Chapter 7: The Communist Party and Parliamentarism

The commission on the parliamentary question (which didn’t include any Italians) was chaired by Trotsky, and he would present a historical introduction to the subject. This would serve as the preface to the Theses on Parliamentarism drawn up by Bukharin and Lenin. The representative of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction (CAF) of the Italian Socialist Party requested that they be allowed to present their counter-theses, and this was agreed. He was nominated as co-reporter to the congress and invited to participate at commission sessions in order to defend the CAF theses. The commission then proceeded to an exploratory debate which ended with the Lenin-Bukharin theses being approved with only two votes against (cast by the Swiss delegate and the IWW).

The debate was now taken up at the congress. Bukharin began by presenting the theses he co-authored with Lenin (the introduction by Trotsky being entitled The New Era and New Parliamentarism). The theses stated the differences between the era of peaceful development and the existing phase of class war. The peaceful period which preceded the First World War was characterized by a certain community of interests between the proletariat and bourgeoisie in the developed capitalist countries, where, due to the politics of imperialism, the bourgeoisie had managed to pay higher wages to the workers. This period was characterized by the incorporation of the workers organizations into the machinery of the bourgeois State: a fact evidenced by the stance taken by the unions during the war. Likewise, the parliamentary fractions of the workers’ parties had been integrated into the parliamentary system. The opening of the period of capitalist decadence and civil war saw the communist parliamentary fractions become instruments of parliamentary destruction. Aspects of the old epoch still survived but were disappearing.

Bukharin went on to review the composition of the parliamentary fractions; reformists predominated in all of them and they were politically opposed to revolutionary parliamentarism. The reporter dwelled at length on the German Independent Socialist Party and its eighty-two-member parliamentary group, which comprised around twenty members in the right wing, forty centrists, and twenty representatives in the party’s left wing. The politics of this parliamentary group were consequently extremely reformist. As regards the Italian Socialist Party affiliated to the Third International and “one of our best parties” Bukharin declared that 30 percent of its parliamentary group belonged to the right-wing Turatian tendency, 55 percent was centrist, and 15 percent were left-wing. The French Socialist Party had sixty-eight parliamentary deputies, forty reformist, twenty-six centrist and two communists. Bukharin’s explanation for this state of affairs was that the parties weren’t sufficiently communist; on the contrary, they contained an extremely large number of opportunists.

Bukharin proceeded to tackle the problem of anti-parliamentarism and divided its supporters into two distinct groups. The first rejected all parliamentary participation under any circumstances (the IWW). They could only see the negative aspects of parliamentarism and had a false view of the political struggle. The second group, whose theses Bukharin dwelled on at greater length, was anti-parliamentary both on the basis of a weighing-up of the possibilities offered by taking part in parliamentary action (the Communist Abstentionist Fraction of the PSI) and because of its view that the communist parties needed to reinforce the revolutionary Marxist method by extricating themselves from the machinery of bourgeois democracy. This second group asserted that it was materially impossible to utilize parliament for revolutionary purposes, but, according to Bukharin, they were unable to provide evidence for this contention. Bukharin argued that “before maintaining a priori that all revolutionary activity is impossible inside parliament, it is first necessary to prove it” and he added that examples of revolutionary parliamentarism existed. In this regard, he cited Liebknecht, the Bulgarian comrades, and the Bolsheviks: “If you have a party which is truly communist, you shouldn’t be afraid of sending representatives into the bourgeois parliament […] If the parties affiliated to the Third International are real communist parties, cleansed of all opportunist and reformist elements, we can be certain that the old parliamentarism will give way to a truly revolutionary parliamentarism which is an infallible method for overturning the bourgeoisie, and the destruction of the State and the capitalist system.”

