THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE U.S. [Page 2]
We will now continue to examine the writings of James P. Cannon as documented in THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE U.S. 1928-31 and to offer comments on the same—and hopefully tie them into the current political situation both in the United States and the rest of the world.
We will also draw a few parallels between the ideology and practices of The Left Opposition with those of the early Gnostics (by “early Gnostics” we are referring to believers who were eventually eradicated by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Modern Gnostics are an eclectic crew who better little or no relation to the early Gnostics.
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FOR THE RUSSIAN
OPPOSITION
Against
Opportunism and Bureaucracy
In the Workers (Communist) Party
October 27, 1928
This 19-point statement lays out the main points of contention of the Left Opposition with the American Communist Party. These points mirror the differences between the Russian Left Opposition led by Trotsky and the Soviet Communist Party dictated by Stalin. At this stage both Oppositionist groups had been expelled by their perspective Communist Parties (by direct orders of Stalin in each case.) The Oppositionists held to the belief that it was possible to salvage the Communist Party and the Comintern, and to reintegrate into a revitalized and democratic centralist Party.
This section also underscores the importance Marxists have traditionally placed on polemic documentation—a practice not unlike that of the original Gnostics—with the important difference that Gnostic texts were spiritual or occult as opposed to political. Both Marxists and Gnostics believed man rather than an externalized god inspired their documentation.
In the sectarian squabbling of Marxists much paper has been wasted with repetitive and vituperative denunciations and allegations. Perhaps this a necessary historical process to finally arrive at a majority can really agree about? Marxists should take not of the fate of the Gnostics whose influence is only now being socially identified after some two thousand years of philosophical atrophy.
Regarding the “class issue”:
The struggle led by Trotsky for party democracy and
against bureaucratism as the pressure
of another class upon the party of the proletariat, was
absolutely correct then and is even
more so now…
[P. 31]
This refers to the Stalinist policy of drawing in major sectors of non-proletarian elements into the party as part of what he called “the Lenin levy.” On the surface this might seem like a good thing, to have as much of the population as possible supporting the fledgling Soviet Communist Party. On the other hand, this marked the beginning of a petty bourgeois and outright bourgeois bureaucracy compliant to Stalin’s egomaniacal demands and subsequent anti-worker, anti-humane actions.
This question still rages within what is remains of the Marxist community.
Since we’re not a political organization, we’re certainly not in a position to even attempt to resolve this important issue here. However, a global effort by the Capitalist Oligarchy is going full throttle to outright BAN all belief in Marxism, Communism and the very idea of class struggle. If successful in this anti-democratic objective, a ban on socialism, Social Democracy and trade unionism is sure to follow. This follows exactly the policy of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
The anti-communist "initiative" currently being rammed through the European Union shows just how much the bourgeoisie still fear the power of a united working class based on the principle of class struggle.
[See also, McCARTHYISM RESURRECTED IN EUROPE]
Regarding socialist internationalism:
The attempts to revise the basic Marxist-Leninist
doctrine with the spurious theory of socialism in
one country have been rightly resisted by the Opposition led by Trotsky.
[P. 32]
Marxist Socialism (communism) is by its essential nature and core internationalist; that is, its primary goal is the elimination of the divisive capitalist nation state, replacing it with an international planned economy administrated by democratically elected citizens subject to recall.
We concur 100% with this enlightened evolutionary goal.
What Stalin advanced was a form of National Socialism, as destructive in practice as the national socialism of Nazi Germany. Up to the bitter end the Soviet Union claimed that it had fully achieved socialism. Considering its dictatorial nature and the demeaning standard of living most of its citizens experienced in comparison to the capitalist West, it’s no wonder the entire bureaucracy fell and the words “socialism” and “communism” left a bitter taste in the mouths of those who suffered under Stalinist distortions.
No true form of socialism can indefinitely serve nationalist ends.
