An assessment of revolutionary parliamentarism from Lenin and the debates within the Communist International to the present day

Our editorial initiative: Revolutionary preparation or electoral preparation

Until the Second Congress of the Communist International (Moscow, July-August 1920), it had not yet been clearly established whether or not the sections of the new International, while denouncing deception, and pointing out to proletarians the need to overthrow the institutions of parliamentary democracy, should inscribe among their tactical means, for purely revolutionary and therefore anti-democratic propaganda purposes, participation in the elections and parliaments of the capitalist West. 
The question had had, depending on the country, different developments. No one doubted either that the new organization of the revolutionary proletariat should accommodate only those movements that had fought against the imperialist war, breaking with the socialtraitors who had supported it, or that sections of the Third International should act on the terrain of armed insurrection to overthrow bourgeois power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, as in Russia in October 1917. 
But the theses and resolutions, however very explicit, of the first congress in March 1919 did not seem to exclude, in the spirit of the Russian Bolsheviks themselves, that certain movements of anarchist or syndicalist-revolutionary orientation would come to swell the great revolutionary wave: suffice it to mention the Spanish National Confederation of Labor, of libertarian tendency, the extreme left of the French General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.), the American I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World), the Scottish and English Shop Stewards Committees. 
These movements did not hesitate to condemn social patriotism and reformism, did not doubt the necessity of insurrection, but did not have a clear position on those problems of revolutionary power and terror, the state and the political party, which the Bolsheviks had for their part fully resolved. Almost everyone, whether by ideological tradition or by reaction to opportunism, opposed the use of parliament. 
In Italy, the question was posed very clearly as early as the last months of the world conflict. The Socialist Party, which had split from the anarchist current in 1892 and from the anarcho-syndicalist current in 1907 (in the following year there had also been a trade union split with the birth of the Unione Sindacale Italiana, which later split when faced with the problem of war), had hesitated but to fall into the deception of the union sacrèe, but the action of its parliamentary group, dominated by the right, ran counter to any prospect of a revolutionary solution to the postwar crisis. The intransigent revolutionary fraction, although it had triumphed in the party even in the prewar period, had not dared to break except with the ultra-right extreme of Bissolati and consorts, expelled in 1912. Thus the more decisive elements on the left of the party — who during the World War had advocated the open defeatism of national defense — began to feel the need for a split from the old party and came to the historical conclusion that, if the proletariat was to be prepared and led to the revolutionary assault, it had to end with the electoral and parliamentary method by which the “intransigent” leadership itself was hampered (See volumes I and 1a of our History of the Left and the extensive documentation therein). 
This position, defended in the newspaper “Il Soviet,” founded in Naples in 1918 as the organ of the Abstentionist Communist fraction, was rejected by the party majority at the Bologna congress in 1919. But the partisans of participation in elections and parliament, while making their case for Lenin’s approval, had the immense wrong in maintaining the unity of the great electoral party, thus openly opposing Lenin and the fundamental directives of the Third International and not hesitating to reject the abstentionists’ offer to renounce their antiparliamentary bias, provided the split was made. 

The situation in Germany was different. Here the anarchist movement was negligible, Sorelian syndicalism did not exist, and no split had divided the trade unions. At the outbreak of war in 1914 the entire political and trade union movement at first followed the social-patriotic orientation. The split began in the political field with the formation in 1915 of the glorious “Spartacus League” and the 1916 breakaway of the Independent Socialist Party from the old Social Democracy, until at the end of 1918 the Spartacists formed themselves into the Communist Party of Germany (K.P.D.). Two trends emerged there, not only on parliamentary tactics, but on the much more important and principled issue of union splitting. The left wing of the Spartacists, which went so far as to split to form the K.A.P.D. (Communist Labor Party of Germany), argued that, given the betrayal of the trade unions linked to social democracy, it was necessary to advocate a boycott and the creation of a new, left-oriented, revolutionary trade union organization. 

The problem was a serious one: the K.A.P.D. current was, in fact, suffering from syndicalist errors which, in addition to being widespread in the Latin countries, were also finding a certain following in the Dutch movement through the newspaper “De Tribune,” directed by theorists Gorter and Pannekoek. It tended to downplay the importance of the political party and the necessary centralization and discipline, and betrayed the same hesitations on the question of the state, thus showing that it did not share the Russian conception of the political party in charge of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is well known, moreover, that the K.P.D. itself, while remaining linked to Moscow, did not clearly understand at the outset that the revolutionary political party must take power directly into its own hands. 

It goes without saying that the Russian Bolsheviks and the leadership of the new International attached the utmost importance to the German problem; Lenin placed it at the center of his famous pamphlet on “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”, the essential purpose of which was to prevent the infiltration into the Communist movement of anarchically motivated tendencies, incapable of understanding the question of authority within the party and the state. Lenin’s critique, dominated by the attention with which he follows the development of the German movement of fundamental historical importance, deals with this problem in parallel with that of parliamentary tactics, and it is indisputable that he condemns both the trade union split and electoral abstentionism. 
Meanwhile, the Italian abstentionist fraction had endeavored to make it clear in two letters to the Executive Committee of the International that in Italy these two issues did not interfere with each other; that the left fraction of the Socialist Party fully shared Marxist positions on the party and the state, and that it not only had no sympathy for the anarchist and syndicalist movement, but had long been conducting an open polemic against it. While these letters had to overcome many obstacles to reach Moscow, it is a fact that Lenin intervened in person so that a representative of the abstentionist Communist fraction would attend the Second World Congress. 
It is not inappropriate to add that in the preparatory meetings for the Congress, when it came to the admission of representatives from the different countries, the Italian abstentionists argued that organizations without a decided political character, such as the Spanish, French, Scottish and English movements we mentioned above, should not have a deliberative vote, and in the sessions devoted to the vital point of the conditions of admission to the C.I. they were the most energetic advocates of theoretical and programmatic homogeneity and organizational centralization of the new world organization of the revolutionary proletariat. 

