           Were any of the Bolshevik oppositions a real alternative?

   The real limitations in Bolshevism can best be seen by the various
   oppositions to the mainstream of that party. That Bolshevik politics
   were not a suitable instrument for working class self-liberation can be
   seen by the limited way which opposition groups questioned Bolshevik
   orthodoxy -- even, in the case of the opposition to the rising
   Stalinist bureaucracy. Each opposition was fundamentally in favour of
   the Bolshevik monopoly of power, basically seeking reforms on areas
   which did not question it (such as economic policy). This does not mean
   that the various oppositions did not have valid points, just that they
   shared most of the key assumptions of Bolshevism which undermined the
   Russian revolution either by their application or their use to justify
   specific (usually highly authoritarian) practice.

   We will not cover all the various oppositions with the Bolshevik party
   here (Robert V. Daniels' The Conscience of the Revolution discusses all
   of them in some detail, as does Leonard Schapiro's The Origin of the
   Communist Autocracy). We will concentrate on the "Left Communists" of
   1918, the "Workers' Opposition" of 1920/1 and the Trotsky-led "Left
   Opposition"
   of 1923-7. It can be said that each opposition is a pale reflection of
   the one before it and each had clear limitations in their politics
   which fatally undermined any liberatory potential they had. Indeed, by
   the time of the "Left Opposition" we are reduced to simply the more
   radical sounding faction of the state and party bureaucracy fighting it
   out with the dominant faction.

   To contrast these fake "oppositions" with a genuine opposition, we will
   discuss (in [1]section 4) the "Workers' Group" of 1923 which was
   expelled from the Communist Party and repressed because it stood for
   (at least until the Bolshevik party seized power) traditional socialist
   values. This repression occurred, significantly, under Lenin and
   Trotsky in 1922/3. The limited nature of the previous oppositions and
   the repression of a genuine dissident working class group within the
   Communist Party shows how deeply unlibertarian the real Bolshevik
   tradition is. In fact, it could be argued that the fate of all the
   non-Trotskyist oppositions shows what will inevitably happen when
   someone takes the more democratic sounding rhetoric of Lenin at face
   value and compares it to his authoritarian practice, namely Lenin will
   turn round and say unambiguously that he had already mentioned his
   practice before hand and the reader simply had not been paying
   attention.

1 Were the "Left Communists" of 1918 an alternative?

   The first opposition of note to Lenin's state capitalist politics was
   the "Left Communists" in early 1918. This was clustered around the
   Bolshevik leader Bukharin. This grouping was focused around opposition
   to the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany and Lenin's advocacy of
   "state capitalism" and "one-man management" as the means of both
   achieving socialism and getting Russia out of its problems. It is the
   latter issue that concerns us here.

   The first issue of their theoretical journal Kommunist was published in
   April 1920 and it argued vigorously against Lenin's advocacy of
   "one-man management" and state capitalism for "socialist" Russia. They
   correctly argued "for the construction of the proletarian society by
   the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by the Ukases of
   the captains of industry . . . If the proletariat itself does not know
   how to create the necessary prerequisites for the socialist
   organisation of labour, no one can do this for it and no one can compel
   it to do this. The stick, if raised against the workers, will find
   itself in the hands of a social force which is either under the
   influence of another social class or is in the hands of the soviet
   power; but the soviet power will then be forced to seek support against
   the proletariat from another class (e.g. the peasantry) and by this it
   will destroy itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism
   and socialist organisation will be set up by the proletariat itself, or
   they will not be set up at all: something else will be set up -- state
   capitalism." [Osinsky, quoted by Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers'
   Control, p. 39]

   Lenin reacted sharply, heaping insult upon insult on the Left
   Communists and arguing against their ideas on workers' self-management.
   Rather than see self-management (or even workers' control) as the key,
   he argued forcefully in favour of one-man management and state
   capitalism as both the means of solving Russia's immediate problems and
   building socialism. Moreover, he linked this with his previous
   writings, correctly noting his "'high' appreciation of state" had been
   given "before the Bolsheviks seized power." For Lenin, "Socialism [was]
   inconceivable without large scale capitalist engineering . . . [and]
   without planned state organisation, which keeps tens of millions of
   people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production
   and distribution." Thus "our task is to study the state capitalism of
   the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from
   adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it." [Selected
   Works, vol. 2, p. 636 and p. 635] This required appointing capitalists
   to management positions, from which the vanguard could learn.

   So, as long as a workers' party held power, the working class need not
   fear "state capitalism" and the lack of economic power at the point of
   production. Of course, without economic power, working class political
   power would be fatally undermined. In practice, Lenin simply handed
   over the workplaces to the state bureaucracy and created the social
   relationships which Stalinism thrived upon. Unfortunately, Lenin's
   arguments carried the day (see see [2]section 9 of the appendix
   [3]"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"). How this conflict
   was resolved is significant, given that the banning of factions (which
   is generally seen as a key cause in the rise of Stalinism) occurred in
   1921 (a ban, incidentally, Trotsky defended throughout the 1920s). As
   one historian notes:

     "The resolution of the party controversy in the spring of 1918 set a
     pattern that was to be followed throughout the history of the
     Communist Opposition in Russia. This was the settlement of the
     issues not by discussion, persuasion, or compromise, but by a
     high-pressure campaign in the party organisations, backed by a
     barrage of violent invective in the party press and in the
     pronouncements of the party leaders. Lenin's polemics set the tone,
     and his organisational lieutenants brought the membership into
     line." [Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 87]

   Indeed, "[s]oon after the party congress had approved the peace [in the
   spring of 1918], a Petrograd city party conference produced a majority
   for Lenin. It ordered the suspension of the newspaper Kommunist which
   had been serving as a Left Communist organ . . . The fourth and final
   issue of the Moscow Kommunist had to be published as a private
   factional paper rather than as the official organ of a party
   organisation." Ultimately, "[u]nder the conditions of party life
   established by Lenin, defence of the Opposition position became
   impossible within the terms of Bolshevik discipline." [Op. Cit., p. 88
   and p. 89] So much for faction rights -- three years before they were
   officially prohibited in the 10th Party Congress!

   However, the "Left Communists," while correct on socialism needing
   workers' economic self-management, were limited in other ways. The
   major problems with the "Left Communists" were two-fold.

   Firstly, by basing themselves on Bolshevik orthodoxy they allowed Lenin
   to dominate the debate. This meant that their more "libertarian"
   reading of Lenin's work could be nullified by Lenin himself pointing to
   the authoritarian and state capitalist aspects of those very same
   works. Which is ironic, as today most Leninists tend to point to these
   very same democratic sounding aspects of Lenin's ideas while
   downplaying the more blatant anti-socialist ones. Given that Lenin had
   dismissed such approaches himself during the debate against the Left
   Communists in 1918, it seems dishonest for his latter day followers to
   do this.

   Secondly, their perspective on the role of the party undermined their
   commitment to true workers' power and freedom. This can be seen from
   the comments of Sorin, a leading Left Communist. He argued that the
   Left Communists were "the most passionate proponents of soviet power,
   but . . . only so far as this power does not degenerate . . . in a
   petty-bourgeois direction." [quoted by Ronald I. Kowalski, The
   Bolshevik Party in Conflict, p. 135] For them, like any Bolshevik, the
   party played the key role. The only true bastion of the interests of
   the proletariat was the party which "is in every case and everywhere
   superior to the soviets . . . The soviets represent labouring democracy
   in general; and its interest, and in particular the interests of the
   petty bourgeois peasantry, do not always coincide with the interests of
   the proletariat." [quoted by Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power,
   p. 182] This support for party power can also be seen in Osinsky's
   comment that "soviet power" and the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
   could "seek support" from other social classes, so showing that the
   class did not govern directly.

   Thus soviet power was limited to approval of the party line and any
   deviation from that line would be denounced as "petty bourgeois" and,
   therefore, ignored. "Ironically," the historian Kowalski notes,
   "Sorin's call for a revived soviet democracy was becoming vitiated by
   the dominant role assigned, in the final analysis, to the party." [Op.
   Cit., p. 136] Thus their politics were just as authoritarian as the
   mainstream Bolshevism they attacked on other issues:

     "Ultimately, the only criterion that they appeared able to offer was
     to define 'proletarian' in terms of adherence to their own policy
     prescriptions and 'non-proletarian' by non-adherence to them. In
     consequence, all who dared to oppose them could be accused either of
     being non-proletarian, or at the very least suffering from some form
     of 'false consciousness' -- and in the interests of building
     socialism must recant or be purged from the party. Rather
     ironically, beneath the surface of their fine rhetoric in defence of
     the soviets, and of the party as 'a forum for all of proletarian
     democracy,' there lay a political philosophy that was arguably as
     authoritarian as that of which they accused Lenin and his faction."
     [Kowalski, Op. Cit., pp. 136-7]

   This position can be traced back to the fundamentals of Bolshevism (see
   [4]section H.5 on vanguardism). "According to the Left Communists,
   therefore," notes Richard Sakwa, "the party was the custodian of an
   interest higher than that of the soviets. Earlier theoretical
   considerations on the vanguard role of the party, developed in response
   to this problem, were confirmed by the circumstances of Bolshevism in
   power. The political dominance of the party over the soviets encouraged
   an administrative one as well. Such a development was further
   encouraged by the emergence of a massive and unwieldy bureaucratic
   apparatus in 1918 . . . The Left Communists and the party leadership
   were therefore in agreement that . . . the party should play a tutelary
   role over the soviets."
   Furthermore, "[w]ith such a formulation it proved difficult to maintain
   the vitality of the soviet plenum as the soviet was controlled by a
   party fraction, itself controlled by a party committee outside the
   soviet." [Op. Cit., p. 182 and p. 182-3]

   With this ideological preference for party power and the ideological
   justification for ignoring soviet democracy, it is doubtful that their
   (correct) commitment to workers' economic self-management would have
   been successful. An economic democracy combined with what amounts to a
   party dictatorship would be an impossibility that could never work in
   practice (as Lenin in 1921 argued against the "Workers' Opposition").

