Note: this text was originally published by me in Brazil and, therefore, it contains a lot of references of the Brazilian revolutionary movement, but the discussions I bring are nonetheless valuable to revolutionaries of any nation

The success of the revolutionary movement depends not only on the organization of the most conscious militants of the working class, but also on the attentive struggle against opportunism. Understanding the phenomenon of opportunism is therefore an important task for every revolutionary.

Opportunism presents itself in two forms, which are usually called “right opportunism” and “left opportunism”.

Right opportunism is any discourse that uses revolutionary language to defend a policy of class collaboration, promoting an alliance of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, which in practice does not exist, because the two classes have contradictory interests. Profit is hostile to the lives of workers, because profit is the pure private expropriation of social labor. Another tactic of right-wing opportunism is the defense of submission to the spontaneous workers’ movement, which is usually unorganized and without political orientation. Right opportunism also advocates a reformist idea, of a “gradual transition” from capitalism to socialism.

On the other hand, left opportunism presents itself as ultra-revolutionary propositions, characterized by adventurism, supported mainly by the fetish of “revolutionary violence”. These are ill-considered proposals that in political practice usually lead to senseless losses and sacrifices, usually causing deep damage to the cause of the revolution. Left opportunists are composed of elements unable to sustain the class struggle in a firm and organized way. Historically left opportunism is characterized by the open defense of terrorism as a revolutionary tactic.

What both faces of opportunism have in common, despite their differences, is that they are ideological manifestations of the petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy and are characterized by hostility to the Marxist-Leninist style of work, which combines the legal and illegal forms of struggle, excluding neither. While right opportunism prizes and fetishizes the legal forms of struggle, left opportunism does the same with the illegal forms, both belittling the combination of the two forms of struggle.

Concrete examples of these two faces of opportunism can be taken from the history of the PCdoB from its founding to the present day. The PCdoB arose in the 1960s from a split with the PCB, which at the time presented reformist deviations and dogmatically applied the Khrushchevist model (which was even right opportunism) to the socialist transition. Instead of resuming the Leninist style of work that was lost in the PCB of the time, the PCdoB completely abandoned Marxism-Leninism and started to dogmatically adopt Maoism as its political line. As a result, it started to defend armed struggle as an omnipotent tactic and fetishized revolutionary violence, characteristic of left opportunism.

The losses that this political line brought to the revolutionary movement were not few: in the undertaking of the Araguaia Guerrilla, the bourgeois state, under the fascist business-military government mobilized thousands of soldiers through Operation Marajoara and systematically exterminated each one of the 80 members of the guerrilla, showing that without the support of the people, the armed struggle would be doomed to failure. Some peasants and local workers in the Araguaia region denounced the guerrillas on their own initiative, but most of the local residents suffered systematic torture by the Army in order for them to reveal information about the guerrillas.

Of course, the greatest responsible for the systematic slaughters, of which the leaderships of the PCB were also victims through Operation Radar, was the fascist Army of the bourgeois Brazilian state. But the tactic of armed struggle in that context, especially without popular support, compromised a much larger contingent of comrades, of militants with great revolutionary potential who lost their lives, resulting in much greater political damage. This is the true legacy of left opportunism, which must be fought at all costs.

The loss of the PCdoB’s cadres and leaderships in the adventurist ventures of this period contributed to the PCdoB’s theoretical deficiencies, which today manifest themselves in right opportunism, where legal means are the only form of struggle, and illegal means are disowned. The PCdoB, despite having competent militants and some quite studied, today is an electioneering party whose positions in Congress vote against the people on many occasions, such as the uncritical approval of the installation of US military bases in Alcântara, or the forgiveness of debts of evangelical churches, which in most cases are factories of fascists and support base of Bolsonaro’s corporate-military government, as well as alliances with far-right parties like PSL (“Social-Liberal Party”) in the last elections.

Maoists and anarchists are also examples of left opportunism, where violence is fetishized through “direct action,” which in the practice of these groups is more a performative agitation than revolutionary tactics, without making an analysis of the gains and losses of these political actions. The same happens with the electoral boycott, which has been promoted by anarchists and Maoists for decades, but which has not since resulted in an advance in the process of working class organization, yet, even without a critical analysis, continues to be dogmatically defended just for the “radical” appearance of this position. It is no wonder that Maoists and anarchists hold many positions in common.

This adventurism is not something new, and this is the importance of learning from the experience and achievements of workers in the past, from various other nations. Lenin dedicated a work in 1920, years after the Russian revolution demonstrated the correctness of the political line adopted by the Bolsheviks, to criticize the left opportunists called “Leftism: an infantile disease of communism,” from which I quote:

“The revolutionary parties had to complete their education. They were learning how to attack. Now they had to realise that such knowledge must be supplemented with the knowledge of how to retreat in good order. They had to realise—and it is from bitter experience that the revolutionary class learns to realise this—that victory is impossible unless one has learned how to attack and retreat properly.

Of all the defeated opposition and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks effected the most orderly retreat, with the least loss to their “army”, with its core best preserved, with the least significant splits (in point of depth and incurability), with the least demoralisation, and in the best condition to resume work on the broadest scale and in the most correct and energetic manner.

The Bolsheviks achieved this only because they ruthlessly exposed and expelled the revolutionary phrase-mongers, those who did not wish to understand that one had to retreat, that one had to know how to retreat, and that one had absolutely to learn how to work legally in the most reactionary of parliaments, in the most reactionary of trade unions, co-operative and insurance societies and similar organisations.”

(link)

Further on, he reveals in another chapter that the tactic of electoral boycott can be positive for the revolutionary movement, but applying it indiscriminately leads to severe political losses:

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