The obsessive preoccupation with the dangers of right opportunism within the “new communist” groups is particularly significant since their apparent radicalism originated in one of the most heady periods of ultraleft theory and practice in recent history. Those whose “leftism” was first fashioned in the hotbeds of student and youth activism of the 1960’s only occasionally refer – and then, in passing – to their problematic origins. Even then, their statements about the political meaning and consequences of their earlier activism are highly superficial, which enables them to glibly present their supposed transition to Marxism-Leninism as an all-too-easy occurrence seemingly without dislocation, and marred only by what they refer to, with equal glibness, as “economist errors”. Typical is the Western Voice Collective’s “self-criticism”. In a single paragraph of a 20-page paper devoted mainly to their “economist errors”, they manage to brush off the sticky question of their origins in the following way:
In fact, the tendency to spontaneism and consequent Economist and right opportunist errors, arose as a reaction. Many (if not most) of us began our involvement in left politics in the student and New Left movements of the Sixties. Those movements were all too often characterized by petit bourgeois idealism, left adventurist practice, and a down grading or complete liquidation of the role of the working class. Disgusted with the failure and demoralization of the New Left and equally critical of the sectarian ravings of the CPCML [Communist Party of Canada Marxist-Leninist] and the various Trot sects, it was understandable, and perhaps even inevitable, that we would tend to overemphasize the importance of spontaneous working class struggle in an attempt to integrate ourselves with “something real.” (“Documents of the ideological struggle within the Western Voice collective,” Western Voice [undated- probably early 1976], p. 7.)
This representative passage reveals curious anomalies. First, while characterizing their new left activities as “petit bourgeois idealism, left adventurist practice, and a down grading or complete liquidation of the role of the working class,” they nonetheless assert that this was an “involvement with left politics.” A “left politics” which undermined all demands for leadership as Leninist – and therefore bad? A “left politics” that considered the then current assortment of anarchist fads as valuable contributions to Marxism? By insisting that these were simply errors made in the context of left politics, the Western Voice inadvertently lets slip its real judgment – that the new left experience was the beginning of a progressive process leading naturally to the even more progressive “new communist movement” of today, a process of harmonious evolution in which they can be opportunists one day and declare themselves Marxist-Leninists the next.
It is especially revealing that they characterize their almost automatic switch to worker spontaneity as a “critical” response to Trotskyism and CPC-ML. Anyone familiar with that period knows that Trotskyism, which commonly assumes ultraleft forms and is congenitally opposed to Marxism-Leninism, was the constant natural bedfellow of new leftism. Western Voice’s attempt to distance itself from CPC-ML is equally revealing, since some leading members of the Western Voice Collective and other such groups, rather than opposing CPC-ML towards the end of the new left period, as they claim, slid directly from new left action-freakism to CPC-ML dogmatism.
Western Voice’s superficiality is representative of the “movement” as a whole. They have managed the magic of separating new leftism from the circumstances in which it arose, and of obliterating the stamp it set on subsequent political outlooks and activities.
Beginning in the early 1960’s, North America and Europe saw an unanticipated revival and proliferation of ultraleftism, which later spilled over into the Third World. It is easier to describe its political and ideological manifestations than to explain its social and historical origins and its staying power. All too little analysis has been done on either score, but at least some parts of the explanation are clear.
Here in North America, the post-World War II era witnessed conditions especially conducive to the germination of widespread left-wing infantilism. A period of unprecedented prosperity, along with greater concentration of wealth by an entrenched imperialism, resulted in an enormous expansion of productive forces and a significant rise in working class living standards. The huge surplus generated by this economic expansion allowed increased public expenditures, especially in education, and stimulated a growing market for “intellectual workers” of a technical/service variety, which led to a tremendous increase in students in what is still called “higher education”. At the same time, the Cold War just about wiped out any progressive leadership. The left leadership so instrumental in the successful union drives of the 1930’s and 1940’s was, except in a small number of unions, purged from the labour movement. By 1960, the remnants of the Communist Party had long since become fully revisionist and mere flunkies of Moscow. Only in very unusual circumstances did honest militants with Communist Party experience break with revisionism and attempt to keep Marxism-Leninism alive. The “old left”, as it was designated in much of the literature of the 1960’s, was virtually dead.
