Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International/Chapter 5
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 form of Communist society, which recognises neither classes, nor class struggle, nor any form of State authority.
4. Parliamentarism cannot be a form of proletarian government during the transition period between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat. At the moment when the class struggle turns into civil war the proletariat must inevitably form its organisation as a fighting organisation, which cannot contain any of the representatives of the former ruling classes; all fictions of a "national will" are harmful to the proletariat at the time, and a parliamentary division of authority is needless and injurious to it; the only form of proletarian dictatorship is a Republic of Soviets.
5. The bourgeois parliaments, which consti1ute one of most important apparatus of the State machinery of the bourgeoisie, cannot be won over by the proletariat any more than can the bourgeois order in general. The task of the proletariat consists in blowing up the whole machinery of the bourgeoisie, in destroying it, and all the parliamentary institutions with it, whether they be republican or constitutional-monarchical.
6. The same relates to the communal institutions of the bourgeoisie, which theoretically it is not correct to consider as State organisations. In reality they are part of the same apparatus of the State machinery of the bourgeoisie, which must be destroyed by the revolutionary proletariat and replaced by local Soviets of Workers' Deputies.
7. Consequently, Communism repudiates parliamentarism as the form of the future; it renounces the same as a form of the class dictatorship of the proletariat; it repudiates the possibility of winning over the parliaments: its aim is to destroy parliamentarism. Therefore it 1s only possible to speak of utilising the bourgeois state organisations with the object of destroying them. The question can only and exclusively be discussed on such a plane.
II.
8. Every class struggle is a political struggle, because it is finally a struggle for power. Any strike, when it spreads through the whole country, is a threat to the bourgeois State and thus acquires a political character. To strive to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to destroy its State by any means whatever, means to carry on political warfare. To create one's own class apparatus—for the management and suppression of the resisting bourgeoisie—whatever such an apparatus may be—means to gain political power.
9. Consequently, the question of a political struggle does not end in the question of one's attitude towards the parliamentary system. It is a general condition of the class struggle of the proletariat, in so far as the struggle grows from a small and private one to a struggle for the overthrow of the capitalistic order.
10. The elementary method of the struggle of the proletariat against the rule of the bourgeoisie, is, first of all, the method of demonstrations en masse. Such mass demonstrations are prepared and carried out by organised masses of the proletariat, under the direction of a united, disciplined centralised Communist Party. Civil war is war. In this war the proletariat must have its efficient political officers, its good political general staff, to command all the operations during all the stages of the fight.
11. The struggle In masses means a whole system of developing demonstrations, growing ever more acute in form and logically leading to an uprising against the capitalist order of government. In this warfare of the masses developing into a civil war, the directing party of the proletariat must, as a general rule, secure all and every lawful positon, making them its auxiliaries in the revolutionary work, and subordinating such positions to the plans of the general campaign, that of the struggle en masse.
12. One of such auxiliary supports is the tribune of the bourgeois parliament. Against participation in a political party struggle one should not use the argument that parliament is a bourgeois government institution.
The Communist Party enters such institution not for the purpose of organisation work, but in order to blow up the whole bourgeois machinery and the parliament itself from within (for instance, the work of Liebknecht in Germany, of the Bolsheviks in the Imperial Duma, in the "Democratic Conference", in the "Pre-parliament" of Kérensky, and lastly, in the "Constituent Assembly", and also in the Municipal Dumas).
13. This work within the parliaments, which consists chiefly in making revolutionary propaganda from the parliamentary tribune, the denunciation of enemies, the ideological uniting of the masses, etc., must be fully subordinated to the objects and tasks of the mass struggle outside the parliaments.
14. The following conditions are indispensable: (1) The absence of all „autonomy“ for the parliamentary Communist groups, and their unconditional subordination to the Central Committee of the Party; (2) Constant control and direction by the Party Executive Committee; (3) The adaptation of parliamentary demonstrations to those going on outside the parliament; (4) Revolutionary attitude in the parliament, i. e., the absence of all "principled" fear of overstepping the limits of parliamentary regulations; (5) The execution of part of the work outside the parliament, especially in connection with the mass demonstrations, by the Communist members of the parliament; (6) To be in constant touch with the illegal work and to profit by parliamentary immunity, as far as It exists, for these purposes; (7) An immediate remand or exclusion from the Party of any member of the parliamentary group who violates in his parliamentary work any of the orders of the Party.
1S. The elective campaign must be carried on not In the sense of obtaining a maximum of votes, but in that of a revolutionary mobilisation of the masses around the mottoes of the Proletarian Revolution. The election campaign must be conducted by the entire mass of party members, not by the leaders alone; it is necessary to make use of and be in complete touch with all the demonstrations of masses (strikes, demonstrations, movements among the soldiers and sailors, etc.) going on at the given moment; it is necessary to summon all the masses of the proletarian organisations to active work.
16. In complying with all these conditions the parliamentary work must present a contrast to the dirty "politics" which is practised by the Social Democratic parties of all countries, who enter parliament with the object of supporting that "democratic" institution, or at the best to "win it over". The Communist Party can only recommend a revolutionary use of the parliament, exemplified by Karl Liebknecht, Höglund and the Bolsheviks.
III.
17. „Antiparliamentarism“, in the sense of an absolute and categorical repudiation of participation in the elections and the parliamentary revolutionary work, cannot therefore bear criticism, and is a naive childish doctrine which is founded sometimes on a healthy disgust of politicians; but which does not understand the possibilities of revolutionary parliamentarism. Besides, very often this doctrine is connected with a quite erroneous representation of the rôle of the Party which In this case is considered not as a fighting, centralised advanced guard of the workers, but as a decentralised system of badly joined revolutionary nuclei!
18. On the other hand, an acknowledgement of the value of parliamentary work does in no wise lead to an absolute, in-all-and-any-case acknowledgement of the necessity of concrete elections and a concrete participation In parliamentary sessions. The matter depends upon a series of specific conditions. In certain combinations it may become necessary to leave the parliament. The Bolsheviks did so when they left the Pre-parliament in order to break it up, to weaken it and to set up against it the Petrograd Soviet, which was then prepared to head the uprising; they acted in the same way in the Constituent Assembly on the day of its dissolution, transferring the meeting to the Third Congress of Soviets. In other circumstances a boycotting of the elections may be necessary, and a direct violent storming of the parliamentary bourgeois clique, or a participation in the elections with a boycott of the parliament itself, etc.
19. In this way, while recognising as a general rule the necessity of participating in the elections to the central parliament, and to the institutions of local selfgovernment, as well as in the work in such institutions, the Communist Party must decide the question concretely. according to the specific conditions of the given moment. Boycotting the elections or the parliament, or leaving the parliament, is allowable, chiefly when there is a chance of an immediate transformation into an armed fight for the power.
20. At the same time one must constantly bear in mind the relative unimportance of this question. If the center of gravity lies in a struggle for the power outside the parliament, then naturally the question of a proletarian dictatorship and a fight in masses for it is immeasurably greater than the secondary one of using the parliament.
21. Therefore the Communist International insists categorically that it considers any division or attempt at a division within the Communist Parties united on this aim as a crime against the Labour movement. The Congress calls upon all the elements which are in favour of the struggle in masses for the proletarian dictatorship, under the direction of a centralised Party of the revolutionary proletariat gaining influence over all the mass-organisations of the working class—to strive for a complete unity between the Communist elements, notwithstanding any possible disgreement on the question of parliamentarism.