A counter-report was presented by the representative of the Italian CAF which affirmed that the anti-parliamentarism of the abstentionists didn’t involve putting principles into question. In principle we are all anti-parliamentarian, it declared, because we are against parliamentarism as a means of the emancipation of the proletariat, and as a political form of the proletarian State. Our anti-parliamentarism, in contrast with that of the anarchist and syndicalist conceptions, is closely connected with the Marxist criticism of bourgeois democracy. The Marxist movement had degenerated into a social-democratic movement and created a field of common action for narrow interests of a cooperative character of certain groups of workers, and for bourgeois democracy. It had created a different ideology which put aside violence and abandoned the proletarian dictatorship. The Russian Revolution confirmed the Marxist theory, “But the historical conditions under which the Russian Revolution developed do not resemble the conditions under which the proletarian revolution in the democratic countries of Western Europe and America will develop. The situation in Russia reminds us of the situation in Germany in 1848, when there were two revolutions one after the other: the bourgeois democratic revolution and the proletarian revolution. The tactical experiences of the Russian revolution cannot be transplanted into countries with a bourgeois democracy of long standing, in which the revolutionary crisis will mean only the direct transition from this political regime to the dictatorship of the proletariat. […] For Western Europe, the revolutionary problem makes it first of all necessary to go beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy, to prove the necessity of carrying the struggle on to another ground, that of direct revolutionary action for the conquest of power. A new technical organization of the party is necessary, i.e., a new historic formation. The first bourgeois machinery that has to be destroyed is parliament.”

It is necessary to show the masses the entire duplicity of bourgeois democracy which acts as a means of direct defense for capitalism against the masses. The anarcho-syndicalist reaction, which denied that political action had any value, leads the proletariat onto a false path. “We propose that the agitation for the proletarian dictatorship in those countries where the democratic regime has been developed a long time should be based on the boycott of the elections and of the bourgeois democratic organs. The great importance which is being given in practice to the electoral action contains a double danger: on the one hand it gives the impression of being essential action, and on the other hand it absorbs all the resources of the party and leads to the almost complete abandonment of action and of preparation in other domains of the movement. The party becomes a group of electoral committees entrusted only with the preparation and the mobilization of electors.”

As regards to the historical introduction to Lenin and Bukharin’s theses on parliamentarism, in which Trotsky stated that the Third International must return to the parliamentarism of the First International for the purpose of destroying parliament from within, the representative of the CAF observed that “should the Third International accept the doctrine of the First International, it must on the contrary use quite different tactics and not participate in the bourgeois democracy, because of the great difference in the historic conditions.” If we agree with the first part of the theses, we differ on the utilization of the electoral campaign and of the parliamentary tribune as a means of mass action. We are not against parliamentarism because it is a legal means, like the press or freedom of assembly etc. Likewise, we are not against “heads”, because we will always need journalists, propagandists, and a centralized party, in which the “heads” will take on dangerous work without enjoying the advantageous benefits conferred on leaders in bourgeois society. The examples by the commission’s other report do not touch our theses: Liebknecht acted in the Reichstag in an epoch in which we recognize the possibility of parliamentary action. However, after all the numerous cases of social democratic treachery are put in the balance, it turns out most unfavorably for revolutionary parliamentarism. The question of the Bolsheviks in the Duma could likewise not be placed alongside the conditions in which we propose the abandonment of parliamentary tactics in other bourgeois countries. The representative of our fraction said that he intended “to make use of the electoral campaigns for agitation and propaganda for the communist revolution, but this agitation will be more efficient the more we support before the masses the boycott of bourgeois elections.” In conclusion, in order to distinguish our abstentionist tactic from those who recommended withdrawing from the trade unions, the speaker would respond to the arguments brought forward by Lenin in his pamphlet “Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”. The trade union, even if corrupted, is still an organization of the working masses. If the question of parliamentarism is secondary for the communist movement, this is not the case with the trade union question.