   As such, the fact that Bukharin (one time "Left Communist") "continued
   to eulogise the party's dictatorship, sometimes quite unabashedly"
   during and after the civil war becomes understandable. In this, he was
   not being extreme: "Bolsheviks no longer bothered to disclaim that the
   dictatorship of the proletariat as the 'dictatorship of the party.'"
   [Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, p. 145 and p.
   142] All the leading Bolsheviks had argued this position for some time
   (see [5]section H.1.2, for example). Bukharin even went so far as to
   argue that "the watchword" taken up by some workers ("even metal
   workers"!) of "For class dictatorship, but against party dictatorship!"
   showed that the proletariat "was declassed."
   This also indicated that a "misunderstanding arose which threatened the
   whole system of the proletarian dictatorship." [contained in Al
   Richardson (ed.), In Defence of the Russian Revolution, p. 192] The
   echoes of the positions argued before the civil war can be seen in
   Bukharin's glib comment that proletarian management of the revolution
   meant the end of the "proletarian" dictatorship!

   Lastly, the arguments of the Left Communists against "one-man
   management"
   were echoed by the Democratic Centralists at the Ninth Party Congress.
   One member of this grouping (which included such "Left Communists" as
   Osinsky) argued against Lenin's dominate position in favour of
   appointed managers inside and outside the party as follows:

     "The Central Committee finds that the [local] party committee is a
     bourgeois prejudice, is conservatism bordering on the province of
     treason, and that the new form is the replacement of party
     committees by political departments, the heads of which by
     themselves replace the elected committees . . . You transform the
     members of the party into an obedient gramophone, with leaders who
     order: go and agitate; but they haven't the right to elect their own
     committee, their own organs.

     "I then put the question to comrade Lenin: Who will appoint the
     Central Committee? You see, there can be individual authority here
     as well. Here also a single commander can be appointed."
     [Sapronov, quoted by Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 114]

   Obviously a man before his time. As Stalin proved, if one-man
   management was such a good idea then why wasn't it being practised in
   the Council of People's Commissars. However, we should not be surprised
   by this party regime. After all, Trotsky had imposed a similar regime
   in the Army in 1918, as had Lenin in industry in the same year. As
   discussed in [6]section 3 of the appendix [7]"What caused the
   degeneration of the Russian Revolution?", the Bolshevik preference for
   centralised "democracy" effectively hollowed out the real democracy at
   the base which makes democracy more than just picking masters.

2 What were the limitations of the "Workers' Opposition" of 1920?

   The next major opposition group were the "Workers' Opposition" of 1920
   and early 1921. Significantly, the name "Workers' Opposition" was the
   label used by the party leadership to describe what latter became a
   proper grouping within the party. This group was more than happy to use
   the label given to it. This group is generally better known than other
   oppositions simply because it was the focus for much debate at the
   tenth party congress and its existence was a precipitating factor in
   the banning of factions within the Communist Party.

   However, like the "Left Communists," the "Workers' Opposition" did not
   extend their economic demands to political issues. Unlike the previous
   opposition, however, their support for party dictatorship was more than
   logically implied, it was taken for granted. Alexandra Kollontai's
   pamphlet, for example, expounding the position of the "Workers'
   Opposition" fails to mention political democracy at all, instead
   discussing exclusively economic and party democracy. Thus it was a case
   of the "Workers' Opposition" expressing the "basis on which, in its
   opinions, the dictatorship of the proletariat must rest in the sphere
   of industrial reconstruction." Indeed, the "whole controversy boils
   down to one basic question: who shall build the communist economy, and
   how shall it be build?" [Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, p.
   161 and p. 173]

   Kollontai was right to state that the working class "can alone by the
   creator of communism" and to ask the question of "shall we achieve
   communist through the workers or over their heads, by the hands of
   Soviet officials." As she argued, "it is impossible to decree
   communism." However, her list of demand were purely economic in nature
   and she wondered "[w]hat shall we do then in order to destroy
   bureaucracy in the party and replace it by workers' democracy?" She
   stressed that the "Workers' Opposition" struggle was "for establishing
   democracy in the party, and for the elimination of all bureaucracy."
   [Op. Cit., p. 176, p. 174, p. 187, p. 192 and p. 197] Thus her demands
   were about the internal regime of the party, not a call for wider
   democratic reforms in the state or society as a whole.

   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]

   Even this extremely limited demand for more economic democracy were too
   much for Lenin. In January, 1921, Lenin was arguing that the Bolsheviks
   had to "add to our platform the following: we must combat the
   ideological confusion of those unsound elements of the opposition who
   go to the lengths of repudiating all 'militarisation of economy,' of
   repudiating not only the 'method of appointing' which has been the
   prevailing method up to now, but all appointments. In the last analysis
   this means repudiating the leading role of the Party in relation to the
   non-Party masses. We must combat the syndicalist deviation which will
   kill the Party if it is not completely cured of it." Indeed, "the
   syndicate deviation leads to the fall of the dictatorship of the
   proletariat." [quoted by Brinton, Op. Cit., pp. 75-6] Maurice Brinton
   correctly notes that by this Lenin meant that "working class power
   ('the dictatorship of the proletariat') is impossible if there are
   militants in the Party who think the working class should exert more
   power in production ('the syndicalist deviation')." Moreover, "Lenin
   here poses quite clearly the question of 'power of the Party' or 'power
   of the class.' He unambiguously opts for the former -- no doubt
   rationalising his choice by equating the two. But he goes even further.
   He not only equates 'workers power' with the rule of the Party. He
   equates it with acceptance of the ideas of the Party leaders!" [Op.
   Cit., p. 76]

   At the tenth party congress, the "Workers' Opposition" were labelled
   "petty-bourgeois," "syndicalist" and even "anarchist" simply because
   they called for limited participation by workers in the rebuilding of
   Russia. The group was "caused in part by the entry into the ranks of
   the Party of elements which had still not completely adopted the
   communist world view." Significantly, those who had the "communist
   world view" did not really debate the issues raised and instead called
   the opposition "genuinely counter-revolutionary,"
   "objectively counter-revolutionary" as well as "too revolutionary."
   [quoted by Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 79]

   For Lenin, the idea of industrial democracy was a nonsense. In this he
   was simply repeating the perspective he had held from spring 1918. As
   he put it, it was "a term that lends itself to misinterpretations. It
   may be read as a repudiation of dictatorship and individual authority."
   Industry, he argued, "is indispensable, democracy is not" and "on no
   account must we renounce dictatorship either." Indeed, "[i]ndustry is
   indispensable, democracy is a category proper only to the political
   sphere"." He did admit "[t]hat [the opposition] has been penetrating
   into the broad masses is evident" however it was the duty of the party
   to ignore the masses. The "bidding for or flirtation with the non-Party
   masses" was a "radical departure from Marxism." "Marxism teaches,"
   Lenin said, "and this tenet has not only been formally endorsed by the
   whole Communist International in the decisions of the Second (1920)
   Congress of the Comintern on the role of the political party of the
   proletariat, but has also been confirmed in practice by our revolution
   -- that only the political party of the working class, i.e. the
   Communist Party, is capable of uniting, training and organising a
   vanguard of the proletariat . . . . that alone will be capable of
   withstanding the inevitable petty-bourgeois vacillation of this mass .
   . . Without this the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible."
   [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 82, p. 27, p. 26, p. 197 and p. 246] In
   other words, "Marxism" teaches that workers' democracy and protest (the
   only means by which "vacillation" can be expressed) is a danger to the
   "dictatorship of the proletariat"! (see also [8]section H.5.3 on why
   this position is the inevitable outcome of vanguardism).

   It should be stresses that this opposition and the debate it provoked
   occurred after the end of the Civil War in the west. The Whites under
   Wrangel had been crushed in November, 1920, and the Russian revolution
   was no longer in immediate danger. As such, there was an opportunity
   for constructive activity and mass participation in the rebuilding of
   Russia. The leading Bolsheviks rejected such demands, even in the
   limited form advocated by the "Workers' Opposition." Lenin and Trotsky
   clearly saw any working class participation as a danger to their power.
   Against the idea of economic participation under Communist control
   raised by the "Workers' Opposition," the leading Bolsheviks favoured
   the NEP. This was a return to the same kind of market-based "state
   capitalist" strategy Lenin had advocated against the "Left Communists"
   before the outbreak of the civil war in May 1918 (and, as noted, he had
   argued for in 1917). This suggests a remarkable consistency in Lenin's
   thoughts, suggesting that claims his policies he advocated and
   implemented in power were somehow the opposite of what he "really"
   wanted are weak.

