MIA > Archive > Kollontai > Workers Opposition
Before making clear what the cause is of the ever widening break between the “Workers’ Opposition” and the official point of view held by our directing centers, it is necessary to call attention to two facts:
At present there prevails an opinion that the whole root of the controversy arising between the Workers’ Opposition and the numerous currents noticeable among the leaders consists exclusively in the difference of opinions regarding the problems that confront the trade unions. This, however, is not true. The break goes deeper. Representatives of the Opposition are not always able to clearly express and define it, but as soon as some vital question of the reconstruction of our republic is touched upon, controversies arise concerning a whole series of cardinal economic and political questions.
For the first time the two different points of view, as they are expressed by the leaders of our party and the representatives of our class-organized workers, found their reflection at the Ninth Congress of our party, when that body was discussing the question: “Collective versus personal management in the industry.” At that time there was no opposition from a well formed group, but it is very significant that collective management was favored by all the representatives of the trade unions, while opposed to it were all the leaders of our party, who are accustomed to appraise all events from the institutional angle. They require a great deal of shrewdness and skill to placate the socially heterogeneous and the sometimes politically hostile aspirations of the different social groups of the population as expressed by proletarians, petty owners, peasantry, and bourgeoisie in the person of specialists, and pseudo-specialists of all kinds and degrees.
Why was it that none but the unions stubbornly defended the principle of collective management, even without being able to adduce scientific arguments in favor of it; and why was it that the specialists’ supporters at the same time defended the “one man management”? The reason is that in this controversy, though both sides emphatically denied that there was a question of principle involved, two historically irreconcilable points of view had clashed. The “one man management” is a product of the individualist conception of the bourgeois class. The “one man management” is in principle an unrestricted, isolated, free will of one man, disconnected from the collective. This idea finds its reflection in all spheres of human endeavor – beginning with the appointment of a sovereign for the state and ending with a sovereign director of the factory. This is the supreme wisdom of bourgeois thought. The bourgeoisie do not believe in the power of a collective body. They like only to whip the masses into an obedient flock, and drive them wherever their unrestricted will desires.
The working class and its spokesmen, on the contrary, realize that the new communist aspirations can be attained only through the collective creative efforts of the workers themselves. The more the masses are developed in the expression of their collective will and common thought the quicker and more complete will be the realization of working-class aspirations, for it will create a new, homogeneous, unified,perfectly arranged communist industry. Only those who are directly bound to industry can introduce into it animating innovations.
Rejection of a principle – the principle of collective management in the control of industry – was a tactical compromise on behalf of our party, an act of adaptation; it was, moreover, an act of deviation from that class policy which we so zealously cultivated and defended during the first phase of the revolution.
Why did this happen? How did it happen that our party, matured and tempered in the struggle of the revolution, was permitted to be carried away from the direct road in orderto journey along the round-about path of adaptation, formerly condemned severely and branded as “opportunism.”
The answer to this question we shall give later. Meanwhile we shall turn to the question: how did the Workers’ Opposition form and develop?
The Ninth Congress (Russian Communist Party) was held in the spring. During the summer the Opposition did not assert itself. Nothing was heard about it during the stormy debates that took place at the Second Congress of the Communist International, but deep at the bottom there was taking place an accumulation of experience, of critical thought. The first expression of this process, incomplete at the time, was at the party conference, in September 1920. For a time the thought preoccupied itself largely with rejections and criticism. The Opposition had no well formulated proposals of its own. But it was obvious that the party was entering into a new phase of its life. Within its ranks a ferment was at work;signifying that the “lower” elements demand freedom of criticism, loudly proclaiming that bureaucracy strangles them,leaves no freedom for activity, or for manifestation of initiative.
The leaders of the party understood this undercurrent and through comrade Zinovieff made many verbal promises as to freedom of criticism, widening of the scope of self-activity for the masses, persecution of leaders deviating from the principles of democracy, etc. A great deal was said, and said well; but from words to deeds there is a considerable distance. The September conference, together with Zinovieff’s much promising speech, has changed nothing either in the party itself or in the life of the masses. The root from which the Opposition sprouts, was not destroyed. Down at the bottom a growth of inarticulate dissatisfaction, criticism, and independence was taking place.
This inarticulate ferment was noted even by the party leaders, where it quite unexpectedly generated sharp controversies. It is significant that in the central party bodies sharp controversies arose concerning the part that must be played by the trade unions. This, however, is only natural.
At present this subject of controversy between the Opposition and the party leaders, while not being the only one, is still the cardinal point of our whole domestic policy.
Long before the Workers’ Opposition had appeared with its theses, and formed that basis on which, in its opinion, the dictatorship of the proletariat must rest in the sphere of industrial reconstruction, the leaders in the party had sharply disagreed in their appraisal of the part that is to be played by the working class organizations regarding the latter’s participation in the reconstruction of industries on a communist basis. The Central Committee of the party split into groups. Comrade Lenin stood in opposition to Trotzky, while Bucharin took the middle ground.
Only at the Eighth Soviet Congress and immediately after, it became obvious that within the party itself there was a united group kept together primarily by the theses of principles concerning the trade unions. This group, the Opposition, having no great theoreticians, and in spite of a most resolute resistance from the most popular leaders of the party,was growing strong and spreading all over laboring Russia. Was it so only in Petrograd and Moscow? Not at all! Even from the Donetz basin, the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and a number of other industrial centers came reports to the Central Committee that there also the Workers’ Opposition was forming and acting. It is true that not everywhere does the Opposition find itself in complete accord on all points with the workers of Moscow. At times there is much indefiniteness,pettiness, and absurdity in the expressions, demands and motives of the Opposition, while even the cardinal points may differ; yet there is everywhere one unalterable point – and this is the question: Who shall develop the creative powers in the sphere of economic reconstruction? Whether purely class organs directly connected by vital ties with the industries – that is, whether industrial unions shall do the work of reconstruction – or shall it be left to the soviet machine which is separated from direct vital industrial activity and is mixed in its composition? This is the root of the break. The Workers’ Opposition defends the first principle, while the leaders of the party, whatever might be their own differences on various secondary matters, are in complete . accord on the cardinal point and defend the second principle.
What does this mean?
This means that our party lives through its first serious crisis of the revolutionary period, and that the Opposition is not to be driven away by such a cheap name as “syndicalism,”but that all comrades must consider this in all seriousness. Who is right – the leaders, or the working masses endowed with the healthy class instinct?
Last updated on 1 February 2023