The next historic step of humanity will either lead to bloody competition, uncontrollable crime, and chaos—or it will lead to international socialism brought about by International Social Revolution.
This inevitably brings us back to the class issue—who is going to administrate the socialist planned economy? The line Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Cannon take is…the proletariat, the workers. In Marx’s time the industrial working class represented the proletariat. But today? The Western world is based on technology at least, if not more, than on industrial production. Additionally, the material (now rapidly dwindling) surplus has created a sort of vast university bureaucracy in which intellectual value has replaced manual labor value. If you don’t go to college (whether you succeed in your studies or not) you’re considered a social nobody. This has fostered an elitist, privileged society rife with snobbery and false values. It has also resulted in a working class alienated as much from itself as from intellectuals and so-called “high society.” We are all for education and extending the parameters of individual consciousness and opportunity, but not at the price of sacrificing the working class and abandoning the most vulnerable members of society to ostracism and neglect.
From a Marxist point of view it wouldn’t matter in the least if Rodeo drive chic boutiques, actors, artists and ivy league campuses went on strike—but if industrial workers, truckers, cabbies, service workers, etc. and socialist supporters united in a sustained general strike and walked off the job en masse, reactionary heads in Washington and the Capitalist Oligarchy in general would roll—and that’s what we want to achieve. The time for relying on the liberals (if there are any) and the reactionary Democratic Party has long since past. The only way to obtain an equitable society is to topple the old one at the root where it hurts—the economy.
Naturally other segments of society can and must be included in the revolutionary process. The question is how and to what extent?
Any viable 21st Century Marxist organization needs to resolve the class issue, to learn to compromise and be more inclusive without reforming itself out of existence.
No easy task.
[NOTE 02/06: Helping to clarify the class position a comrade
wrote:
Based
on my own experience, I would disagree with you that the working class in this
country is really that “politically backward”. What I have found is that, in
instances where it appears as such, it is usually a thin veneer that hides more
forward-looking instinctive principles. It’s not always easy to get past that
veneer due to trust issues (the working class has been screwed over so much
over the generations that trust is not easily earned). However, if you do, you
find that their class instincts and rudimentary class consciousness are there.
I find that the “backwardness” sometimes displayed is due to societal pressures
and an unconscious knowledge of their atomization. In other words, it’s a
self-defense mechanism.
On
the other hand, you are right about the unions being linked to the capitalists.
However, even that is not standing in the way of workers in struggle, such as
the unionized workers at
From
my reading of Marx, he never said that only “the industrial working class”
should be allowed to join a proletarian party. He did, however, say that only
“proletarians” (and those who have “adopted the proletarian viewpoint” – i.e.,
people who have integrated themselves into the working class) should be brought
in as members. That includes not only workers in heavy industry (auto, steel,
mining, etc.), but also workers in light industry, transportation, agriculture
and “service” (a category that often lumps together proletarians working in
offices with those working in the manufacturing of foodstuffs and those
contributing to the creation of surplus value at the point of distribution).
All of these proletarians should be welcomed into the proletarian party and
given the resources to develop as leaders of that organization.
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Regarding Trotsky, Cannon writes:
…Trotsky—who, after Lenin, was the outstanding leader of the Russian revolution and the Comintern…
[P. 33]
How one views Trotsky is how one views the Bolshevik Revolution.
Remember there were two distinct revolutions in Russia. The first was a mass movement of almost all revolutionary parties and the masses united to end Russia’s disastrous involvement in World War I and to bring down the Tsarist autocracy. The first revolution was only partially successful in that it did not end Russia’s involvement in the war, it left the door open to a restored monarchy, and it did not press to overthrow capitalism. It was the Bolshevik revolution that succeeded in achieving all three. The question is, at what price?
In THE POSITION OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Cannon clearly delineates the importance of the October Revolution and the deteriorating and ruthless state of capitalism.