   As with the "Left Communists" of 1918, Lenin saw his opposition to the
   "Workers' Opposition" as reflecting the basic ideas of his politics.
   "If we perish," he said privately at the time according to Trotsky, "it
   is all the more important to preserve our ideological line and give a
   lesson to our continuators. This should never be forgotten, even in
   hopeless circumstances." [quoted by Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 147]

   In summary, like the "Left Communists", the "Workers' Opposition"
   presented a platform of economic demands rooted in the assumption of
   Bolshevik party domination. It is, therefore, unsurprising that leading
   members of the "Workers' Opposition" took part in the attack on
   Kronstadt and that they wholeheartedly rejected the consistent demands
   for political and economic that the Kronstadt rebels had raised (see
   appendix [9]"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?" for more information).
   Such a policy would be too contradictory to be applied. Either the
   economic reforms would remain a dead letter under party control or the
   economic reforms would provoke demands for political change. This last
   possibility may explain Lenin's vitriolic attacks on the "Workers'
   Opposition."

   This opposition, like the "Left Communists" of 1918, was ultimately
   defeated by organisational pressures within the party and state. Victor
   Serge "was horrified to see the voting rigged for Lenin's and
   Zinoviev's 'majority'" in late 1920. [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p.
   123] Kollantai complained that while officially one and a half million
   copies of the "Workers' Opposition" manifesto was published, in fact
   only 1500 were "and that with difficulty." [quoted by Schaprio, Op.
   Cit., p. 291] This applied even more after the banning of factions,
   when the party machine used state power to break up the base of the
   opposition in the trade unions as well as its influence in the party.

   "Victimisation of supporters of the Workers' Opposition," notes
   Schapiro, "began immediately after the Tenth Party Congress. 'The
   struggle,' as Shlyapnikov later recounted, 'took place not along
   ideological lines but by means . . . of edging out from appointments,
   of systematic transfers from one district to another, and even
   expulsion from the party.' . . . the attack was levelled not for
   heretical opinions, but for criticism of any kind of party
   shortcomings. 'Every member of the party who spoke in defence of the
   resolution on workers' democracy [in the party -- see next section] was
   declared a supporter of the Workers' Opposition and guilty of
   disintegrating the party,' and was accordingly victimised." [Op. Cit.,
   pp. 325-6] Thus "the party Secretariat was perfecting its technique of
   dealing with recalcitrant individuals by the power of removal and
   transfer, directed primarily at the adherents of the Workers'
   Opposition. (Of the 37 Workers' Opposition delegates to the Tenth
   Congress whom Lenin consulted when he was persuading Shlyapnikov and
   Kutuzov to enter the Central Committee, only four managed to return as
   voting delegates to the next congress.)" [Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 161]

   A similar process was at work in the trade unions. For example, "[w]hen
   the metalworkers' union held its congress in May 1921, the Central
   Committee of the party handed it a list of recommended candidates for
   the union leadership. The metalworkers' delegates voted down the
   party-backed list, but this gesture proved futile: the party leadership
   boldly appointed their own men to the union offices." This was "a show
   of political force" as the union was a centre of the Workers'
   Opposition. [Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 157]

   This repression was practised under Lenin and Trotsky, using techniques
   which were later used by the Stalinists against Trotsky and his
   followers. Lenin himself was not above removing his opponents from the
   central committee by undemocratic methods. At the Tenth Party Congress
   he had persuaded Shlyapnikov to be elected to the Central Committee in
   an attempt to undermine the opposition. A mere "five months later,
   Lenin was demanding his expulsion for a few sharp words of criticism of
   the bureaucracy, uttered at a private meeting of a local party cell. If
   he was looking for a pretext, he could scarcely have picked a weaker
   one." [Schapiro, Op. Cit., p. 327] Lenin failed by only one vote short
   of the necessary two thirds majority of the Committee.

   In summary, the "Workers' Opposition" vision was limited. Politically,
   it merely wanted democracy within the party. It did not question the
   party's monopoly of power. As such, it definitely did not deserve the
   labels "anarchist" and "syndicalist" which their opponents called them.
   As far as its economic policy goes, it, too, was limited. Its demands
   for economic democracy were circumscribed by placing it under the
   control of the communist cells within the trade unions.

   However, Kollontai was right to state that only the working class "can
   alone by the creator of communism," that it was impossible to "achieve
   communist . . . over [the workers'] heads, by the hands of Soviet
   officials" and that "it is impossible to decree communism." As
   Kropotkin put it decades before:

     "Communist organisation cannot be left to be constructed by
     legislative bodies called parliaments, municipal or communal
     council. It must be the work of all, a natural growth, a product of
     the constructive genius of the great mass. Communism cannot be
     imposed from above." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 140]

3 What about Trotsky's "Left Opposition" in the 1920s?

   Finally, there is Trotsky's opposition between 1923 and 1927. Since
   1918 Trotsky had been wholeheartedly in favour of the party
   dictatorship and its economic regime. This position started to change
   once his own power came under threat and he suddenly became aware of
   the necessity for reform. Unsurprisingly, his opposition was the last
   and by far the weakest politically. As Cornelius Castoriadis points
   out:

     "From the beginning of 1918 until the banning of factions in March
     1921, tendencies within the Bolshevik party were formed that, with
     farsightedness and sometimes an astonishing clarity, expressed
     opposition to the Party's bureaucratic line and to its very rapid
     bureaucratisation. These were the 'Left Communists' (at the
     beginning of 1918), then the 'Democratic Centralist' tendency
     (1919), and finally the 'Workers' Opposition' (1920-21). . . these
     oppositions were defeated one by one . . . The very feeble echoes of
     their critique of the bureaucracy that can be found later in the
     (Trotskyist) 'Left Opposition' after 1923 do not have the same
     signification. Trotsky was opposed to the bad policies of the
     bureaucracy and to the excesses of its power. He never put into
     question its essential nature. Until practically the end of his
     life, he never brought up the questions raised by the various
     oppositions of the period from 1918 to 1921 (in essence: 'Who
     manages production?' and 'What is the proletariat supposed to do
     during the 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' other than work and
     follow the orders of 'its' party?')." [Political and Social
     Writings, vol. 3, p. 98]

   While the "Left Communists" and "Workers' Opposition" had challenged
   Lenin's state capitalist economic regime while upholding the Bolshevik
   monopoly of power (implicitly or explicitly), Trotsky did not even
   manage that. His opposition was firmly limited to internal reforms to
   the party which he hoped would result in wider participation in the
   soviets and trade unions (he did not bother to explain why continuing
   party dictatorship would reinvigorate the soviets or unions).

   Politically, Trotsky was unashamedly in favour of party dictatorship.
   Indeed, his basic opposition to Stalinism was because he considered it
   as the end of that dictatorship by the rule of the bureaucracy. He held
   this position consistently during the civil war and into the 1920s (and
   beyond -- see [10]section H.3.8). For example, in April 1923, he
   asserted quite clearly that "[i]f there is one question which basically
   not only does not require revision but does not so much as admit the
   thought of revision, it is the question of the dictatorship of the
   Party." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 158] And was true to his word. In "The
   New Course" (generally accepted as being the first public expression of
   his opposition), he stated that "[w]e are the only party in the
   country, and in the period of the dictatorship it could not be
   otherwise." Moreover, it was "incontestable that factions [within the
   party] are a scourge in the present situation" and so the party "does
   not want factions and will not tolerate them." [The Challenge of the
   Left Opposition (1923-25), p. 78, p. 80 and p. 86] In May 1924, he even
   went so far as to proclaim that:

     "Comrades, none of us wishes or is able to be right against his
     party. The party in the last analysis is always right, because the
     party is the sole historical instrument given to the proletariat for
     the solution of its basic problems . . . I know that one cannot be
     right against the party. It is only possible to be right with the
     party and through the party, for history has not created other ways
     for the realisation of what is right." [quoted by Daniels, The
     Conscience of the Revolution, p. 240]

   However, confusion creeps into the politics of the Left Opposition
   simply because they used the term "workers' democracy" a lot. However,
   a close reading of Trotsky's argument soon clarifies this issue.
   Trotsky, following the Communist Party itself, had simply redefined
   what "workers' democracy" meant. Rather than mean what you would expect
   it would mean, the Bolsheviks had changed its meaning to become "party
   democracy." Thus Trotsky could talk about "party dictatorship" and
   "workers' democracy" without contradiction. As his support Max Eastman
   noted in the mid-1920s, Trotsky supported the "programme of democracy
   within the party -- called 'Workers' Democracy' by Lenin." This "was
   not something new or especially devised . . . It was part of the
   essential policy of Lenin for going forward toward the creation of a
   Communist society -- a principle adopted under his leadership at the
   Tenth Congress of the party, immediately after the cessation of the
   civil war." [Since Lenin Died, p. 35] In the words of historian Robert
   V. Daniels:

