Shlyapnikov was born into a peasant family before moving to Saint Petersburg where he joined the Bolsheviks. He was arrested and imprisoned at various times for his radical poltiical activities, including his involvement with the 1905 revolution. Shlyapnikov left Russia and came into contact with various individuals involved with the European left.
Shlyapnikov returned to Russia in 1916 and along with Vyacheslav Molotov was the senior Bolshevik in Petrograd at the time of the February revolution in 1917 as figures such as Lenin and Stalin still lived in exile.
Shlyapnikov was deeply suspicious of intellectuals within the party such as Lenin and Leon Trotsky, who he felt were not truly proletarian, unlike himself who was a factory worker and trade union official.
Shlyapnikov became a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee and, following the October revolution and the Bolshevik ascendency to power, he was appointed Commissar of Labour. Shlyapnikov argued for the inclusion of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in the Soviet government.
Shlyapnikov, along with his friend Alexandra Kollantai, became leaders of the Workers' Opposition movement inside the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This movement was basically a left-wing reaction to perceived over-centralisation under Lenin. Lenin was concerned with factionalisation inside the party and succedeed in suppressing the Workers' Opposition. He also tried to have Shlyapnikov removed from the party's Central Committee, but was unsuccesful.
Shlyapnikov was appointed a diplomat under Stalin, who in 1930 forced Shlyapnikov to publish a public confession of his "political errors". Shlyapnikov was expelled from the Communist Party in 1933 and imprisoned. He died in prison in 1937.