The present position of the Russian revolution and its
Marxist-Leninist foundation is the dominating
factor in the world movement that must determine the
course of every communist and revolutionary
worker. It overshadows all other questions. An
examination of its present status and an analysis of
the conditions of its development are prerequisites to
the solution of all other main problems of the
strategy and tactics of the revolutionary movement…
The collapse of the Russian revolution as the
dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the retardation for decades of
the revolutionary movement in Europe and America…A collapse would be followed
by an unequalled reign of reaction throughout the world…Our primary concern is
therefore with the fate of the Russian revolution, which directly affects the
fate of all Communist parties…
[Pgs. 83-84]
When writing this Cannon (like Trotsky) still believed
that the Russian Communist and American Communist Parties were “salvageable.”
Even after they realized that the Party was hopelessly “degenerated” they continued
to politically support the Soviet Union while calling for a social revolution
to eliminate the parasitic bureaucracy. Trotsky was assassinated. Cannon worked
until he was worn out. And truly oppressed people, yuppies and closet fascists
crashed the Party.
…Imperialism is the final stage of capitalism, of the
domination of finance capital, monopolies, and international trusts, of the
division and redivision of the world among the imperialist powers, wherein the
only method of “remedying” of the disproportion between productive development
and capital accumulation on the one hand and the division of markets…on the
other, is the resort to imperialist war…Thanks to the treachery of the
reformist Social Democracy, to the strategic…post-war concessions of the
bourgeoisie, and to the weakness or bad leadership of the Communist parties,
the bourgeoisie has been able to achieve the present relative stabilization of
capitalism.
[Pgs. 84-85]
This holds as true today as when Cannon first wrote the above passage. If anything, capitalism has become even more ruthless, more desperate, and consequently is escalating its attacks on the working class.
In the concluding paragraph of this section, Cannon says that Stalin devised the doctrine of “socialism in one country” because Stalin foresaw capitalism’s ability to survive for decades to come and as a consequence no Social Revolution in a Western nation (particularly in Germany) would come to the aide of the Soviet Union. Time and circumstance (including the Nazi’s ascent to power) has shown this to be true since capitalism not only continues to dominate the world, but the degenerated Soviet State itself was to become a thing of the past.
This idea of “socialism in one country” was later transformed into the slogan of “peaceful co-existence with capitalism”—a policy that only emboldened the capitalists and weakened the entire worker’s movement.
The Capitalist Oligarchy will never condone the existence of a worker’s state of any nature—just look at the sustained hostility focused on Cuba for over fifty years. The anti-worker goal of the U.S. has been more than evident in its insidious Central and South American militaristic policies.
Returning to Cannon’s FOR THE RUSSIAN OPPOSITION, in his last to end points (18) we find:
The arbitrary decisions made against us cannot in the slightest degree change our position as Communists, since the party we helped to found and build is our party. Reserving the right to express our viewpoint and opinion on these disputed questions, we will adhere to the discipline and decisions of the party as heretofore. Under all circumstances we will continue to live with the party and work for its future.
[P. 35]
Unfortunately this idealism and resolve was not to last.
When it became obvious that the Party was not about to let the dissidents return to the fold, the Trotskyites labeled the Communist Party in the Soviet Union “degenerated” and all its satellites “deformed.” They instituted the tactic of attempting to “split” members off the Communists (and other groups) and to “intervene” in public meetings. This latter tactic involved disruptions and unwanted debating. Again, this can be compared to the early Gnostics who engaged in similar actions, but within a church rather than a meeting hall setting
In both instances, the dissenters were more or less viewed as pests and thrown out by anti-democratic actions that can aptly be described as sheer gangsterism.
Nonetheless, supporters of The Left Opposition have had some notable success in trade union work.
Soon to join The Left Opposition were central players in the Seattle General Strike of 1919.
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WORK-IN-PROGRESS
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BEYOND IMPERIALISM
NEW AEON SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (NASM)
Reviewer: J.E. Farrow
Updated 10/06