As to Lenin’s tactics, our representative declared: “I only want to say that a Marxist movement in the western democratic countries demands much more direct tactics than those which were necessary for the Russian Revolution.” Furthermore, in response to Lenin’s accusation that the Italian abstentionists wished to postpone the problem of communist action in parliament because anti-parliamentarism requires the least effort, he replied that seeking to direct the greater part of the efforts of the communist movement towards grounds of action of greater importance than that of parliamentarism would certainly not be easier. But the tenfold efforts required to solve the problem of communist parliamentarism according to the theses would however draw resources of energy away from the real revolutionary movement.

The CAF considered that the transference of power from the exploiters to the exploited implied a change in the representative apparatus. For bourgeois parliamentarism must be substituted with the soviet system.

However, the question of parliamentarism should not be the cause of a split in the communist movement and, therefore, the abstentionists would submit to the Communist International’s decisions and not attempt to bring about the failure of its work.

Speeches followed by those who were against parliament on principle.

Lenin then took the floor to make a short polemical speech in which he stated that every revolutionary crisis was accompanied by a parliamentary crisis. Now, it is true that the struggle must be carried into a different field, for instance the Soviets, we know that these can’t be created artificially and may only be formed either during or immediately before the revolution. “Only when one is a member of parliament is it possible from the given historical point of view to fight bourgeois society and parliamentarism.” The backward elements amongst the masses, who really believe that their interests are represented in parliament, must have the truth brought home to them by act and deed. In Russia, the Constituent Assembly was convened in order to show backward workers that nothing could thereby be achieved through parliamentarism, and to confront them with the formation of Soviets as an accomplished fact in order to bring them to the conviction that the Soviets were their only weapon. Addressing the CAF, Lenin asserted that to destroy parliament it had to be destroyed from within to prove to the masses how parliament was an instrument used by the bourgeoisie to deceive them. Moreover, according to Lenin, if all classes are prompted to participate in the parliamentary struggle, class interests and class will be reflected in parliament: “parliament represents the arena of class struggle.”

Expounded with an incontestable dialectic power, Lenin’s proposals provoked serious worries, not so much because of fears about what the International might do under Lenin’s leadership, but because the proposals were open to misinterpretation, and could be seen as authorizing an overly flexible tactical approach. The representative of the Left would underline this ambiguity in his reply to Lenin.

Lenin had cited Germany as the best proof that a communist group in parliament was possible, and he maintained that many parties were driven to contest the necessity of working in parliament because of their weakness.

Our representative remarked that Lenin’s objections raised the general problem of the Marxist tactics, and that the historical mission of communism “leads us to a new tactical position, i.e., to declining participation in parliament, which is no more a means of influencing events in a revolutionary sense.” He also stated that he was convinced that the Communist International would not succeed in expediting really revolutionary parliamentarian tactics.

Our representative rounded off his intervention by expressing the hope that when it came to voting for the theses of the Italian abstentionists, only those anti-parliamentarian comrades who accepted the Marxist spirit of the assertions on which they were based, would vote for them.

Bukharin, who had been the first speaker, closed the debate with a reply to the anti-parliamentarians. At the voting, only seven votes were cast against the Lenin-Bukharin theses, and eighty votes for, and the latter were therefore approved by an overwhelming majority. Out of the seven votes against, at the express request of the abstentionist speaker who was concerned to avoid any confusion with the arguments of the revolutionary syndicalists, only three votes were registered in favor of the theses he had defended: the ones cast by the Swiss, Belgian, and Danish Communist Parties.

The Lenin-Bukharin theses, approved by the congress, were divided into three parts. The first part explained that the modern conditions were of unbridled imperialism. In the preceding historical epoch parliament was an instrument of the developing capitalist system, and as such played a role that was in a certain sense progressive. and could be an arena in which to struggle for reforms and improvements on working-class living standards. In the modern imperialist epoch parliament had become a weapon of falsehood, deception, and violence. The historical task of the working class was therefore to wrest the parliamentary apparatus from the hands of the ruling classes in order to destroy it. The time had come for a new tactic in parliament as a means to destroy parliamentarism in general. The Communist Party enters parliament to uproot the parliamentary and governmental apparatus from within, i.e., Liebknecht in Germany, the Bolsheviks in the Duma, and the Communists in Bulgaria.

