, Kollontai's pamphlet is a failure. Labour union control of industry in the Soviet Russia of 1921 wasn't the same as "workers' control" of industry, since the labour unions were controlled by the Bolsheviks. The pamphlet nowhere calls for multi-party elections or free soviets. It's not even clear whether Kollontai wants to abolish the centralized planned economy, since she proposes that the labour unions appoint a supreme economic council. Some demands are downright weird, such as the crazy workerist call for the expulsion of all non-proletarians from the party (Kollontai herself had an aristocratic background).

One can only wonder what these ouvrieriste-labourite petty apparatchiks would have done, had they somehow managed to take power? The question is, of course, hypothetical. The Workers' Opposition was too confused to really challenge the hardened Bolshevik leadership. Had they somehow taken power, they would have been quickly overthrown (and romanticized by generations of idealist leftists).

Another anarchist urban legend can be laid to rest. It's a fact that the Workers' Opposition really had no solutions. When the chips were down, the dangerous slogans of the Workers' Opposition really meant very little...