     "The Opposition's political ideal was summed up in the slogan
     'workers' democracy,' which referred particularly to two documents
     [from 1920 and 1923] . . . Both these statements concerned the need
     to combat 'bureaucratism' and implement party democracy." [Op. Cit.,
     p. 300]

   That this was the case can be seen from the Fourth All-Russian Congress
   of Trade Unions in 1921:

     "At the meeting of delegates who were party members, Tomsky
     submitted for routine approval a set of these on the tasks of trade
     unions. The approval was a matter of form, but an omission was
     noted, The theses made no reference to the formula of 'proletarian
     democracy' with which the Tenth Congress had tried to assuage the
     rank and file. Riazanov . . . offered an amendment to fill the
     breach, in language almost identical with the Tenth Congress
     resolution: 'The party must observe with special care the normal
     methods of proletarian democracy, particularly in the trade unions,
     where most of all the selection of leaders should be done by the
     organised party masses themselves.' . . . The party leadership
     reacted instantaneously to this miscarriage of their plans for
     curtailing the idea of union autonomy. Tomksy was summarily ejected
     from the trade union congress. Lenin put in appearance together with
     Bukharin and Stalin to rectify the unionists' action." [Daniels, Op.
     Cit., p. 157]

   The "New Course Resolution" passed in December, 1923, stresses this,
   stating that "Workers' democracy means the liberty of frank discussion
   of the most important questions of party life by all members, and the
   election of all leading party functionaries and commissions . . . It
   does not . . . imply the freedom to form factional groupings, which are
   extremely dangerous for the ruling party." [Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 408]
   It made it clear that "workers' democracy" was no such thing:

     "Worker's democracy signifies freedom of open discussion by all
     members of the party of the most important questions of party life,
     freedom of controversy about them, and also electiveness of the
     leading official individuals and collegia from below upwards.
     However, it does not at all suggest freedom of factional groupings .
     . . It is self-evident that within the party . . . it is impossible
     to tolerate groupings, the ideological contents of which are
     directed against the party as a whole and against the dictatorship
     of the proletariat (such as, for example, the 'Workers' Truth' and
     the 'Workers' Group')." [quoted by Robert V. Daniels, Op. Cit., p.
     222]

   As "Left Oppositionist" Victor Serge himself pointed out, "the greatest
   reach of boldness of the Left Opposition in the Bolshevik Party was to
   demand the restoration of inner-Party democracy, and it never dared
   dispute the theory of single-party government -- by this time, it was
   too late." Trotsky had "ever since 1923 [been] for the renovation of
   the party through inner party democracy and the struggle against
   bureaucracy." [The Serge-Trotsky Papers, p. 181 and p. 201]

   Thus Trotsky's opposition was hardly democratic. In 1926, for example,
   he took aim at Stalin's dismissal of the idea of "the dictatorship of
   the party" as "nonsense" the previous year. If he were the heroic
   defender of genuine workers democracy modern day Trotskyists assert, he
   would have agreed with Stalin while exposing his hypocrisy. Instead he
   defended the concept of "the dictatorship of the party" and linked it
   to Lenin (and so Leninist orthodoxy):

     "Of course, the foundation of our regime is the dictatorship of a
     class. But this in turn . . . assumes it is class that has come to
     self-consciousness through its vanguard, which is to say, through
     the party. Without this, the dictatorship could not exist . . .
     Dictatorship is the most highly concentrated function of function of
     a class, and therefore the basic instrument of a dictatorship is a
     party. In the most fundamental aspects a class realises its
     dictatorship through a party. That is why Lenin spoke not only of
     the dictatorship of the class but also the dictatorship of the party
     and, in a certain sense, made them identical." [Trotsky, The
     Challenge of the Left Opposition (1926-27), pp. 75-6]

   Trotsky argued that Stalin's repudiation of the "dictatorship of the
   party" was, in fact, a ploy to substitute the dictatorship of the party
   "apparatus" for the dictatorship of the party (a theme which would be
   raised in the following year's Platform of the Opposition). Such a
   substitution, he argued, had its roots in a "disproportion" between
   workers' democracy and peasants' democracy (or "the private sector of
   the economy" in general). As long as there was a "proper 'proportion'"
   between the two and "the advance of democratic methods in the party and
   working class organisations," then "the identification of the
   dictatorship of the class with that of the party is fully and
   completely justified historically and politically." Needless to say,
   Trotsky did not bother to ask how much democracy (of any kind) was
   possible under a party dictatorship nor how a class could run society
   or have "democratic" organisations if subjected to such a dictatorship.
   For him it was a truism that the "dictatorship of a party does not
   contradict the dictatorship of the class either theoretically or
   practically, but is an expression of it." [Op. Cit., p. 76] Needless to
   say, the obvious conclusion to draw from Trotsky's argument is that if
   a revolution occurred in a country without a peasantry then the
   "dictatorship of the party" would be of no real concern!

   This was no temporary (7 year!) aberration. As indicated in [11]section
   H.3.8, Trotsky repeated this support for party dictatorship ten years
   later (and after). Furthermore, Trotsky's defence of party dictatorship
   against Stalin was included in the 1927 Platform of the Opposition.
   This included the same contradictory demands for workers' democracy and
   the revitalising of the soviets and trade unions with deeply rooted
   ideological support for party dictatorship. This document made his
   opposition clear, attacking Stalin for weakening the party's
   dictatorship. In its words, the "growing replacement of the party by
   its own apparatus is promoted by a 'theory' of Stalin's which denies
   the Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the
   dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realised only through the
   dictatorship of the party." It repeats this principle by arguing that
   "the dictatorship of the proletariat demands a single and united
   proletarian party as the leader of the working masses and the poor
   peasantry." As such, "[w]e will fight with all our power against the
   idea of two parties, because the dictatorship of the proletariat
   demands as its very core a single proletarian party. It demands a
   single party." [The Platform of the Opposition] Even in the prison
   camps in the late 1920s and early 1930s, "almost all the Trotskyists
   continued to consider that 'freedom of party' would be 'the end of the
   revolution.' 'Freedom to choose one's party -- that is Menshevism,' was
   the Trotskyists' final verdict." [Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma, p.
   280]

   Once we understand that "workers' democracy" had a very specific
   meaning to the Communist Party, we can start to understand such
   apparently contradictory demands as the "consistent development of a
   workers' democracy in the party, the trade unions, and the soviets."
   Simply put, this call for "workers' democracy" was purely within the
   respective party cells and not a call for genuine democracy in the
   unions or soviets. Such a position in no way undermines the
   dictatorship of the party.

   Economically, Trotsky's opposition was far more backward than previous
   oppositions. For Trotsky, economic democracy was not an issue. It
   played no role in determining the socialist nature of a society. Rather
   state ownership did. Thus he did not question one-man management in the
   workplace nor the capitalist social relationships it generated. For
   Trotsky, it was "necessary for each state-owned factory, with its
   technical director and with its commercial director, to be subjected
   not only to control from the top -- by the state organs -- but also
   from below, by the market which will remain the regulator of the state
   economy for a long time to come." In spite of the obvious fact that the
   workers did not control their labour or its product, Trotsky asserted
   that "[n]o class exploitation exists here, and consequently neither
   does capitalism exist." Moreover, "socialist industry . . . utilises
   methods of development which were invented by capitalist economy."
   Ultimately, it was not self-management that mattered, it was "the
   growth of Soviet state industry [which] signifies the growth of
   socialism itself, a direct strengthening of the power of the
   proletariat"! [The First 5 Years of the Communist International, vol.
   2, p. 237 and p. 245]

   Writing in 1923, he argued that the "system of actual one-man
   management must be applied in the organisation of industry from top to
   bottom. For leading economic organs of industry to really direct
   industry and to bear responsibility for its fate, it is essential for
   them to have authority over the selection of functionaries and their
   transfer and removal." These economic organs must "in actual practice
   have full freedom of selection and appointment." He also tied payment
   to performance (just as he did during the civil war), arguing that "the
   payment of the directors of enterprises must be made to depend on their
   balance sheets, like wages depend on output." [quoted by Robert V.
   Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 1, p. 237]

   Moreover, Trotsky's key idea during the 1920s was to industrialise
   Russia. As the 1927 Platform argued, it was a case that the "present
   tempo of industrialisation and the tempo indicated for the coming years
   are obviously inadequate" and so the "necessary acceleration of
   industrialisation" was required. In fact, the "Soviet Union must nor
   fall further behind the capitalist countries, but in the near future
   must overtake them." Thus industrialisation "must be sufficient to
   guarantee the defence of the country and in particular an adequate
   growth of war industries." [The Platform of the Opposition]

   In summary, Trotsky's "opposition" in no way presented any real
   alternative to Stalinism. Indeed, Stalinism simply took over and
   applied Trotsky's demands for increased industrialisation. At no time
   did Trotsky question the fundamental social relationships within Soviet
   society. He simply wished the ruling elite to apply different policies
   while allowing him and his followers more space and freedom within the
   party structures. Essentially, as the 1927 Platform noted, he saw
   Stalinism as the victory of the state bureaucracy over the party and
   its dictatorship. Writing ten years after the Platform, Trotsky
   reiterated this: "The bureaucracy won the upper hand. It cowed the
   revolutionary vanguard, trampled upon Marxism, prostituted the
   Bolshevik party . . . To the extent that the political centre of
   gravity has shifted form the proletarian vanguard to the bureaucracy,
   the party has changed its social structure as well as its ideology."
   [Stalinism and Bolshevism] He simply wanted to shift the "political
   centre of gravity" back towards the party, as it had been in the early
   1920s when he and Lenin were in power. He in no significant way
   questioned the nature of the regime or the social relationships it was
   rooted in.