The second part of the theses denounced parliamentarism as a “democratic” form of the rule of the bourgeoisie. Parliamentarism can never be a form of proletarian government. Parliament cannot be won over to the side of the proletariat but must be destroyed along with the bourgeois State machine. The same attitude must be taken to local government institutions. Consequently, communism denies the possibility of parliament being won to the proletarian cause and sets itself the task of destroying parliamentarism. The Communist Party must stand exclusively for the revolutionary utilization of parliament. Anti-parliamentarism as a principle is therefore a naive and childish position.

A certain combination of conditions may make withdrawal from parliament essential. The Bolsheviks left the Kerensky parliament in order to weaken it, undermine it, and counterpoise it to the St. Petersburg Soviet which was about to take on the leadership of the October Revolution. It may also be essential to boycott elections. A boycott of elections or of parliament are permissible when conditions are ripe for an immediate move to armed struggle for power.

It was essential to keep in view the comparative unimportance of this question since the focal point of the struggle for State power lay outside parliament. For this reason, the International therefore emphasized most strongly that it considered any split or attempt to split the Communist Party solely on the parliamentary question to be a serious mistake.

The third part of the theses gave precise directives for developing revolutionary tactics in parliament. It was essential to monitor the quality of the members of the parliamentary fractions and to break with the social-democratic custom of putting forward only so-called “experienced” parliamentarians. As a rule, the party should put forward candidates who are workers. The parliamentary fractions would be organized by the Central Committees (CCs). The CC of the party must have a permanent representative in the parliamentary fraction with the right of veto. There must be a thorough purge of the parliamentary fractions penetrated by reformists. The Communist deputies must also combine their legal work with illegal work if the CC decides, and their parliamentary immunity should be put at the service of the party. The deputies must subordinate their parliamentary work to the extra-parliamentary activity of their party; the deputy must bear in mind that they are agitators sent into the enemy camp to carry out party decisions.

Following this brief summary of the Lenin-Bukharin theses, we need to clarify that the parliamentary question didn’t assume a position of central importance (even if “illustrious” opportunist historians affirm the contrary) at the International’s Second Congress, and this can be shown merely by pointing to the weighty body of theses on questions of principle, on revolution, on the taking of power, on the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc., etc. If the Bolsheviks considered parliamentarism as one of the criteria for establishing the revolutionary efficiency of the nascent parties, this is only because it was a parliamentarism with an anti-parliamentary agenda: on the one hand it aimed at overcoming the democratic prejudices that persisted inside the workers’ movement; on the other hand, it aimed at eliminating the opposite prejudice, of the anarcho-syndicalist, workerist variety, whose electoral abstentionism was founded on the basis of natural morality (rejection of “power”, of leaders, scruples about purity etc.), and identified the parliamentary struggle with politics in general, finally rejecting the political struggle in favor of a purely trade-unionist struggle. The Bolsheviks then also stood by the critical rejection of the cult of the sovereignty of the masses, that is of those who were affected by the same malady which had already infected the parties of the Second International. The Bolsheviks placed themselves on the same terrain as us. We can equally say that, as far as the examination of the historical role of parliament is concerned, there was no difference between the positions as outlined in Trotsky’s introduction, the Lenin-Bukharin theses and those of the Italian abstentionists.

What were the areas of disagreement between us and the Bolsheviks then? The difference is explained in points six and seven of the theses on parliamentarism presented by the Italian Left: during a period when the conquest of power did not seem possible in the very near future, possibilities of propaganda, agitation and criticism could be offered by participation in elections and in parliamentary activity. This possibility existed still in those countries where the bourgeois revolution was still developing and where parliament kept its original character of an institution which was anti-feudal and therefore historically revolutionary (Russia in 1917, colonial countries). On the other hand, in those countries where the democratic regime achieved its formation a long time ago, and in the historical period which opened with the ending of the World War, with the victory of the October Revolution and the Third International, it wouldn’t be possible to use the parliamentary tribune for revolutionary ends. Our view (thesis eleven) was that the continuation of electoral action would prevent the necessary elimination of social-democratic elements without which the Third International would fail in its historic role.