Imagine a working class with a rising standard of living for a period of nearly 20 years. Imagine a trade union movement led by encrusted agents of business unionism. Imagine the almost complete disappearance, with rare exceptions, of any socialist tradition. Add to this the growth of universities which did little to educate and much to create expectations of achievements and rewards which the system was incapable of satisfying. In retrospect, it is not very surprising that this atmosphere nurtured among petty-bourgeois intellectuals negative responses – resentment, hostility and indignation – which, because there was no viable working class movement, took on a specifically individualistic moral tone. This was the atmosphere of the university of the 1960’s, an atmosphere which would stimulate many superficial changes in the cultural climate of decaying capitalism, but which would leave its basic structure intact.
It is against this backdrop that the rise of the new left in North America must be understood. The 60’s saw the growth of youth, especially student, rebellion. This rebellion took place in almost complete isolation from and in blatant rejection of the working class. The rebelliousness which nurtured the new left was located primarily within that social stratum most susceptible to petty-bourgeois leftism – young students and intellectuals.
The dominant concerns of those days were, on the surface at least, specifically student ones – education, its quality, content and control. Almost universally, however, the infantile leaders undermined progressive student demands for better, less expensive education and greater university democracy. Legitimate student campaigns were reduced to rubble by the ego-building excesses of their new left mini-bosses.
Through the petty-bourgeois theoretical fantasies and faddish practice peculiar to new leftism, certain common ideological features emerge which allow a firm political judgment of its meaning and consequences. New leftism was, from its beginnings, antipathetic to the very idea of a vanguard party of the working class. It dubbed as “Stalinist” any hint in this direction and even used the term “Leninist” as synonymous with authoritarianism and bureaucratic elitism. It was against leadership in any form, against organization, and against any consistent political analysis and programme.
The new left thought it had nothing to learn from the past. It either arrogantly ignored or condescendingly rejected the whole of progressive history that preceded it, while being so bold as to imagine that it alone represented higher revolutionary principles and new-found truths. In the euphoria of the movement, even small attempts to analyze what to do and how to do it were quickly drowned in denunciations of “bureaucratism,” “elitism” and “old leftism”. Instead of analysis, organization, programme and strategy, the new left, in its most vulgar forms, was simply an elaborate exercise enthroning petty-bourgeois individualism and exhibitionism. At its “best”, new leftism emphasized what was considered the pure revolutionary virtue of moral action based on personal sacrifice. What “theory” it did produce was no more than wild fantasies varying from one year to the next. Sometimes it was youth, at other times blacks, or women, or something they called the third world, or the lumpen proletariat who were presented as the new revolutionary class, the only thing unifying all such “theories” being the rejection of the centrality and revolutionary role of the working class.
Groups like the New Democratic Youth, Young Socialists, the Canadian Union of Students, student press organizations, and the Red Morning/New Morning/Partisans were temporary stopovers for the loosely organized jamboree. The free and easy passage between them created, despite trumpeted “differences”, a single swamp, a breeding ground for each other’s action-freakism. In this regard as in others, the Canadian version differed little from its counterparts elsewhere in the western world.
In analyzing the new left, it is important to distinguish its accomplishments as a broad social and political movement from its specific political significance as a potential revolutionary vanguard. (The failure to make this distinction is common to those who consider that during that period there was indeed a left, which they were part of, and that they have simply evolved into something more progressive in the 70’s.) For example, as far as any real achievements are concerned, new leftism as a social movement did, out of some moral outrage and activism, in fact act as a catalyst in the United States for the broad-based anti-war movement which occurred on a smaller scale here in Canada. Insofar as the anti-war movement assisted the Vietnamese liberation forces in their extraordinary battle against American imperialism, this social movement deserves credit. But new leftism, as a presumed revolutionary theory, actually held back the wider possibilities of the anti-war movement, leading to its decline with the end of the military draft. While this relatively easy decline of the anti-war movement obviously had objective causes, it is always the responsibility of leading elements to comprehend what part they played in the process.
It is in these terms that the new left must be evaluated since its leadership set the direction and tone not only for what occurred in the 1960’s, but also for much that has followed. As leaders in spite of their disclaimers, they must be judged on the basis of what they did (or did not) build of lasting significance and how they did (or did not) contribute to advancing the overall revolutionary movement. This judgment must be unsparing and harsh, especially in light of the continuing reluctance to see the new left as it really was.
In our view, the new left was neither new nor left. It was no more than a recapitulation under new conditions of all the old anarchist theories and actions so thoroughly discredited by Marx and Engels in their polemics with Bakunin and by all subsequent Marxists. (To call themselves Marxists, as did many within the new left, and not to know, or even care whether or not they knew, Marx’s incisive critique of anarchism is an example of their infantile nature.) It is also our contention that the easy acceptance of unanalyzed problems of the past is always symptomatic of the continuation of such problems.