   This explains his continual self-imposed role after his exile of loyal
   opposition to Stalinism in spite of the violence applied to him and his
   followers by the Stalinists. It also explains the lack of excitement by
   the working class over the "Left Opposition." There was really not that
   much to choose between the two factions within the ruling party/elite.
   As Serge acknowledged: "Outraged by the Opposition, they [the
   bureaucrats] saw it as treason against them; which in a sense it was,
   since the Opposition itself belonged to the ruling bureaucracy."
   [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 225]

   This may come as a shock to many readers. This is because Trotskyists
   are notorious for their rewriting of the policies of Trotsky's
   opposition to the rise of what became known as Stalinism. This
   revisionism can take extreme forms. For example, Chris Harman (of the
   UK's SWP) in his summary of the rise Stalinism asserted that after
   "Lenin's illness and subsequent death" the "principles of October were
   abandoned one by one." [Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe,
   p. 14] Presumably, in that case, the "principles of October" included
   the practice of, and ideological commitment to, party dictatorship,
   one-man management, banning opposition groups/parties (as well as
   factions within the Communist Party), censorship, state repression of
   working class strikes and protests, piece-work, Taylorism, the end of
   independent trade unions and a host of other crimes against socialism
   implemented under Lenin and normal practice at the time of his death.

   Harman is correct to say that "there was always an alternative to
   Stalinism. It meant, in the late 1920s, returning to genuine workers'
   democracy and consciously linking the fate of Russia to the fate of
   world revolution." Yet this alternative was not Trotsky's. Harman even
   goes so far as to assert that the "historical merit of the Left
   Opposition" was that it "did link the question of the expansion of
   industry with that of working-class democracy and internationalism."
   [Op. Cit., p. 19]

   However, in reality, this was not the case. Trotsky, nor the Left
   Opposition, supported "genuine" working-class democracy, unless by
   "genuine" Harman means "party dictatorship presiding over." This is
   clear from Trotsky's writings for the period in question. The Left
   Opposition did not question the Bolshevik's monopoly of power and
   explicitly supported the idea of party dictatorship. This fact helps
   explains what Harman seems puzzled by, namely that Trotsky "continued
   to his death to harbour the illusion that somehow, despite the lack of
   workers' democracy, Russia was a 'workers' state.'" [Op. Cit., p. 20]
   Strangely, Harman does not explain why Russia was a "workers' state"
   under Lenin and Trotsky, given its "lack of workers' democracy." But
   illusions are hard to dispel, sometimes.

   So, for Trotsky, like all leading members of the Communist Party and
   its "Left Opposition", "workers' democracy" was not considered
   important and, in fact, was (at best) applicable only within the party.
   Thus the capitulation of many of the Left Opposition to Stalin once he
   started a policy of forced industrialisation comes as less of a
   surprise than Harman seems to think it was. As Ante Ciliga saw first
   hand in the prison camps, "the majority of the Opposition were . . .
   looking for a road to reconciliation; whilst criticising the Five Year
   Plan, they put stress not on the part of exploited class played by the
   proletariat, but on the technical errors made by the Government qua
   employer in the matter of insufficient harmony within the system and
   inferior quality of production. This criticism did not lead to an
   appeal to the workers against the Central Committee and against
   bureaucratic authority; it restricted itself to proposing amendments in
   a programme of which the essentials were approved. The socialist nature
   of State industry was taken for granted. They denied the fact that the
   proletariat was exploited; for 'we were in a period of proletarian
   dictatorship.'" [The Russian Enigma, p. 213]

   As Victor Serge noted, "[f]rom 1928-9 onwards, the Politbureau turned
   to its own use the great fundamental ideas of the now expelled
   Opposition (excepting, of course, that of working-class democracy) and
   implemented them with ruthless violence." While acknowledging that the
   Stalinists had applied these ideas in a more extreme form than the
   Opposition planned, he also acknowledged that "[b]eginning in those
   years, a good many Oppositionists rallied to the 'general line' and
   renounced their errors since, as they put it, 'After all, it is our
   programme that is being applied.'" Nor did it help that at "the end of
   1928, Trotsky wrote to [the Opposition] from his exile . . . to the
   effect that, since the Right represented the danger of a slide towards
   capitalism, we had to support the 'Centre' -- Stalin -- against it."
   [Op. Cit., p. 252 and p. 253]

   However, Serge's comments on "working-class democracy" are somewhat
   incredulous, given that he knew fine well that the Opposition did not
   stand for it. His summary of the 1927 Platform was restricted to it
   aiming "to restore life to the Soviets . . . and above all to
   revitalise the Party and the trade unions. . . In conclusion, the
   Opposition openly demanded a Congress for the reform of the Party, and
   the implementation of the excellent resolutions on internal democracy
   that had been adopted in 1921 and 1923." [Op. Cit., pp. 224-5] Which is
   essentially correct. The Platform was based on redefining "workers'
   democracy" to mean "party democracy" within the context of its
   dictatorship.

   We can hardly blame Harman, as it was Trotsky himself who started the
   process of revising history to exclude his own role in creating the
   evils he (sometimes) denounced his opponents within the party for. For
   example, the 1927 Platform states that "[n]ever before have the trade
   unions and the working mass stood so far from the management of
   socialist industry as now" and that "[p]re-revolutionary relations
   between foremen and workmen are frequently found." Which is hardly
   surprising, given that Lenin had argued for, and implemented, appointed
   one-man management armed with "dictatorial powers"
   from April 1918 and that Trotsky himself also supported one-man
   management (see [12]section 10 of the appendix [13]"What happened
   during the Russian Revolution?").

   Even more ironically, Harman argues that the Stalinist bureaucracy
   became a ruling class in 1928 when it implemented the first five year
   plan. This industrialisation was provoked by military competition with
   the west, which forced the "drive to accumulate" which caused the
   bureaucracy to attack "the living standards of peasants and workers."
   He quotes Stalin: "to slacken the pace (of industrialisation) would
   mean to lag behind; and those who lag behind are beaten . . . We must
   make good this lag in ten years. Either we do so or they crush us."
   Moreover, the "environment in which we are placed . . . at home and
   abroad . . . compels us to adopt a rapid rate of industrialisation."
   [Harman, Op. Cit., pp. 15-6] Given that this was exactly the same
   argument as Trotsky in 1927, it seems far from clear that the "Left
   Opposition" presented any sort of alternative to Stalinism. After all,
   the "Left Opposition took the stand that large-scale new investment was
   imperative, especially in heavy industry, and that comprehensive
   planning and new sources of capital accumulation should be employed
   immediately to effect a high rate of industrial expansion . . . They
   also stressed the necessity of rapidly overtaking the capitalist powers
   in economic strength, both as a guarantee of military security and as a
   demonstration of the superiority of the socialist system." [Robert V.
   Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, p. 290]

   Would the Left Opposition's idea of "primitive socialist accumulation"
   been obtained by any means other than politically enforced exploitation
   and the repression of working class and peasant protest? Of course not.
   Faced with the same objective pressures and goals, would it have been
   any different if that faction had become dominant in the party
   dictatorship? It is doubtful, unless you argue that who is in charge
   rather than social relationships that determine the "socialist" nature
   of a regime. But, then again, that is precisely what Trotskyists like
   Harman do do when they look at Lenin's Russia.

   As for Harman's assertion that the Left Opposition stood for
   "internationalism," that is less straight forward than he would like.
   As noted, it favoured the industrialisation of Russia to defend the
   regime against its foreign competitors. As such, the Left Opposition
   were as committed to building "socialism" in the USSR as were the
   Stalinist promoters of "socialism in one country." The difference was
   that the Left Opposition also argued for spreading revolution
   externally as well. For them, this was the only means of assuring the
   lasting victory of "socialism" (i.e. statised industry) in Russia. So,
   for the Left Opposition, building Russia's industrial base was part and
   parcel of supporting revolution internationally rather, as in the case
   of the Stalinists, an alternative to it.