In conclusion, we draw the reader’s attention to the fact that the only party which had actually practiced revolutionary parliamentarism and remained true to its spirit was the PCd’I led by the Left, and that this was because the clear demarcations which had followed the scissions at the Livorno Congress had effectively set up a barrier against the “parliamentarists as a matter of principle.” The elections which followed in 1921 would do nothing to advance the movement towards revolution in Italy, as should have occurred according to the Second Congress theses which predicted the revolutionary effect of entering parliament. It would be left to the lack of success of the movements during March 1921 in Germany and those of autumn 1923 to tragically confirm the truth of what the Italian Left had asserted.

In an article from Il Soviet of September 5, 1920 written after the Second Congress of the Third International and entitled The Abstentionist Fraction and the Moscow Congress, the Left explained yet again its one and only divergence with the Bolsheviks:

“The resolutions of the Moscow Congress agree fully with what our fraction has always upheld on the necessity of creating a truly Communist Party, and on the functions and constitution of this party and its relations with the Third International. They also fully agree with what we have always asserted regarding the Soviet question, implicitly dispensing summary justice to the resolution, opposed by us but backed by the PSI, of constituting them right-away; a resolution which was reduced after the National Council of Milan to the minimum expression of local (mono-communal) experimental Soviets, and in its turn tacitly allowed to die a death. The single divergence is on the parliamentary question.

“The theses voted for in Moscow reasserts as premise the fundamental concept that parliamentarism is a system of bourgeois government, which cannot constitute the form of the proletarian State, which cannot be conquered from within but must be smashed along with all the other similar and local organs in order to be substituted by central and local soviets etc. This evaluation of parliamentarism responds exactly to what has always been maintained on the subject by our fraction, who have doggedly insisted on it in order that it be accepted by the majority of the party as well. At the Bologna Congress the difference between us and the winning majority on this cardinal point was that we called on all those who didn’t accept this scheme to leave the party, and that was what we were really voting for; the majority confined itself to making a verbal agreement on the matter and voted for those who didn’t accept the programme to remain in the party. We were with Moscow in word and deed, the others… Well, they didn’t practice what they preached.

“The Moscow thesis correctly points out that the fundamental method of struggle against the political power of the bourgeoisie is that of mass action becoming armed struggle (just as we have always said) and subordinates parliamentary action to the aims of extra-parliamentary action, considering the parliamentary tribune as one of the bases, or a legal position which the party, which directs the actions of the masses or the armed struggle, must constitute behind the fighting proletariat. This is profoundly different and opposed to what has been done, both before and after Bologna, by the PSI, whose epicenter has only ever remained that of parliamentary action, which dominates and drives forward its political struggle. Illegal action was and remains unknown (before Bologna it was strongly repudiated and it still is by many members): and yet it is one of the cornerstones of the Moscow thesis, and constitutes no small part of that extra-parliamentary action to which parliamentary action should be linked in a subordinate capacity in order to utilize parliamentary immunity. With its aims restricted in this way, parliamentary action, in itself, is not nearly so important, and the question of the use of parliament is restricted within much narrower confines. It is true that communists have always viewed the question in this way, and nor could they do otherwise, seeing that their initial premise is that parliamentarism is a system of bourgeois government; but the PSI, the social democrats, and even many so-called Maximalists don’t see it like that.