In the early 1970’s, many new leftists moved into what they thought was Marxism-Leninism, sowing the seeds which were to grow into the Canadian Communist League (CCL) and In Struggle (IS), the two main organizations – both Montreal based – in what now comprises the “new communist movement”. This move was foreshadowed in two other still unexplored areas of new left history – the new left’s relationship to Trotskyism, and the first flurry of “Marxism-Leninism”, for example, the Canadian Party of Labour (CPL) and CPC-ML, which began in and survived the new left period. But throughout the process from then till now, they have sustained, even refined, many of their new left habits of thought and conduct.
The new left had something of a courtship approaching a lasting love affair with Trotskyism, the most institutionalized of “leftist” extravagances. This symbiosis was due to the fact that new leftism and Trotskyism stem from the same class origins and therefore exhibit similar ideological manifestations. Historically, the specific features of Trotskyism developed in response to the Bolshevik Revolution. Presenting itself as the true guardian of the Leninist tradition and as the only revolutionary force to properly respond to the “Stalinist Reaction”, Trotskyism has become a siren call for every form of petty-bourgeois revolutionism ever since. Trotskyism always and everywhere undermines revolutionary possibilities both by making unrealizable demands, and by preaching inevitable doom to those who refuse to heed its special “truths”. Its inherent opportunism sometimes pushes it to make reformist “errors”, but it more commonly assumes “left” forms. For Trotskyists, no revolutionary country is revolutionary, no communist party is democratic, no Marxist-Leninist is free from the “Stalinist” taint unless under their tutelage.
Trotsky as an individual is only a representative of a certain social class. He is a petty-bourgeois intellectual. He started with opposition to the Revolution and the Communist Party, and he has finished with heading the counter-revolution. True to type, he was drawn to the revolutionary movement of the working class but he never believed in the ability of the revolutionary forces to carry through the Revolution to a successful conclusion and he always hated the very essence of a proletarian party. He hates the tedious day-by-day activities of building and perfecting a workers’ organization. He hates discipline when applied to himself. But he loves discipline when he applies it to others. . . .
During the most revolutionary period of his life he was always full of misgivings. Whenever the Revolution was confronted with a difficulty, he fell into a panic. When patience and endurance were required, he demanded spectacular action. When temporary retreat was the order of the day, he advocated senseless bravado which would have wrecked the Revolution .... When a new victory was achieved, he decried it as a defeat.
In this, as in his unwillingness to admit errors, to apply self-criticism to himself, he only expressed his class. (M.J. Olgin, Trotskyism: Counter Revolution in Disguise. [San Francisco: Proletarian Publishers, 1935], pp. 20-21.)
Despite superficial differences in “theory”, both Trotskyism and new leftism offer their advocates the excitement of permanent opposition to any established order (otherwise called “permanent revolution” in the peculiar usage of the Trotskyists). In their celebration of the counter-cultural excesses of the 60’s, their exaggeration of themselves and of revolutionary possibilities, and their perpetual flitting from one fad to another with the constant promise of revolutionary glory, both manifest the pretensions of petty-bourgeois individualism – a danger not to be underestimated in any group which purports to be revolutionary, particularly when it is separated from the chastening and disciplining effects of a real working class movement.
Because of the attraction it holds for petty-bourgeois intellectuals and because of the great barrier it presents to any serious revolutionary work, Trotskyism must be well understood and rejected. This demands a full analysis of its history, political significance, and recent manifestations, including the continuing Trotskyist tendencies within those who now call themselves Marxist-Leninists. Yet the “new communist movement” has paid no more attention to Trotskyism than to new leftism.
Even a cursory look at the attempts during the new left period to form Marxist-Leninist groups reveals the folly of underestimating ultraleftism. The first and seemingly most promising of such groups on the continent were Progressive Labour (PL) in the United States and its branch plant organization in Canada, the Canadian Party of Labour. They originated on the heels of the Sino-Soviet schism, taking what appeared to be a firm pro-revolutionary, anti-revisionist stand. Inexorably the petty-bourgeois revolutionism characteristic of the whole period transformed their early ultraleft tendencies into a full-fledged counterrevolutionary “leftist” programme. Most glaring was their downplaying of the significance of national movements to the point where they eventually proclaimed all nationalism to be reactionary. Like more conventional Trotskyists of the period, PL and CPL considered the Vietnamese participation in the Paris Peace Accords as a sellout of the revolution. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution they supported ultraleftism in China and defined Mao as a centrist, condemning him as reactionary and essentially no different from the Russian leadership.