   The contradictions in Trotsky's position may best be seen from the
   relations between Lenin's Russia and the German military. Negotiations
   between the two states started as early as 1920 with an important aide
   of Trotsky's. The fruit of the German military's negotiations were
   "secret military understandings." By September 1922 German officers and
   pilots were training in Russia. An organisation of German military and
   industrial enterprises in Russia was established and under it's
   auspices shells, tanks and aircraft were manufactured in Russia for the
   German army (an attempt to produce poison gas failed). [E.H. Carr, The
   Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 3, p. 327 and pp. 431-2] In April, 1923, the
   German High Command ordered 35 million gold marks worth of war
   material. [Aberdeen Solidarity, Spartakism to National Bolshevism, p.
   24]

   These relations had their impact on the politics of the German
   Communist Party who enforced its so-called "Schlageter Line" of
   co-operation with nationalist and fascist groups. This policy was first
   promoted in the Comintern by leading Communist Radek and inspired by
   Zinoviev. According to Radek, "national Bolshevism" was required as the
   "strong emphasis on the nation in Germany is a revolutionary act."
   [quoted in E.H. Carr, The Interregnum 1923-1924, p. 177] During the
   summer of 1923, joint meetings with them were held and both communist
   and fascist speakers urged an alliance with Soviet Russia against the
   Entente powers. So, for several months, the German Communists worked
   with the Nazis, going so as far as to stage rallies and share podiums
   together. The Communist leader Ruth Fischer even argued that "he who
   denounces Jewish capital . . . is already a warrior in the class war,
   even though he does not know it" (she latter said her remarks had been
   distorted). [quoted in E.H. Carr, Op. Cit., p. 182f] This continued
   until "the Nazis leadership placed a ban on further co-operation."
   [E.H. Carr, Op. Cit., p. 183] Thus the activities of the German
   communists were tailored to fit into the needs of Lenin's regime and
   Trotsky played a key role in the negotiations which started the
   process.

   How "internationalist" was it to arm and train the very forces which
   had crushed the German revolutionary workers between 1919 and 1921? How
   sensible was it, when pressing for world revolution, to enhance the
   power of the army which would be used to attack any revolution in
   Germany? Which, of course, was what happened in 1923, when the army
   repressed the Comintern inspired revolt in November that year. Trotsky
   was one of the staunchest in favour of this insurrection, insisting
   that it be fixed for the 7th of that month, the anniversary of the
   Bolshevik seizure of power. [E.H. Carr, Op. Cit., p. 205] The attempted
   revolt was a dismal failure. Rather than a revolution in Berlin on the
   7th of November, there was a diner at the Russian embassy for German
   officers, industrialists and officials to celebrate the anniversary of
   the Russian revolution. [Carr, Op. Cit., p. 226] The big question is
   how many Communists and workers killed in the revolt had been at the
   receiving end of weapons and training supplied to the German army by
   Trotsky's Red Army?

   Moreover, the nature of any such revolution is what counts. The Left
   Opposition would have encourage revolutions which followed (to re-quote
   the Platform of the Opposition) the "Leninist principle" ("inviolable
   for every Bolshevik") that "the dictatorship of the proletariat is and
   can be realised only through the dictatorship of the party." It would
   have opposed workers' self-management in favour of nationalisation and
   one-man management. In other words, the influence of the Left
   Opposition would have been as detrimental to the global workers'
   movement and other revolutions as Stalin's was (or, for that matter,
   Lenin's) although, of course, in a different way. Generalising Lenin's
   state capitalism would not have resulted in socialism, no matter how
   many revolutions in the west the Left Opposition encouraged.

   Finally, the fate of the "Left Opposition" should be noted. As befell
   the previous oppositions, the party machine was used against it.
   Ironically, the Stalinists began by using the very techniques the
   Trotskyists had used against their opponents years before. For example,
   the Eighth Party Congress in December 1919 agreed that "[a]ll decisions
   of the higher jurisdiction are absolutely binding for the lower."
   Moreover, "[e]ach decision must above all be fulfilled, and only after
   this is an appeal to the corresponding party organ permissible."
   Centralism was reaffirmed: "The whole matter of assignment of party
   workers is in the hands of the Central Committee of the party. Its
   decision is binding for everyone..." These decisions were used as a
   weapon against the opposition: "Translating this principle into
   practice, the Secretariat under Krestinsky [a Trotsky supporter] began
   deliberately to transfer party officials for political reasons, to end
   personal conflicts and curb opposition." In 1923, the Secretariat
   "brought into play its power of transfer, which had already proven to
   be an effective political weapon against the Ukrainian Leftists and the
   Workers' Opposition." [Robert V. Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 113 and p. 229]

   The party itself had been reorganised, with "the replacement of local
   party committees, which were at least democratic in form, by
   bureaucratically constituted 'political departments.' With the
   institution of such bodies, all political activity . . . was placed
   under rigid control from above. This innovation was taken from the
   army; as its origin suggests, it was strictly a military, authoritarian
   institution, designed for transmitting propaganda downward rather than
   opinion upward." [Op. Cit., p. 114] Needless to say, it was Trotsky
   himself who implemented that regime in the army to begin with.

   It should also be remembered that when, in early in 1922, the "Workers'
   Opposition" had appealed to the Communist abroad in the form of a
   statement to a Comintern Congress, Trotsky defended the party against
   its claims. These claims, ironically, included the accusation that the
   "party and trade-union bureaucracy . . . ignore the decisions of our
   congresses on putting workers' democracy [inside the party] into
   practice." Their "effort to draw the proletarian masses closer to the
   state is declared to be 'anarcho-syndicalism,' and its adherents are
   subjected to persecution and discrediting." They argued that the
   "tutelage and pressure by the bureaucracy goes so far that it is
   prescribed for members of the party, under threat of exclusion and
   other repressive measures, to elect not those whom the Communists want
   themselves, but those whom the ignorant high places want." [quoted by
   Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 162]

   Even more ironically, the dominant faction of the bureaucracy heaped
   upon Trotsky's opposition faction similar insults to those he (and
   Lenin) had heaped upon previous oppositions inside and outside the
   party. In 1924, the Trotskyist opposition was accused of having
   "clearly violated the decision of the Tenth Congress . . . which
   prohibited the formation of factions within the party" and has
   "enlivened the hopes of all enemies of the party, including the
   West-European bourgeoisie, for a split in the ranks of the Russian
   Communist Party." In fact, it was a "direct departure of Leninism" and
   "also a clearly expressed petty-bourgeois deviation" reflecting "the
   pressure of the petty bourgeois on the position of the proletarian
   party and its policy." [contained in Daniels, A Documentary History of
   Communism, vol. 1, pp. 247-8] In 1927 the "United Opposition" was
   "[o]bjectively . . . a tool of the bourgeois elements." [quoted by
   Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, p. 318]

   One of the ways which supporters of Leninism seek to differentiate it
   from Stalinism is on the issue of repression within the Communist Party
   itself. However, the suppression of opposition currents within
   Bolshevism did not start under Stalinism, it had existed to some degree
   from the start. Ironically, Trotsky's belated opposition faced exactly
   the same measures he had approved for use against groups like the
   "Workers' Opposition" within a party regime he himself had helped
   create.

   Of course, the Stalinists did not stop there. Once the "Left
   Opposition" was broken its members were brutally repressed. Some were
   simply murdered, many more arrested and placed into prison camps where
   many died. Which shows, in its own way, a key difference between
   Lenin's and Stalin's regime. Under Lenin, the opposition outside the
   party was brutally repressed. Stalin simply applied the methods used by
   Lenin outside the party to oppositions within it.

4 What do these oppositions tell us about the essence of Leninism?

   The history and ideas of these oppositions are important in evaluating
   the claims of pro-Bolsheviks. If, as modern-day supporters of
   Bolshevism argue, Leninism is inherently democratic and that before the
   revolution it stood for basic civil liberties for the working class
   then we have to come to the conclusion that none of the party
   oppositions represented the "true" Leninist tradition. Given that many
   Trotskyists support the "Left Opposition" as the only "real" opposition
   to Stalin, defending the true essence of Bolshevism, we can only wonder
   what the "real" Bolshevik tradition is. After all, the "Left
   Opposition" wholeheartedly supported party dictatorship, remained
   silent on workers' control and urged the speeding up of
   industrialisation to meet competition from the west.

   However, there are groups which did raise more substantial critiques of
   mainstream Bolshevism. They raised their ideas between 1921 and 1923.
   How Lenin and Trotsky responded to them is significant. Rather than
   embrace them as expressing what the (according to Leninists) really
   stood for, they used state repression to break them and they were
   kicked out of the Communist Party. All with the approval of Lenin and
   Trotsky.

   The only groups associated with the Bolshevik party which advocated
   democracy and freedom for working people were the dissidents of the
   "Workers' Truth" and "Workers' Group." Material on both is hard to come
   by. The "Workers' Truth" group was labelled "Menshevik" by the ruling
   party while the "Workers' Group" was dismissed as
   "anarcho-syndicalist." Both were expelled from the party and their
   members arrested by the Bolsheviks. The latter group is better known
   than the former and so, by necessity, we will concentrate on that. It
   was also the largest, boldest and composed mainly of workers. We find
   them labelled the NEP the "New Exploitation of the Proletariat" and
   attacking, like the "Workers' Opposition", the "purely bureaucratic
   way" industry was run and urging "the direct participation of the
   working class" in it. However, unlike the "Workers' Opposition", the
   "Workers' Group" extended their call for workers' democracy to beyond
   the workplace and party. They wondered if the proletariat might not be
   "compelled once again to start anew the struggle . . . for the
   overthrow of the oligarchy." They noted that ruling clique in the party
   "will tolerate no criticism, since it considers itself just as
   infallible as the Pope of Rome." [quoted by E.H. Carr, The Interregnum
   1923-1924, p. 82, p. 269]

   The "Workers' Group" is associated with the old worker Bolshevik G. T.
   Miasnikov, its founder and leading thinker (see Paul Avrich's essay
   Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers' Group
   for more details -- any non-attributed quotes can be found in this
   essay). As Ante Ciliga recounted in his experiences of political debate
   in the prison camps in the late 1920s and early 1930s (ironically,
   there had always been more freedom of expression in prison than in
   Bolshevik society):

     "In the criticism of the Lenin of the revolutionary period the tone
     was set by . . . the Workers Group . . . [It was], in origin, from
     the Bolshevik old guard. But . . . they criticised Lenin's course of
     action from the beginning, and not on details but as a whole. The
     Workers Opposition denounced Lenin's economic line. The Workers
     Group went even farther and attacked the political regime and the
     single party established by Lenin prior to the NEP . . .

