From: Sebastian Budgen <sebastian-AT-amadeobordiga.u-net.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: [VT_THEORY] on empire and negri
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 17:42:35 +0200


Harald raises some interesting points. I don't agree with everything he 
says, or his general understanding of the Russian Revolution (but, as 
Trot, I would say that, wouldn't I?), but these are issues that need to 
be explored further. For those who wish to look into them in more 
detail, here are some more references:

Barbara C. Allen, "Worker, Trade Unionist, Revolutionary:  A Political 
Biography of Alexander Shliapnikov, 1905-1922," (Indiana Univ., 2001), 
which is available from UMI on microfilm or as a printed copy for 
purchase or through interlibrary loan
(http://www.umi.com/umi/dissertations/).

More easily obtainable studies by Allen are in the journal 
"Revolutionary Russia" vol 15 no. 2, pp. 72-105 and forthcoming in 
"Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichte Osteuropas"
(early 2005).

Larry Holmes discusses the question of support for the WO in his paper, 
"For the Revolution Redeemed, The Workers' Opposition in the Bolshevik 
Party, 1919-21,"  The Carl Beck Papers, 1990, as does Allen in the 
dissertation, but the question remains murky.

The biographical entry on Shliapnikov in the Encyclopedia of Marxism at 
www.marxists.org is the most authoritative and up-to-date online bio of 
him.  The documents in his personal archive on that site are helpful, 
although translated rather roughly.


If you are interested in these matters, you may like to know that 
Historical Materialism will be publishing soon a review essay on the 
recently published minutes of the factory committees, as well as a long 
piece on historiography of the Russian Revolution by Kevin Murphy, 
which will probably also reply to the article by Simon Pirani on 
party-class relations in Moscow 1920-21 which we carried. Also, further 
down the road, we hope to publish in the book series a collection of 
the documents (by all the platforms) in the trade-union debate, as well 
as a series of documents by the Democratic Centralists (the other main 
Bolshevik oppositionists).