The PL/CPL phenomenon demonstrates that the final results of superleftism, when unchecked, are counter-revolutionary and that groups which are initially in “sympathy” with the Chinese Revolution are not immune from these results. While PL and CPL remain formally anti-Trotskyist (they have to, for this is the rhetoric most commonly used to conceal their type of opportunism), they are in fact, both in political programme and style, just another variation of Trotskyism.
There is as much to learn, by way of negative example, from another “Marxist-Leninist” formation of more recent vintage, the self-celebrating Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). But nothing has been learned, in our opinion, when the summation of their doings leads to the conclusion forwarded by the “new communist movement” that CPC-ML is right opportunist. Anyone who has had dealings with CPC-ML, read their newspaper, and seen their members in action recognizes that they remain an isolated bunch of phrase-mongering fanatics. Here in Halifax and, we gather, in other Canadian cities, many of CPC-ML’s recruits have come from the most hooligan and adventurist remnants of the new left period. They remain faithful to this heritage. Even if this outfit takes an apparent right turn at a particular time, we still have to judge them on the basis of their total history. Instances of right opportunism in CPC-ML’s trade union activities cannot be used as grounds for a full understanding of their type of opportunism, especially since ultraleftism has governed their politics throughout. Moreover, their passing twists to the right are done in such a juvenile manner that to call them right opportunists is to obliterate the meaning of a definition vitally necessary in dealing with real and formidable right opportunism.
Momentary right opportunist turns should not blind us to the fundamental direction of the opportunism of both Trotskyism and CPC-ML. Blindness about any of these groups would be no more than a small mistake if there were not an overwhelming proclivity within the “new communist movement” to automatically characterize almost any prevailing opportunism as right in form.
One offshoot of the new left period included groups and individuals having in common a vague sense that something new was necessary, and a seeming recognition that the working class is the significant force for revolutionary transformation and that their former antipathy to Leninism had been wrong. At the same time, they avoided the fundamental critique of their former theory and practice which would have led to a clear break with left opportunism. Without any understanding of their new left past, they simply adopted a superficial notion about the need for some sort of Leninist formation and departed from their student surroundings to “join the working class”, or else attempted to set up student support programmes for workers.
At present, many groups throughout Canada claim to accept Marxism-Leninism, proclaiming that they are engaged in the primary task of party building. Virtually all these new groups have persisted in characterizing their most recent politics as right opportunist, as suffering first and foremost from the false assumption that the trade union movement would in and of itself forward the revolutionary process. We recognize as obvious that the working class in general has been and is burdened with right opportunist and, more commonly, overtly bourgeois leadership. It is also true that the groups that sprang up in the early 70’s did attempt some perfunctory engagement with the working class which they thought would spontaneously lead to revolution. What is peculiar, however, is that the new “Marxist-Leninist” groups, which have evolved out of a still unanalyzed adventurist past and are isolated from working class realities, should promptly and confidently condemn their most recent involvements as rightist. Because party formation was at best secondary in the early 70’s – only vaguely perceived,if at all – and because there was a belief in a fluid progression from trade union victories to revolutionary transformation, it is now universally acclaimed that this spontaneism was rightist and that the period as a whole was economist.
We have a different interpretation; the absence of party building activity was directly linked to the new left days. To begin with, no one had any experience with the problems of vanguard formation. How could they when organization itself was anathema to them and when all the rich revolutionary experience of the past was discarded as obsolete? Commitment to a party took on no more than a rhetorical flourish. (Here in Halifax it even included acceptance of Trotskyism.) The prevailing petty-bourgeois opportunism exhibited a profound antipathy towards principled and disciplined work. These were not “rightist errors”, but a continuation of entrenched ultraleftism. Significantly, when new leftism became unfashionable, many ex-new leftists who still imagined themselves revolutionary found CPC-ML attractive, not exactly a “rightist mistake”.