     "Having put as the basis of its programme Marx's watchword for the
     1st International -- 'The emancipation of the workers must be the
     task of the workers themselves' -- the Workers Group declared war
     from the start on the Leninist concept of the 'dictatorship of the
     party' and the bureaucratic organisation of production, enunciated
     by Lenin in the initial period of the revolution's decline. Against
     the Leninist line, they demanded organisation of production by the
     masses themselves, beginning with factory collectives. Politically,
     the Workers Group demanded the control of power and of the party by
     the worker masses. These, the true political leaders of the country,
     must have the right to withdraw power from any political party, even
     from the Communist Party, if they judged that that party was not
     defending their interests. Contrary to . . . the majority of the
     Workers' Opposition, for whom the demand for 'workers' democracy'
     was practically limited to the economic domain, and who tried to
     reconcile it with the 'single party,' the Workers Group extended its
     struggle for workers' democracy to the demand for the workers to
     choose among competing political parties of the worker milieu.
     Socialism could only be the work of free creation by the workers.
     While that which was being constructed by coercion, and given the
     name of socialism, was for them nothing but bureaucratic State
     capitalism from the very beginning."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 277-8]

   Years before, Miasnikov had exposed the abuses he has seen first hand
   under Lenin's regimed. In 1921, he stated the obvious that "[i]t stands
   to reason that workers' democracy presupposes not only the right to
   vote but also freedom of speech and press. If workers who govern the
   country, manage factories, do not have freedom of speech, we get a
   highly abnormal state." He urged total freedom of speech for all. He
   discussed corruption within the party, noting that a "special type of
   Communist is evolving. He is forward, sensible, and, what counts most,
   he knows how to please his superiors, which the latter like only too
   much." Furthermore, "[i]f one of the party rank and file dares to have
   an opinion of his own, he is looked upon as a heretic and people scoff
   at him saying, 'Wouldn't Ilyitch (Lenin) have come to this idea if it
   were timely now? So you are the only clever man around, eh, you want to
   be wiser than all? Ha, ha, ha! You want to be clever than Ilyitch!'
   This is the typical 'argumentation' of the honourable Communist
   fraternity." "Any one who ventures a critical opinion of his own," he
   noted, "will be labelled a Menshevik of Social-Revolutionist, with all
   the consequences that entails." [quoted by G. P. Maximoff, The
   Guillotine at Work, p. 269 and p. 268]

   Lenin tried to reply to Miasnikov's demand for freedom of speech.
   Freedom of the press, Lenin argued, would, under existing
   circumstances, strengthen the forces of counter-revolution. Lenin
   rejected "freedom" in the abstract. Freedom for whom? he demanded.
   Under what conditions? For which class? "We do not believe in
   'absolutes.' We laugh at 'pure democracy,'" he asserted. "Freedom of
   press in the RSFSR," Lenin maintained, "surrounded by bourgeois enemies
   everywhere means freedom for the bourgeoisie" and as "we do not want to
   commit suicide and that is why we will never do this" (i.e. introduce
   freedom of speech). According to Lenin, freedom of speech was a
   "non-party, anti-proletarian slogan" as well as a "flagrant political
   error." After sober reflection, Lenin hoped, Miasnikov would recognise
   his errors and return to useful party work.

   Miasnikov was not convinced by Lenin's arguments. He drafted a strong
   reply. Reminding Lenin of his revolutionary credentials, he wrote: "You
   say that I want freedom of the press for the bourgeoisie. On the
   contrary, I want freedom of the press for myself, a proletarian, a
   member of the party for fifteen years, who has been a party member in
   Russia and not abroad. I spent seven and a half of the eleven years of
   my party membership before 1917 in prisons and at hard labour, with a
   total of seventy-five days in hunger strikes. I was mercilessly beaten
   and subjected to other tortures . . . I escaped not abroad, but for
   party work here in Russia. To me one can grant at least a little
   freedom of press. Or is it that I must leave or be expelled from the
   party as soon as I disagree with you in the evaluation of social
   forces? Such simplified treatment evades but does not tackle our
   problems." [quoted by Maximoff, Op. Cit., pp. 270-1] Lenin said,
   Miasnikov went on, that the jaws of the bourgeoisie must be cracked:

     "To break the jaws of international bourgeoisie, is all very well,
     but the trouble is that, you raise your hand against the bourgeoisie
     and you strike at the worker. Which class now supplies the greatest
     numbers of people arrested on charges of counter-revolution?
     Peasants and workers, to be sure. There is no Communist working
     class. There is just a working class pure and simple." [quoted by
     Maximoff, Op. Cit., p. 271]

   "Don't you know," he asked Lenin, "that thousands of proletarians are
   kept in prison because they talked the way I am talking now, and that
   bourgeois people are not arrested on this source for the simple reason
   that the are never concerned with these questions? If I am still at
   large, that is so because of my standing as a Communist. I have
   suffered for my Communist views; moreover, I am known by the workers;
   were it not for these facts, were I just an ordinary Communist mechanic
   from the same factory, where would I be now? In the Che-Ka [prison] . .
   . Once more I say: you raise your hand against the bourgeoisie, but it
   is I who am spitting blood, and it is we, the workers, whose jaws are
   being cracked." [quoted by Maximoff, Ibid.]

   After engaging in political activity in his home area, Miasnikov was
   summoned to Moscow and placed under the control of the Central
   Committee. In defiance of the Central Committee, he returned to the
   Urals and resumed his agitation. At the end of August he appeared
   before a general meeting of Motovilikha party members and succeeded in
   winning them over to his side. Adopting a resolution against the
   Orgburo's censure of Miasnikov, they branded his transfer to Moscow a
   form of "banishment" and demanded that he be allowed "full freedom of
   speech and press within the party."

   On November 25 he wrote to a sympathiser in Petrograd urging a campaign
   of agitation in preparation for the 11th party congress. By now
   Miasnikov was being watched by the Cheka, and his letter was
   intercepted. For Lenin, this was the last straw: "We must devote
   greater attention to Miasnikov's agitation," he wrote to Molotov on
   December 5, "and to report on it to the Politburo twice a month." To
   deal with Miasnikov, meanwhile, the Orgburo formed a new commission.
   This commission recommended his expulsion from the party, which was
   agreed by the Politburo on February 20, 1922. This was the first
   instance, except for the brief expulsion of S. A. Lozovsky in 1918,
   where Lenin actually expelled a well-known Bolshevik of long standing.

   By the start of 1923, he had organised a clandestine opposition and
   formed (despite his expulsion) the "Workers' Group of the Russian
   Communist Party." He claimed that it, and not the Bolshevik leadership,
   represented the authentic voice of the proletariat. Joining hands in
   the venture were P. B. Moiseev, a Bolshevik since 1914, and N. V.
   Kuznetsov, the former Workers' Oppositionist. The three men, all
   workers, constituted themselves as the "Provisional Central
   Organisational Bureau" of the group. Their first act, in February 1923,
   was to draw up a statement of principles in anticipation of the Twelfth
   Party Congress called the "Manifesto of the Workers' Group of the
   Russian Communist Party."
   The manifesto was "denouncing the New Exploitation of the Proletariat
   and urging the workers to fight for soviet democracy," according to
   Trotskyist historian I. Deutscher. [The Prophet Unarmed, p.107]

   The manifesto recapitulated the program of Miasnikov's earlier
   writings: workers' self-determination and self-management, the removal
   of bourgeois specialists from positions of authority, freedom of
   discussion within the party, and the election of new soviets centred in
   the factories. It protested against administrative high-handedness, the
   expanding bureaucracy, the predominance of non-workers within the
   party, and the suppression of local initiative and debate. The
   manifesto denounced the New Economic Policy (NEP) as the "New
   Exploitation of the Proletariat." In spite of the abolition of private
   ownership, the worst features of capitalism had been preserved: wage
   slavery, differences of income and status, hierarchical authority,
   bureaucratism. In the words of the manifesto, the "organisation of this
   industry since the Ninth Congress of the RCP(b) is carried out without
   the direct participation of the working class by nominations in a
   purely bureaucratic way." [quoted by Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 204]

   The manifesto wondered whether the Russian proletariat might not be
   compelled "to start anew the struggle -- and perhaps a bloody one --
   for the overthrow of the oligarchy." Not that it contemplated an
   immediate insurrection. Rather it sought to rally the workers,
   Communist and non-Communist alike, to press for the elimination of
   bureaucratism and the revival of proletarian democracy. Within the
   party the manifesto defended-the right to form factions and draw up
   platforms. "If criticism does not have a distinct point of view,"
   Miasnikov wrote to Zinoviev, "a platform on which to rally a majority
   of party members, on which to develop a new policy with regard to this
   or that question, then it is not really criticism but a mere collection
   of words, nothing but chatter." He went even further, calling into
   question the very Bolshevik monopoly of power. Under a single-party
   dictatorship, he argued, elections remained "an empty formality." To
   speak of "workers' democracy" while insisting on one-party government,
   he told Zinoviev, was to entwine oneself in a contradiction, a
   "contradiction in terms."

