Trotsky sets out the Marxist definition of adventurism, as against the opportunist definition.
“Had a revolutionary situation really existed, the mere fact of the defeat of Canton would have been a special episode, and in any case, would not have transformed the uprising of this city into an adventure. Even in face of unfavourable conditions for the insurrection of Canton itself or its environs, the leadership would have had as its duty to do all that was necessary to realize the revolt most rapidly in order thus to disperse and weaken the forces of the enemy and to facilitate the triumph of the uprising in the other parts of the country.” (p 159)
Here, again, is the application of the concept of permanent revolution as was also applied by Lenin, in relation to the seizure of power in 1917. The fact of locally unfavourable conditions cannot be the basis of determining whether an action is adventurist or not. It depends, also, on an evaluation of the wider social conditions, both within a country and internationally. In 1983-4, in Britain, there were rampant strikes by workers against the Thatcher government. There was the mobilisation of a growing number of unemployed in the Peoples' March for Jobs of 1981 and 1983. A number of councils were resisting the government's spending cuts.
In other times, for revolutionaries to put themselves forward, as councillors or MP's, would be adventurist, and for councils to take on the government, by refusing to make cuts, raise rents or rates, and so be forced into setting illegal budgets, would also have been adventurist. But, in conditions of a Miners' Strike, in 1981 that defeated Tory plans for pit closures, and all of these other events, that was not at all the case. On the contrary, it was necessary to link all of these different struggles together, and using the platform of a local council, in particular, in a revolutionary manner, as Lenin sets out, in Left-Wing Communism, was entirely appropriate.
The old right-wing and reformist councillors certainly were not going to challenge the government by setting illegal budgets, and so it was up to revolutionaries to seize those positions, so as to do so, or, at least, to raise the demand for it, and to do so, even if the local conditions meant the chances of succeeding were against it. For an individual council to set an illegal budget, as Liverpool did, would normally be adventurist, but, if several councils do so, in conditions where that is combined with large-scale industrial action, and other social revolts, by the creation of local workers' councils, co-ordinating the struggle, outside the confines of bourgeois democratic institutions, is not. The failure of that time was that these separate struggles were not linked up, and coordinated, and many of those claiming to be revolutionaries, simply used their position as MP's and councillors, in a reformist parliamentarist manner, often to build their own organisation, not to build a revolutionary struggle.
In China, in 1927, however, it was clear that, after the series of defeats and betrayals, the revolutionary wave had ebbed. The opportunity had passed, much as happened in Britain, after 1985, and the defeat/betrayal of the miners, having been undermined by Kinnock and the Labour leadership, and failure of left reformists in local councils to link their struggle to it, as well as the action of TUC leaders in obstructing secondary action by other unions alongside it. Actions that only opportunists could describe as “adventurist” in 1983-4, actually did become adventurist in the period after 1985.
“The campaign of Ho Lung and Ye Ting were already developing in an atmosphere of revolutionary decline, the workers were separating themselves from the revolution, the centrifugal tendencies were gaining in strength. This is in no way contradictory to the existence of peasant movements in various provinces. That is how it always is.” (p 159)
Yet, it was in these conditions of decline that the Canton Uprising was called for, in an area that was not even propitious for it, given the greater preponderance of petty-bourgeois and peasants, rather than proletarian forces. The task of the revolutionary party is to analyse such conditions and adjust its demands accordingly, as with Marx's advice to the Parisian workers not to rise up in 1871, or the Bolsheviks advice to Russian workers in the July Days.
“The only way of explaining the policy of the leadership, in fixing and carrying out this revolt, is that it did not understand the meaning and the consequences of the defeats in Shanghai and Hupeh. There can be no other interpretation of it. But the lack of understanding can all the less excuse the leadership of the Communist International since the Opposition had warned in good time against the new situation and the new dangers. It found itself accused for this, by idiots and calumniators, of having the spirit of liquidators.” (p 159-60)
Of course, as with Marx, in 1871, and the Bolsheviks in the July Days, if the workers still rise up, despite the warnings, the Marxists throw themselves into the struggle to try to minimise the damage done by it, and to prepare for the next revolutionary wave. Again, only opportunists would refuse to do that, concerned with their own skins.
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