two and a half years after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the acquirement of political power by the proletariat, we still see around us this atmosphere of mass (peasant and craftsmen), bourgeois-democratic, property relations.
Parliamentarism is one form of activity, journalism is another. Both can be Communist and should be communist, when the active workers in either sphere are really communists, are really members of the proletarian mass party. Yet in one as well as in the other (and, for the matter of that, in any sphere of activity), under the system of capitalism and during the transition period from capitalism to Socialism, it is impossible to avoid those difficulties which are inherent in their present organization. It is for the proletariat to solve the problem of utilizing for its own ends its assistants, press or political, of a bourgeois turn of mind; of gaining a victory over the bourgeois intellectual prejudices and influences; of weakening and, ultimately, of completing the transformation of the petit-bourgeois atmosphere.
Have we not all been witnesses of an abundance of instances, in all countries prior to the war of 1914–1918, of extreme "Left" Anarchists, Syndicalists, and others denouncing parliamentarism, and deriding parliamentary Socialists who became middle-class, flaying them as place-seekers and so forth, and yet themselves making the same kind of bourgeois career through the Press and through syndicalist trade union activity? To quote only France, are not the examples of Messrs. Jouhaux and Merrheim typical enough?
That is why the "repudiation" of participation in Parliament is mere childishness. Those who would boycott Parliament think it possible to "solve," by such a "simple" and "easy," alleged revolutionary, method, the difficult problem of the struggle against bourgeois democratic influences within the labor movement. In reality they are fleeing from their own shadow, they are closing their eyes to difficulties, and satisfying themselves with mere words. And there is no doubt whatever that capitalism universally generates, not only outside the labor movement, but also within it, certain prevailing characteristic traits, such as shameless place-hunting,