   Miasnikov was arrested by the GPU (the new name for the Cheka) on May
   25, 1923, a month after the Twelfth Party Congress (the rest of the
   group's leadership was soon to follow). Miasnikov was released from
   custody and permitted to leave the country and left for Germany (this
   was a device not infrequently used by the authorities to rid themselves
   of dissenters). In Berlin he formed ties with the council communists of
   the German Communist Workers' Party (KAPD) and with the left wing of
   the German Communist Party. With the aid of these groups, Miasnikov was
   able to publish the manifesto of the Workers' Group, prefaced by an
   appeal drafted by his associates in Moscow. The appeal concluded with a
   set of slogans proclaiming the aims of the Workers' Group: "The
   strength of the working class lies in its solidarity. Long live freedom
   of speech and press for the proletarians! Long live Soviet Power! Long
   live Proletarian Democracy! Long live Communism!"

   Inside Russia the manifesto was having its effect. Fresh recruits were
   drawn into the Workers' Group. It established ties with discontented
   workers in several cities and began negotiations with leaders of the
   now defunct Workers' Opposition. The group won support within the Red
   Army garrison quartered in the Kremlin, a company of which had to be
   transferred to Smolensk. By summer of 1923 the group had some 300
   members in Moscow, as well as a sprinkling of adherents in other
   cities. Many were Old Bolsheviks, and all, or nearly all, were workers.
   Soon an unexpected opportunity for the group to extend its influence
   arrived. In August and September 1923 a wave of strikes (which recalled
   the events of February 1921) swept Russia's industrial centres. An
   economic crisis (named the "scissors' crisis") had been deepening since
   the beginning of the year, bringing cuts in wages and the dismissal of
   large numbers of workers. The resulting strikes, which broke out in
   Moscow and other cities, were spontaneous and no evidence existed to
   connect them with any oppositionist faction. The Workers' Group,
   however, sought to take advantage of the unrest to oppose the party
   leadership. Stepping up its agitation, it considered calling a one-day
   general strike and organising a mass demonstration of workers, on the
   lines of Bloody Sunday 1905, with a portrait of Lenin (rather than the
   Tzar!) at the lead.

   The authorities became alarmed. The Central Committee branded the
   Workers' Group as "anti-Communist and anti-Soviet" and ordered the GPU
   to suppress it. By the end of September its meeting places had been
   raided, literature seized, and leaders arrested. Twelve members were
   expelled from the party and fourteen others received reprimands. As one
   Trotskyist historian put it, the "party leaders" were "determined to
   suppress the Workers' Group and the Workers' Truth." [I. Deutscher, Op.
   Cit., p. 108] Miasnikov was considered such a threat that in the autumn
   of 1923 he was lured back to Russia on assurances from Zinoviev and
   Krestinsky, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, that he would not be
   molested. Once in Russia he was immediately placed behind bars. The
   arrest was carried out by Dzerzhinsky himself (the infamous creator and
   head of the Cheka), a token of the gravity with which the government
   viewed the case.

   This response is significant, simply because Trotsky was still an
   influential member of the Communist Party leadership. As Paul Avrich
   points out, "[i]n January 1924, Lenin died. By then the Workers' Group
   had been silenced. It was the last dissident movement within the party
   to be liquidated while Lenin was still alive. It was also the last
   rank-and-file group to be smashed with the blessing of all the top
   Soviet leaders, who now began their struggle for Lenin's mantle."
   [Bolshevik Opposition To Lenin: G. Miasnikov and the Workers Group]

   The response of Trotsky is particularly important, given that for most
   modern day Leninists he raised the banner of "authentic" Leninism
   against the obvious evils of Stalinism. What was his reaction to the
   state repression of the Workers' Group? As Deutscher notes, Trotsky
   "did not protest when their adherents were thrown into prison . . . Nor
   was he inclined to countenance industrial unrest . . . Nor was he at
   all eager to support the demand for Soviet democracy in the extreme
   form in which the Workers' Opposition and its splinter groups [like the
   Workers' Group] had raised it." [Op. Cit., pp. 108-9] Dzerzhinsky was
   given the task of breaking the opposition groups by the central
   committee. He "found that even party members of unquestioned loyalty
   regarded them as comrades and refused to testify against them. He then
   turned to the Politburo and asked it to declare it was the duty of any
   party member to denounce to the GPU people inside the party engaged
   aggressive action against the official leaders." Trotsky "did not tell
   the Politburo plainly that it should reject Dzerzhinsky's demand. He
   evaded the question." [Op. Cit., p. 108 and p. 109]

   Trotskyist Tony Cliff presents a similar picture of Trotsky's lack of
   concern for opposition groups and his utter failure to support working
   class self-activity or calls for real democracy. He notes that in July
   and August 1923 Moscow and Petrograd "were shaken by industrial unrest
   . . . Unofficial strikes broke out in many places . . . In November
   1923, rumours of a general strike circulated throughout Moscow, and the
   movement seems at the point of turning into a political revolt. Not
   since the Kronstadt rising of 1921 had there been so much tension in
   the working class and so much alarm in the ruling circles." The ruling
   elite, including Trotsky, acted to maintain their position and the
   secret police turned on any political group which could influence the
   movement. The "strike wave gave a new lease of life to the Mensheviks"
   and so "the GPU carried out a massive round up of Mensheviks, and as
   many as one thousand were arrested in Moscow alone." When it was the
   turn of the Workers Group and Workers Truth, Trotsky "did not condemn
   their persecution" and he "did not support their incitement of workers
   to industrial unrest." Moreover, "[n]or was Trotsky ready to support
   the demand for workers' democracy in the extreme form to which the
   Workers Group and Workers Truth raised it." [Trotsky, vol. 3, p. 25, p.
   26 and pp. 26-7]

   By "extreme," Cliff obviously means "genuine" as Trotsky did not call
   for workers' democracy in any meaningful form. Indeed, his "New Course
   Resolution" even went so far as to say that "it is obvious that there
   can be no toleration of the formation of groupings whose ideological
   content is directed against the party as a whole and against the
   dictatorship of the proletariat. as for instance the Workers' Truth and
   Workers' Group." Trotsky himself was at pains to distance himself from
   Myainikov. [The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25), p. 408 and
   p. 80] The resolution made it clear that it considered "the
   dictatorship of the proletariat" to be incompatible with real workers
   democracy by arguing "it is impossible to tolerate groupings, the
   ideological contents of which are directed against the party as a whole
   and against the dictatorship of the proletariat (such as, for example,
   the 'Workers' Truth' and the 'Workers' Group')." [quoted by Robert V.
   Daniels, Op. Cit., p. 222] Given that both these groups advocated
   actual soviet and trade union democracy, the Politburo was simply
   indicating that actual "workers' democracy" was "against" the
   dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. the dictatorship of the party).

   Thus we come to the strange fact that it was Lenin and Trotsky
   themselves who knowingly destroyed the groups which represent what
   modern day Leninists assert is the "real" essence of Leninism.
   Furthermore, modern day Leninists generally ignore these opposition
   groups when they discuss alternatives to Stalinism or the
   bureaucratisation under Lenin. This seems a strange fate to befall
   tendencies which, if we take Leninists at their word, expressed what
   their tradition stands for. Equally, in spite of their support for
   party dictatorship, the "Workers' Opposition" did have some
   constructive suggests to make as regards combating the economic
   bureaucratisation which existed under Lenin. Yet almost all modern
   Leninists (like Lenin and Trotsky) dismiss them as "syndicalist" and
   utopian. Which is, of course, significant about the real essence of
   Leninism.

   Ultimately, the nature of the various oppositions within the party and
   the fate of such real dissidents as the "Workers' Group" says far more
   about the real reasons the Russian revolution than most Trotskyist
   books on the matter. Little wonder there is so much silence and
   distortion about these events. They prove that the "essence" of
   Bolshevism is not a democratic one but rather a deeply authoritarian
   one hidden (at times) behind libertarian sounding rhetoric. Faced with
   opposition which were somewhat libertarian, the response of Lenin and
   Trotsky was to repress them. In summary, they show that the problems of
   the revolution and subsequent civil war did not create but rather
   revealed Bolshevism's authoritarian core.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append45.html#app4
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append41.html#app9
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append41.html
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH5.html
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech12
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append43.html#app3
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append43.html
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   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append42.html
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  12. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append41.html#app10
  13. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append41.html
