MIA > Archive > Kollontai > Workers Opposition
Now it remains to answer: Is the Opposition necessary? Is it necessary on behalf of the world workers’ liberation from the yoke of capital to welcome its formation or is it an undesirable movement, detrimental to the lighting energy of the party, and destructive to its ranks?
Every comrade not prejudiced against the Opposition, and, who therefore wants to approach the question with an open mind, and analyze it, not in accordance with what the recognized authorities tell him, will see even from these brief outlines that the Opposition is useful and necessary. It is useful primarily because it has awakened slumbering thought. During these years of the revolution we have been so preoccupied with our pressing affairs that we had ceased to appraise our actions from the standpoint of principle and theory. We have been forgetting that the proletariat can commit grave mistakes not only during the period of struggle for political control, and turn toward the morass of opportunism – but that even during the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat such mistakes are possible, particularly when on all sides we are surrounded with stormy waves of imperialism, and when the Soviet republic is compelled to act in the capitalist environment. At such times our leaders must be, not only wise “statesman-like” politicians, but also be able to lead the party and the whole working class along the line of class reconcilability and class creativeness, and prepare it for a prolonged struggle against the new forms of seizure of the Soviet republic by bourgeois influences of world capitalism. “Be ready, be clear – but along the class lines” – such must be the slogan of our party now more than ever.
The Workers’ Opposition has put these questions into the order of the day, rendering thereby its historical service. The thought begins to move, members began to analyze what has already been done, and wherever there is criticism, analysis, where thought moves and works, there is life, progress; advancement forward toward the future. There is nothing more frightful and harmful than sterility of thought and standards of routine. We have been retiring into routine, and might inadvertently have gone off the direct class road leading to communism, if it were not for the Workers’ Opposition injecting itself into the situation at a time when our enemies were about to burst into joyful laughter. At present this is already impossible. The Congress and, therefore, the party will be compelled to contend with the point of view expressed by the Workers’ Opposition, and either to compromise or make essential concessions under its influence and pressure.
The second service of the Workers’ Opposition is that it has brought up for discussion the question as to who, after all, shall be called upon to create new forms of economy, whether it shall be the technicians, men of affairs who by their psychology are bound-up with the past, and soviet officials with communists scattered among them, or the working class collectives which are represented by the unions?
The Workers’ Opposition has said what has long ago been printed in “the Communist Manifesto” by Marx and Engels, viz.: “Creation of communism can and will be the work of the toiling masses themselves. Creation of communism belongs to workers.”
Finally, the Workers’ Opposition has raised its voice against bureaucracy, and has dared to say that bureaucracy binds the wings of self-activity and the creativeness of the working class; that it deadens thought, hinders initiative and experimenting, in the sphere of finding new approaches to production, in a word – it hinders development of new forms for production and life.
Instead of a system of bureaucracy it proposes a system’ of self-activity for the masses. In this respect the party leaders even now are making concessions and “recognizing” the deviations as being harmful to communism and detrimental to the working class interests (the rejection of centralism). The Tenth Congress, we understand, will make another series of concessions to the Workers’ Opposition. Thus, in spite of the fact that the Workers’ Opposition appeared just as a mere group inside the party only a few months ago, it has already fulfilled its mission, and has compelled the directing party centres to listen to the workers’ sound advice. At present, whatever might be the wrath toward the Workers’ Opposition, it has the historical future to support it.
Just because we believe in the vital forces of our party we know that after some hesitation, resistance and circuitous political moves our party ultimately will again follow that path which has been blazed by the elemental forces of the class organized proletarian. There will be no split. If some of the groups shall leave the party they will not be the ones that make up the Workers’ Opposition. Only those will fall out who attempt to evolve into principles our temporary deviations from the spirit of the Communist program, which were forced upon the party by the prolonged civil war, and will hold to them as if they were the essence of our political line of action.
All that part of the party which has been accustomed to reflect the class point of view of the ever growing giant-proletariat will absorb and digest everything that is wholesome, practical and sound in the workers’ Opposition. Not in vain will the rank and file worker speak with assurance and reconciliation: “Ilyich (Lenin) will ponder, think over, listen to us, and then will decide to turn the party rudder toward the Opposition.) Ilyich will be with us yet.”
The sooner the party leaders will take into account the Oppositions’ work, and follow the road marked by the rank and file members, the quicker we shall pass through the crisis in the party at such a difficult time, and the sooner we shall step over the destined line beyond which humanity, having freed itself from the objective economic laws and, profiting by the rich scientific treasure of the workers’ collective, will consciously begin to create the human history of the Communist epoch.
Last updated on 1 February 2023