Failure to include the subjective side of things results in left opportunist practice, which is still the most dangerous error we are prone to make. (X/Y, Some Brief, Provocative Notes)
What is left opportunism? The very fact that this term had been bandied about for so long without any scientific definition of its meaning and application is testimony to our utter failure to come to grips with even the most elementary issues confronting the WESTERN VOICE and the Marxist-Leninist movement.
In the classic work, Left-wing Communism – an infantile disorder, Lenin lays the cornerstone for an understanding of this phenomenom. He can do no more, for, as a deviation from Marxism-Leninism, left opportunism assumes constantly changing forms, (page notations are from Lenin, Selected Works, v. 3, Moscow 1971).
He first describes it as “petit-bourgeois revolutionism”, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently revolutionary struggle.” (358) Lenin states that when Bolshevism came into being in 1903 it took on the struggle against the “petit-bourgeois, semi-anarchist (or dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism” of the “Socialist-Revolutionary” Party on three main issues:
First, that party, which rejected Marxism, stubbornly refused [or, it might be more correct to say, was unable] to understand the need for a strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their alignment, before taking any political action. Second, this party considered itself particularly revolutionary or ’Left’ because of its rejection of individual terrorism. Third, the ’Socialist-Revolutionaries’ thought it very ’Left’ to sneer at the comparatively insignificant opportunist sins of the German Social-Democratic Party, while they themselves imitated the most extreme opportunists of that party, for example, on the agrarian question, or the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As the Bolshevik party developed in struggle, other issues of left opportunism emerged. The ”Left” Bolsheviks fought against the tactic of participation in reactionary parliaments. They opposed the signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the imperialists, which took Russia out of the war in 1917 and strengthened the support of the peasantry for the revolution. They refused to participate in reactionary trade unions, seeking to form “revolutionary” unions in isolation from the masses. In Germany they rejected the Party principles and Party discipline in favour of “a mass party which expects an upsurge of the revolutionary struggle from below...and rejects all parliamentary and opportunist methods’” (quoting from a “Left” pamphlet, p. 365). This rejection of party leadership is qualified by Lenin as that “petit-bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that incapacity for sustained effort, unity and action, which, if encouraged, must inevitably destroy any proletarian revolutionary movement.” (p. 368)
In general, “Left” communism is characterized as stubborn and unthinking refusal to compromise under any and all circumstances. To this Lenin responds: “To carry out a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilization of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies) – is that not ridiculous in the extreme?’’
One thing that clearly does not fall into the domain of “Left” communism, as far as Lenin is concerned, is the propagation of revolutionary ideas. “It is far more difficult – and far more precious – to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist, to be able to champion the interests of the revolution (by propaganda, agitation and organization) in non-revolutionary bodies, and quite often in downright reactionary bodies, in a non-revolutionary situation, among the masses who are incapable of immediately appreciating the need for revolutionary methods of action. To be able to seek, find and correctly determine the specific path or the particular turn of events that will lead the masses to the real, decisive and final revolutionary struggle – such is the main objective of communism in Western Europe and America today.” (p. 411)
Evidently, if “Left” opportunism is to be found anywhere in the WESTERN VOICE, it is to be found in the X/Y line. Rejection of class analysis, programmatic work and the study of scientific socialism, opposition to the building of a political vanguard to lead the struggle for socialism, carping at the rightism of the NDP and trade unions without putting forward the dictatorship of the proletariat, glorification of spontaneous struggles above all else – these are the hallmarks of left opportunism as defined by Lenin.
Unlike the German left opportunists, however, X/Y lack a political line which clearly calls for revolution. As a result, the “left” opportunist “theory” becomes quickly transformed into a right opportunist practice. (This is not unusual). Rejecting existing parliamentary forms and reforms, rejecting the capitalist state, rejecting social democracy, rejecting the reformist and reactionary trade unions, we fall back on the mass struggles. But rejecting, too, the objective of revolution we can only describe victories within the very reformist terms which we so abhor. On the one hand, this approach, when we stick to our unstated principles, makes for very few victories. On the other, all victories that we do announce camouflage the fact that the ultimate “reform” is unattainable without the overthrow of capitalist rule.
In practice, looking over the issues of spring and summer 1975, we see very few “victories”, if international struggles are not counted. Examples of “victory” type articles are stories on CAIMAW, CCU and AUCE conventions (v. 4, nos. 8 & 13), “unity” moves in the woods industry and native movement, and the first contract at SFU (no. 11). All the “victories” described in these articles fall clearly within the framework of the economic struggle, although some have certain elements of anti-imperialist reform as well. The sole exception is the native struggle, whose tactics in the past two years provide an example of left opportunism unguided by the barest minimum of ML principles. In face of the native struggle, the real willingness of large numbers of people to go beyond the narrow framework imposed by capitalism, we have no theoretical guidance to offer. In the face of union struggles, we can continue hailing the economic victories and bemoaning the defeats indefinitely.
The adoption of ML methods, if done correctly, is the very opposite of dogmatism, sectarianism, and idealism. It is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions applied to revolutionary strategy, the taking to the masses of this analysis to build a movement with specific, realistic and attainable goals and strategies. The first real victories will be the resolution and propagation of the solutions to the “burning questions” which confront the Marxist-Leninist movement, those which begin to describe “the specific path that will lead the masses to the real, decisive and final revolutionary struggle.