Sebastian Budgen


On Aug 31, 2004, at 4:38 PM, Harald Beyer-Arnesen wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Wright" <pmargin-AT-optusnet.com.au>
> To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
> Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 1:11 PM
> Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: [VT_THEORY] on empire and negri
>
>
> << It would be interesting to know more about the unions
> from which the Bolshevik Workers' Opposition drew much
> of its base, ... >>
>         Well, the 3 most prominent leaders of the "Workers'
> Opposition" (a name Lenin is said to have given them), apart
> from the celibirity A. Kollontaj, Shyplinakov Alexander G.
> Shlyapnikov, (Commisar of Labour Oct 1918 to Oct 1919),
> Yu. Kh. Lutovinov and S. Medevev, just happpened to make
> up the top cadres of the All-Russian Metal Workers Union,
> whose cenetral committee also officially endorsed their
> position, with Shyplinakov as chairman. The Miners and Textile
> Workers unions are also often mentioned.  ( In a footnote
> in William B Husband; "Revolution in the Factory: The Birth
> of the Soviet Textile Industry, of 1917-1920"  the author
> comments: "But Asatkin's [a top offical within the Textile
> Workers Union] politics demonstrate one important insight
> abut the Workers' Opposition -- that it was in this instance
> more the advocate for the independence of union leaders
> than for rank-and-file democracy by the members." ]  But also,
> for instance the chairman of the All-Russian Trade Union
> Council,  M. P Tomsky, is said to initially have been part of
> this opposition, until he got cold feet. Silvinia Malle in "The
> Econonomic Organization of War Communism: 1918-1921,"
> writes: "The 'workers opposition', which included several
> members [read top officals] of the Metal, Mining and
> Textile Unions, and some managers of heavy industry, ..."
>         If not written in the last years, I am pretty sure
> that no in-dept study has ever been written about the Worker's
> Opposition, and how they were recieved among workers,
> but I am pretty certain that the above would give a pretty
> accurate, if limited, picture of their composition. It must
> also be taken into account that it was very much an
> internal affair, and Trostkii scornfully used against the
> opposition, citing Zinoviev to the effet that in Petrograd
> 99 per cent of the workers either had no party preference
> or, to the extent that they did, symphatised with the
> Mesheviks, or even the Black Hundreds.  The opinions of Trotsky
> nor Zinoviev are not much worth, but regardless of this,
> Bolshevik membership among the metal workers in Petograd
> is said to have been a mere 2 per cent at this point, and
> 4 per cent in Moscow. How many of these again that held
> management-like positions, nothing is said.
>         This said, it is is self-evident that close to 100
> per cent of workers would much have preferred the
> position of the "Workers Oppostion" to either Trostky's
> or Lenin's line (too the degree that the two latter at
> all differed other than in words.)
>
> The above-mentiond unions, if they so can be called, to
> my knowledge certainly had nothing at all to do with self-
> organization .. but everything to do with impostion of labour
> discipline, including sentencing workers to jail or forced
> labour duties and camps when needed. And of course to combat
> strikes. Although some of them may not have liked it, I at
> least, cannot remember ever seeing any protests coming
> from these so-called union-leaders against machine-guns
> being put in use to break strikes. Added to this, "the unions"
> served as a ladder for a select few to higher management
> positions. And much of the conflict no doubt concerned
> partially closing that door throught the apointment of
> "bourgeois specialists" by central party and government
> institutions.  Richard Pipes refers to Alexander Shlyapnikov
> as the "highest Bolshevik functionary of worker
> background,"  and that very likely tells something about
> the psycological factors involved.
>       An important part of it certainly was a conflict between
> the central and middle-level bureaucracy-mangement, inflamed
> by that the former more often than not had no idea what
> they were doing, combined with a genuine animosity against
> competitors amongst people with bourgeois and peasant
> backgrounds for management-power.
>         A. Kollontay, as far as I can judge, based on a very
> limited knowledge on the Workers' Opposition, is irrelevant
> in all this, apart from having a greater ability than
> average of articulation and being an international icon,
> something she continued to be under Stalin.
>
> I neither find any reason to take away from people as
> Shlyapnikov, Lutovinov and S. Medevev a degree of
> sincerity, idealism and integrity. The relative extrmeity
> of their proposals would be unexplicable if this was
> not the case.  Still. the little I know of Shlyapnikov,
> nothing points to that he did not firmly believe that
> workers should obey "their leaders" and the Party, and
> if not, face the consquences, as for instance the
> Kronstadt sailors and workers did with the full support
> of the "Workers' Opposition," whether this was for
> in part for "tactical reasons" or not.
>         Volin paints a picture of Shlyapnikov at his time of
> Commisar of Labour, attending a meeting at the Nobel
> refinery in Petrograd near the end of 1917,  which might
> be summed up as: the voices of the workers should be
> allowed to be heard, but after having spoken what was
> on their minds, their duty was to obey or else face the
> consquences. One of the milder statements, is as telling
> of the mindset as any: "You, the working class of the
> country, wished us to take care of your interests."
>
> There is however no doubt that Shlyapnikov hated Trotsky,
> and was also sincerly politically opposed to the the overuse
> of "the cudgel" (i.e is brute force, Shlyapnikov's phrase).  In
> 1919 he had in respect to the economical organization of labour.
> contrasted the "machine", which he favoured, to the
> Trotsky's "cudgel" (militarization of labour). The expression,
> "the machine" was to illustrate the kind of discipline championed
> by a certain motor-company, named Ford . It is probably
> not too far off to see Workers's Oppostion in general as
> social democrats of the old school, in the latters first phase of 
> government
> power. There position is so contradictory that
> it is hard to know for sure.
>
> Their platform is intriguing though. What is not so explicitely
> mentioned, is that they to my limited knowledge never
> contested that unions should be lead by members of the
> Party. That is a not small contradiction, given that no more
> than a tiny minority of the workers where members of the
> Party at this point. Added to this, the peasants were to be
> exluded from the All-Russian Congress of Producers .
>
> I stole the following from the anrchist on-line FAQ:
>
> As one historian notes, the "arguments of Kollontai were . . . strictly
> limited in their appeal to the communist party . . . Nor did they in 
> any
> form criticise the domination of the communist minority over the
> majority of the proletariat. The fundamental weakness of the
> case of the Workers' Opposition was that, while demanding more
> freedom of initiative for the workers, it was quite content to
> leave untouched the state of affairs in which a few hundred
> thousand imposed their will on many millions. 'And since
> when have we [the Workers' Opposition] been enemies of
> komitetchina [manipulation and control by communist party
> committees], I should like to know?' Shlyapnikov asked at the
> Tenth Party Congress. He went on to explain that the trade
> union congress in which, as he and his followers proposed,
> all control of industry should be vested would 'of course'
> be composed of delegates nominated and elected 'through
> the party cells, as we always do.' But he argued that the
> local trade union cells would ensure the election of
> men qualified by experience and ability in pace of those who are 
> 'imposed on
> us at present' by the centre. Kollontai and her
> supporters had no wish to disturb the communist party's
> monopoly of political power." [Leonard Schapiro, The Origin
> of the Communist Autocracy, p. 294]
>
> And again, when these internal party discussion was going
> on, workers and sailiors calling for "all powers to soviets"
> were being butchered.
>         The misnamed "Workers' Opposition," to my knowledge,
> never even thought of mobilizing the workers. In Samara,
> where the "Workers' Opposition" controlled the local Party,
> judging from the very unspecific comments by historians
> I've seen, go far more openly out, but again, nothing of what
> I have read points to that they ever considered that the
> question should be decided outside the centralized will of
> the Party. That their proposals should have been accepted
> there was no more likely than it would have been blessed
> by the Pope.
>         Added to this, the "Workers' Opposition," precisely
> represented the forces that had been instrumental in
> breaking the power of factory commiitees back in the
> 1917-18 period. As such they were facing the consequences
> of their own acts.
>         Still to would be interesting to know more of them,
> and with a greater degree of certainty.  And the more it
> can be said they, or at least many of them, were idealists,
> and not foremost opportunists who got less than what
> they thought they had coming, the more interesting. For
> a person like Shlyapnikov, maybe the problem lay in that
> he strongly believed in things that could not
> be reconciled. It is intersting in so far as question of
> "reformism" is concerned, the greatest problem as a rule
> are the "true believers," and not the "opportunists".
>
> Harald
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>


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