Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/64

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B. The Communist Parties and the Question
of Parliamentarism.

1. In many countries of Western Europe and America one of the most acute questions of Communist tactics is that of Parliamentarism. The division in the German Communist Party, the formation. of an anti-parliamentary faction n the Italian party, the position of the Belgian Communist group, and lastly, the attitude of the revolutionary Syndicalist circles and the I. W. W.—all these demand precise and definite directions on this question from the Communist International.

I.

2. Parliamentarism, as a State system, is a „democratic“ form of the rule of the bourgeoisie, which at a certain stage of its development needs the fiction of a national representation, that outwardly would be an organisation of the will of all the classes, but in reality would be an instrument of oppress ion and suppression in the hands of the ruling capitalists.

3. Parliamentarism is a definite form of State order. Therefore it can in no way be a