“Our bitter and determined struggle within the PSI, which led us to feel we needed to form an abstentionist fraction in order to act with greater energy and unity of purpose, was, and is, inspired by the conviction that the proletarian struggle for the conquest of power takes place outside parliament; and it is a struggle which is trying to carry party activity along towards its true destination. Obliging the party to restrict parliamentary activity within the limitations required by Moscow and to agree to discuss the parliamentary question from the standpoint from which we have always considered it, that is to say: how and up to what point can the parliamentary role be utilized in pursuit of revolutionary aims, is a great victory for us. We have never declared that the political struggle can be characterized as a matter of aptitude towards parliamentarism, nor have we supported an absolute and ingenuous negation of parliamentary participation. In the programme presented at Bologna we clearly distinguished the pre-revolutionary period, in which parliament is used to carry out a work of criticism and propaganda, from the revolutionary period, the present one, in which the proletariat rises up to overthrow the bourgeois State; an action to which no effective contribution can be brought by way of parliament. Future experience, when on the basis of the Moscow resolutions all the member parties of the Third International, rendered truly communist and rid of their various encumbrances, have adopted the parliamentary tactic, will tell if our view was right or wrong.

“The Moscow thesis don’t rule out that leaving parliament, boycotting parliament or boycotting elections may happen; they simply say that this should happen when there is a situation which allows an immediate passage to the armed struggle. Without going into a detailed examination of these various actions and the considerable differences between them; without considering the not easily surmountable difficulty of how to evaluate the circumstances for their implementation as expressed in the theses, we draw attention to the fact that the active boycotting of elections which we propose (intervening in them without candidates with a view to propagandizing with greater effectiveness the bourgeois nature of parliamentarism, its ineptitude compared to the proletarian dictatorship, and the necessity of overthrowing it) is definitely to be found amongst those actions recommended by the Moscow theses.

“There is maybe a different evaluation of when a boycott should be used. We say “maybe” because we were certain that the majority wasn’t behind us and so were aware that our claim was premature, not in the historical sense but in the sense of its acceptance and its consequent implementation. We didn’t call for a boycott, nor do we do it now, for the laughable reason of appearing more revolutionary.

“All tendencies have always started like this: they begin with just one person or a few people and grow and develop if they respond to a real need and future necessity. Just because a tendency in a given period of its development only has a small following doesn’t mean its ideas are immature. If we reasoned thus all new ideas would be immature. When at the Bologna Congress we called on the party to call itself Communist, to consecrate a radical change of direction, there were only few of us then and we knew it.

“It was the same when we argued the incompatibility of having centrists and right-wingers in the party. We will see at the next congress, following the deliberations in Moscow, what progress our tendency has made in a year. And the same for abstentionism. To have supported and to still support abstentionism has, and will, serve to exercise a powerful devaluation of the function of parliamentarism especially amongst the Maximalists; supporting abstentionism inspires in the party and the masses the growing conviction that the proletarian movement’s center of gravity is outside the bourgeois parliament and prepares it for the hour when this will have to be swept away once and for all.

“That we don’t consider abstentionism as representing the central fulcrum of communist action can be gauged from the fact that we have never wanted to split the party over it nor have we wanted to ally ourselves with those anti-parliamentarists whom, merely through the fact of being such, don’t rigidly subscribe to the communist programme. In the motion voted for by the fraction at the Florence conference we said amongst other things, that: “The fraction resolves to consecrate all its energies to the constitution in Italy of the Communist Party, as a section of the Third International, affirming that in this party, as at the heart of the International itself, the fraction will uphold the incompatibility of participating in elections to bourgeois organizations etc The clear upshot of this resolution is our fundamental proposition of the need to form a communist party, an indispensable organ in the proletariat’s political struggle; a party with a positive programme of action, and not one based on negative differentiations such as abstentionism. This proposition of ours, corroborated by the Moscow resolutions, obliges us to engage in the most energetic activity now that it is finally and definitively entering into its implementation phase. We will continue to work in order to try and become a majority in the International, which, it is understood, will absolutely not detract from our observing the most rigorous, disciplined, and unconditional respect towards its resolutions, even those which don’t correspond to our most deeply held convictions. An iron discipline is the main strength of those communist parties which are truly such both in name and in deed.”