The counterrevolutionary character of ultraleft ideology derives from its class roots. These roots are petty-bourgeois, predominantly of an intellectualist stamp. Ultraleftists’ disaffection with the status quo is, by and large, personal. Rebellion, with a dramatic flair, has been their style since their proliferation on this continent in the 1960’s. As petty-bourgeois pseudo-intellectuals, ultraleftists always like to hear themselves talk; they spin new “theories” just to flatter their own vanity and to impress each other. Words for them are instruments for creating self-images. The only difference between ultraleftists and other petty-bourgeois intellectuals is that ultraleftists strive to establish their communist credentials, whereas more ordinary petty-bourgeois intellectuals hanker after bourgeois credentials.
Both are alike in their tendency to latch onto whatever is in the wind at a particular time and use it to enchance their statures. So, when it is discovered that Lenin said we must demarcate from opportunists, the ultraleftist, without coming to grips with the nature of opportunism, suddenly becomes the great demarcator. Lenin has written that right opportunism is the most dangerous deviation; so the ultraleftist becomes the fiercest slayer of rightist dragons, though they are most often of his own creation, and the real dragons are left alone unnoticed still breathing fire. Stalin says that a party is built by integrating cadres with the rising spontaneous struggle of the working class. Thus the ultraleftist imagines a massive movement, with himself at the head shouting the most revolutionary slogans, yet never turning around to see if any masses are following or listening.
These super-revolutionaries huddle together, picking up the latest “correct” ideas from each other and from whatever authority happens to be in vogue at the moment and impressing each other with their revolutionary dedication. All the while each group in this movement which is built on deception believes or would like to believe itself better than the rest.
It is no wonder, then, that none of them pays the slightest attention to the matter of ideology in its deepest sense, their own or anyone else’s, despite repeated demands for “ideological struggle”. “We must keep in mind the essential principle comrade Mao Tsetung teaches us: ’Ideological and political line determines everything’,” says CCL (Statement of political agreement... , p. 7) in ritual obeisance. This is representative of the kind of statement that can be found again and again in the writings of the ultraleftists. But then after asserting the primacy of “ideological line”, they say not another word about it and instead continue on about political line exclusively. Having conveniently given no thought to ideology – what it is and its significance – they either assume it to be synonymous and interchangeable with political line, or they use their notion of political line to surround and swallow any conception of ideology so that it completely disappears, yet all the while acting as if their passing reference can take the place of explanation and comprehension.
As petty-bourgeois intellectuals entranced by dogmas, their “Marxism-Leninism” is bookish and mechanical; they have no sense whatsoever of the core of the science – its ideological basis, its proletarian class nature. The very heart of Marxism-Leninism – the most vital of all its parts – is thus ripped out by the ultraleftists, leaving just a lifeless covering. Because of this, their so-called self-criticisms are always superficial and self-deceptive. Real self-criticism demands that the true class nature of positions and actions be bared, that the slow and painstaking job of dissecting and eliminating bourgeois and petty-bourgeois outlooks and the equally difficult job of gradually and carefully replacing them with a proletarian perspective be seriously undertaken. They will not do this because it would entail the prospect, particularly unappealing to opportunists, of having to face that they are deeply wrong and that only wrenching efforts can bring about the required changes in themselves.
Instead, following the standard practice of bourgeois societies, they take the easier path of filling in with empty sounds. When it comes to their own failings, they pay lip service to easy truths: for example, they formally repudiate their anarchism of the 60’s, even calling it petty-bourgeois and adventurist, but without ever analyzing its class basis in ideological terms and therefore without ever really changing themselves. When they criticize others like themselves, they seem at times to make sense, as when CCL said in its browbeating of the group called Mobilization: “It is a question of principle for Marxist-Leninists to be vigilant and to insure that the re-education of opportunist elements is complete before considering them to be Marxist-Leninist and before integrating them into a Marxist-Leninist formation.” (“Mobilization is; not Leninist group!” The Forge, December 16, 1976 p. 8.) But because CCL will not apply these criteria to themselves (or to anyone who flatters them), its words are in fact just so much more noise.