In parts of Canada some new leftists did join the Waffle. A number of them later entered the “new Marxist-Leninist movement”; ostensibly they had rejected right opportunism, specifically the Waffle’s antipathy to Leninism. On the surface, the time they spent in the Waffle constituted a “rightist phase” – but only on the surface. Even the most confirmed ultraleftists have their apparent rightist days and weeks. It is in the nature of the sickness that their political temperatures rise and fall; naturally one of their bouts will find them in the company of social democrats.[1]
“Going to the working class” is the reference point most commonly used by ultraleftists to justify characterizing this period as right opportunist. While there was in fact the tendency to accept workers’ immediate demands as the sole criterion for revolutionary action, this spontaneism is not necessarily rightist. Spontaneism can be cast in a “leftist” mold as well, especially when it is not rooted in the cautious careerism of an established, self-interested trade union leadership. It can be suffused with romantic workerism which lacks any concrete sense of working class conditions, but instead idealizes working class consciousness and sentimentalizes working class struggle. The same interpretation has been made in the Chinese context:
Politically, ultra-leftist spontaneism is a direct extension of empiricism. Spontaneism asserts, as does empiricism, that knowledge can be derived directly from a limited practice and that the masses are therefore never in error. (Charles Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China [New York: Monthly Review, 1974], p. 122.)
Here in Halifax, for example, the group called the East Coast Socialist Movement (ECSM) was, during its short history, completely opportunist, as all local observers now agree. While the local “new communists” insist that this past was rightist, ECSM in fact exhibited left spontaneism at one moment and seemingly standard economism at the next. Mired in petty-bourgeois revolutionism and misled by opportunist descendants of the earlier new left period, this group committed every sort of “error”, including those which could be called rightist ones. But a political summation of this group, as well as of many other similar groups in Canada at that time, must take into account its continuity with an uncriticized ultraleft past. ECSM’s presuming to be a pre-party Marxist-Leninist formation displayed its overestimation of the group’s (and especially its leaders’) capacities, its sloppy and negligent approach to the analysis of local conditions, its romanticization of thoughtless activism, the substitution of quotations from the classics for theoretical knowledge, and a generally unprincipled approach to all of its tasks. This amateurishness, raised to the level of higher politics, is most characteristic of the petty-bourgeois ultraleftism that lay at the base of the group’s whole political history.
In summing up ECSM, we recognize that we are not as fully cognizant of the experiences of other groups in Canada at that time, and that, on this account, a similar summation for other groups may appear hazardous. We are open to the possibility that other conditions did in fact produce a more economist practice. Our case for the danger of left opportunism, however, does not rest on the uniformity of all Canadian groups during that period. As long as people coming out of new leftism appeared to adopt Marxism-Leninism and an engagement with the working class but without making any fundamental break with their opportunist past, then regardless of the local variation in political tendencies, it is fully logical to come to the same conclusion for all these groups.
Two continuing problems lend credence to this interpretation. One is the fact that many in the present “movement” direct descendants of the earlier phase-are raising the question of party building as if they just invented it, all by themselves. It is, however, simply an elementary axiom of Leninism, one which would have been accepted earlier and would now be approached far more soberly had there not been a deep aversion to it before.
Second is the unanimously accepted proposition that the very first order of business in undertaking to build such a party is to do communist agitation and propaganda among the masses. This is clearly a continuation of left spontaneism, since what passes for agitation and propaganda is being conducted without anything resembling an analysis of present class structure and class consciousness. In place of investigation and study we hear little more than references to great crises, spontaneous militancy, and the readiness of an advanced guard of the working class for communism. Again, it is axiomatic that communists “take communist agitation and propaganda to the masses”, but the substance and style of such work cannot be decided in a vacuum. No amount of leafletting, street corner haranguing, or self-satisfied proclamations can substitute for arduous, thorough class analysis and for the realistic assessment of what is actually feasible in specific conditions.
We are led to one inescapable conclusion: left opportunism has permeated the whole history of the present “movement”. We have no doubt that economism will again assume prominence when Marxist leadership is successful – when Marxist-Leninists have a deep and enduring connection to working people. In the meantime, how can those who consider themselves Marxist-Leninists, yet have had nothing but repeated failure with the working class, make such a fuss about rightism?
As the following sections demonstrate, what we now see is a relentless continuation of still virulent opportunism, usually assuming “left” forms.
[1] By the same token, social democrats of a certain type are at times not averse to putting on Marxist-Leninist masks (making it especially easy for them to get along with ultraleftists). Their fear and hatred of Marxism-Leninism is so intense, however, that at the first moment of difficulty occasioned by open conflict or exposure, their underlying petty-bourgeois habits of backbiting, gossip, deceit, factionalism, and antipathy to Leninism take over. Just as the ultraleftists pin the label of social democrat on everyone to their “right”, social democrats of this type malign everyone to their left as ultraleft.