Considerations on Opportunism and Ultra-Leftism

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The Bolsheviks’ boycott of “parliament” in 1905 enriched the revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience and showed that, when legal and illegal parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential to reject parliamentary forms. It would, however, be highly erroneous to apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to other conditions and other situations.

—Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder

I'm taking a small break from my upcoming analysis of Trudeau’s resignation to write this, if only to make sense of some ideas I've been trying to work out concerning the direction the American progressive movement took in recent years, and the parallels to our current struggle. It's clear that the utter failure of the Democratic Party to present a worthwhile alternative to the American people cost them the election, and doomed the rest of the world to another four years of Trump's destructive caprices. As we see Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party adopt the same reactionary rhetoric, it worries me that the Canadian Left will follow the opportunistic path supporters of Democratic Party have gone down. That's why I believe it's essential that we are careful and considerate with our support of organizations like the NDP. We need to always keep in mind that such organizations only bring us as close as the confines that our dominant economic system allows, and that real political change requires far more than simply rallying behind a common party. Real, tangible economic, social and political change necessitates a commitment on the part of not only an organized political platform but also the mobilization of a significant portion of the general population. To this end, our support of organizations like the NDP must only extend as far as it is useful for the advancement of the class struggle at large.

My goal is not to justify opportunism, but neither is it to completely exonerate the so-called “ultra-left” tendencies that resist collaboration with anyone they deem to be insufficiently revolutionary. Parliament, as flawed an institution as it is given its role in the reproduction of capitalist social relations, is nevertheless an indispensable tool to organize the working class into a body capable of leading itself to its own emancipation. Even Lenin stressed the importance of working within the parliamentary framework despite its reactionary nature. “In Western Europe and America,” he writes:

parliament has become most odious to the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. That cannot be denied. It can readily be understood, for it is difficult to imagine anything more infamous, vile or treacherous than the behaviour of the vast majority of socialist and Social-Democratic parliamentary deputies during and after the war. It would, however, be not only unreasonable but actually criminal to yield to this mood when deciding how this generally recognised evil should be fought.¹

It’s true that the odious nature of parliaments was on full display as broad swathes of the American Left were reduced to hopelessly tailing the Democratic Party. Instead of critically assessing their support for a party that has repeatedly proven itself to be hostile to the interests of workers, they have decided to turn on those who dared to demand accountability from their politicians. Nevertheless, participation in parliament is a necessary, if frustrating, step towards constructing a mass movement. This is the crucial mistake committed by groups such as the Revolutionary Communist Party, who believe themselves to be the true vanguard of the working class but by consequence reveal themselves to be alien to it by virtue of their political isolation. Both of our parliamentary communist parties understand this fact, however neither have been able to form a mass movement, and as such their voices only represent a tiny fraction of the working class, dooming them likewise to their own isolation. I do not say all this to disparage these organisations, the work they do is still important to the context of the greater class struggle, but I want to stress the advantageous position the NDP finds itself in for the purposes of mobilizing working people into a serious political force that can win us immediate gains, despite the limitations of working within the parliamentary system, and that our efforts should be concentrated there, at least for the time being.

To this end, it's essential that we engage in the kind of ruthless criticism that challenges the party’s lack of commitment to overt socialist values, all the while keeping in mind that such criticisms should always have the goal of strengthening the broader labour movement, rather than dragging it down with useless sectarian bickering. We need Leftists to be willing to criticize Jagmeet Singh’s reluctance to adopt a more comprehensive socialist (or at least economically progressive) platform, the kind that has been shown to be widely popular with younger voters, policies such as: universal basic income, rent control, subsidised dental and vision care, redistributive taxation plans and affordable drug coverage, some of which have been promised by the NDP on paper but have yet to materialize in a meaningful outreach program. It would be silly to think that any of this amounts to “real” socialism, even the most progressive of social democracies are still dominated by the laws of production and exchange that perpetuate the inequality inherent to capitalism, or, in other words, “One form of wage labour may correct the abuses of another, but no form of wage labour can correct the abuses of wage labour itself.”, as Marx writes², but we cannot lose track of our current political conditions and act so wildly outside of what it permits as to throw any chances at enacting meaningful change down the drain, and with it our dreams of a (truly) democratic, free and humane society. Political institutions are only as useful as their potential to guide the sum of human activity towards a certain goal. That goal to us is the emancipation of the working class and the creation of a society that can truly embody the values of freedom and equality. That cannot be achieved with theory and activism alone, however essential they may to be to our common struggle, and must be actively fought for in the political arena if we want to see such a society materialize. Accordingly, Søren Mau reminds us that:

Communism doesn’t imply a particular idea of the good life. Communism isn’t a lifestyle or a fantasy about making every facet of an individual’s life the object of political decision-making; it isn’t a romantic community cult or a dream of communes and potlucks and DIY culture. Communism is the effort to establish institutions that can ensure the highest possible degree of individual freedom and democratic control over those aspects of human life that are, necessarily, shared by the members of a society.³

I want to close by saying that I believe the biggest issue at hand with the NDP isn’t the weakness of their platform (though it could certainly stand to be more robust in its support of the Canadian working class, rather than hopelessly attempting to toe the line between social democracy and Third Way liberalism) but instead the abysmal state of their outreach. If the party wants to avoid the fate that befell the Democrats and be taken seriously as an alternative for ordinary Canadians, then it needs to show itself willing to stand up to defend their interests against those of multinational corporations and the owning class as a whole, as currently represented by the Liberals and Conservatives. I welcome the recent decision to rupture with the federal government but the NDP must now prove that they are capable of standing on their own as the political voice of the Canadian labour movement.

—M.

Sources

1. Vladimir Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder. Marxist Internet Archive, 1999, retrieved from: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm

2. Karl Marx, Grundrisse. Penguin Classics, 1993, p. 123.

3. Søren Mau, Communism is Freedom. Verso Books Blog, 2023, retrieved from: https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom?srsltid=AfmBOopH8xEGflX4bQ3q2Yp5hczvQ1Iw9p0hR3dWpKA8hc63CSgA4q5S