Because they lack proletarian direction, both their criticisms with dogmas, sloppy analysis, competition for authority, etc. and from any exposure of the ideological and class character of these habits.
Like bourgeois hypocrites, petty-bourgeois ultraleftists condemn others but find excuses for themselves. Their condemnations allow them to rest content in their smug self-righteousness and are therefore self-serving. This is opportunism in command.
And, in their “self-criticisms”, still following the example of bourgeois hypocrites who will use any trick to ward off exposure, they make up cheap excuses for themselves, which they try to pass off as definitive proof of their moral rectitude. So, for example, they call all wrong-doings mistakes, no matter how often they are repeated or how serious their consequences – the unavoidable mistakes of well intentioned youth. They cook up contrived “analyses” to turn their weaknesses into strengths. For example, CCL observes that “today our movement is still young and relatively inexperienced. It is seriously marked by its origins in the youth and student movement in the 60’s” (CCL, For the unity of. . . , p. 7), and so on. But when it is expedient to say the opposite, they do not hesitate, as when CCL tells us, just a few pages later in the same pamphlet, that “for over 20 years, attempts have been made to rebuild that unity [communist unity in Canada].” The usefulness to them of this particular comment is not hard to find; they tell us themselves in the next breath: “but only in recent times has progress been made.” (Ibid., p. 14) In a case of having their cake and eating it, they appear to criticize the 60’s while also claiming it to be a time of serious communist work, the better to congratulate themselves for their recent “successes”.
Contrary to CCL’s claims, it is not communist work that has been going on for two decades, but one or another variety of the new infantilism, which has been common to Western countries since the early 60’s. The only thing unusual about it has been its capacity to appear and reappear in recycled form. The super-profits of imperialism have swelled the intellectual ranks, which are the natural breeding grounds of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. Still, the capacity of ultraleftism to so preempt Marxism-Leninism and inhibit the growth of even the first flames of revolutionary initiative points to the extent to which bourgeois ideology dominates the working class, whether this takes the form generated by the restoration of capitalism as in Russia, by galloping revisionism as in France and Italy, by social democracy as in England and Scandinavia, or by straight bourgeois hackery as in Canada and the United States. This hegemony of bourgeois ideology has given ultraleftism a temporary reprieve.
It is necessary to settle accounts with ultraleftism, at the same time paying the closest and most patient attention to the problem of overcoming bourgeois domination over the proletariat. While the defeat of ultraleftism can only come about through a sustained, direct attack on its phoney lines – on questions ranging from the principal contradiction in Canada to trade union work-and on its class ideology, this defeat will be fleeting until a real Marxist-Leninist alternative is developed with genuine roots in the working class. Thus clearing the decks of this band of ultraleft opportunists remains significant but is inextricably related to the larger fight against bourgeois domination. The seriousness of the problem of ultraleftism should not blind anyone to this fact, since bourgeois hegemony is undoubtedly the tougher nut to crack.
There are many well meaning people who have not succumbed to the false blandishments of the ultraleftists but are nevertheless impressed with their apparent diligence and seeming commitment. But it must always be asked: commitment to what; diligence for what? Without proletarian goals and without proletarian ideology, their “commitment”, like that of bourgeois individualists, is to self-promotion. As for hard work, this too is not the monopoly of progressives; ambitious careerists of all stripes are equally capable of high energy output. These 150 percenters, just because they appear to be working 36 hours a day and present themselves as willing to make any sacrifice, are all the more dangerous on that account. To admire them for the ostentatious image they have tried to create is to give them a credibility they don’t deserve. It is to prolong the life of a “movement” which poisons the political atmosphere.
Ultraleftists must not be mistaken for revolutionaries. There must be no avoidable political alliances with them, since they inevitably tarnish everything they touch. Identification with them can only lead to failure with the working class and to the inevitable disillusionment of those potentially progressive people who are uneasy about ultraleftism, but will not make a definitive break with it. Ultraleftism must be treated as a serious problem to be combatted with determination. But in the end it will be shown up as no more than a bubble of hot air. Once it is burst, the more difficult battles of Marxism-Leninism still remain ahead.