* * *

During the sessions of the congress, of which we shall reproduce some of the most important documents, the discussion immediately highlighted the sharp difference between the opposition to electoral participation that the Italian Left defended, and that conducted by syndicalists and semi-syndicalists in other countries. 
The speaker on the question of revolutionary parliamentarism was Bukharin, who spoke at the session of August 2, 1920, presenting the theses he had drafted with Lenin, and to which Trotski had prefaced an introduction entitled, “The New Epoch and the New Parliamentarism,” and announced a counter-report by the representative of the Italian abstentionists, who had also submitted a body of theses to the congress. He added that Comrade Wolfstein would report on the work of the Commission, and polemicized at length against the opponents of parliamentary tactics while distinguishing between the two groups of different theoretical orientation. This was followed by a counter-report from the representative of the Italian Left who, also taking into consideration the arguments carried out by Lenin in “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”, illustrated the concepts contained in his theses. Against parliamentarianism then took the floor the Scotsman Gallacher, later refuted by the Englishman Murphy; in favor was the Bulgarian Shablin; against, the Swiss Herzog and the German Suchi, the latter, however, antiparliamentarian in the anarcho-syndicalist manner. 
Lenin then took the floor, and his speech was, as always, of extreme importance. As the discussion had already gone on for a long time, the speaker on the abstentionist theses answered him very briefly, expressing the grave concern caused by the very arguments, of a tactical nature, used by Lenin to argue that not only could but should be acted upon in parliament for the purpose of destroying it from within. Brief statements were made by Murphy, Shablin, Goldenberg (who proposed an amendment in favor of boycotting elections in the insurrectionary phase); the representative of the Italian youth, Polano, while voting in favor of the theses on revolutionary parliamentarism, acknowledged that the youth movement in Italy was largely abstentionist; Serrati cleared, amid the clamors of the assembly, the PSI parliamentary group; Herzog responded to protests from Bulgarians for his criticism of their party’s parliamentary action; and finally Bukharin closed the debate by briefly responding to the anti-parliamentarianists and concluding with a call to go to parliament to the cry of “Down with parliament.” Put to a vote, the Bukharin-Lenin theses were approved by a large majority against just seven “no” votes. Of the seven votes against, at the express request of the abstentionist rapporteur, anxious to avoid any confusion with the arguments of the syndicalist-revolutionaries, only three went to the theses he presented: those of the Swiss Communist Party, the Belgian Communist Party and a fraction of the Danish Communist Party. As for the speaker he did not have a deliberative vote, only an advisory one. 

* * *

The very nature of the documents we are publishing facilitates their presentation. It can be said that, in examining the historical function of the bourgeois parliament, Trotski’s introduction, Bukharin-Lenin’s theses and those of the abstentionist Marxists, present no difference. From the point of view of principles, all three establish that bourgeois state power must be brought down by violent action and its machine destroyed to its last cog; that parliament is one of the most counter-revolutionary elements of the bourgeois state apparatus, and must therefore be eliminated by force. This is what the Bolsheviks had done with the Constituent Assembly, although they had participated in its election. So Marx had suggested doing in 1871, when he hoped the Communards would march on Versailles and disperse the ignoble National Assembly from whose womb the Third Republic emerged. After its victory, the proletariat must then build a new state, the state of its dictatorship, founded on workers’ councils, and thus mark the historic end of bourgeois power, the capitalist state and parliament. 
Many years have passed since the Second Congress of the Communist International. But a legitimate observation imposes itself: the parliamentary praxis to which the false communist parties, that have the supreme impudence to cover themselves with the arguments of Bukharin, Lenin and Trotsky, have resorted to, has completely disavowed those fundamental principles, in order to identify with the old parliamentarianism of the Second International. Parliament is now undrapedly presented as an eternal organism, in the same way that the bourgeois state is regarded as a structure that can accommodate genuine representation of proletarian class forces. In the face of this, one cannot but recall the easy prediction of the abstentionist representative at the end of his reply to Bukharin: “I hope that the next congress of the Communist International will not have to discuss the results of parliamentary action, but rather to record the victories of the communist revolution in a large number of countries. If this is not possible, I wish Comrade Bukharin to be able to present us with a less dismal balance sheet of parliamentarianism than the one with which he had to begin his report today.» 
We have already discussed Lenin’s speech. It clearly shows how the great revolutionary was firmly convinced of the possibility of sending into the bourgeois parliament groups of communist deputies capable of attacking capitalist institutions not only with theoretical speeches, but with offensive, sabotage, violently destructive action, and supplemented by armed action of the masses (today, we have the right to think that this prediction could not have been realized even if the revolution had broken out in the short space of a few years, as Lenin and all communists were convinced at the time). But the formulations contained in Lenin’s speech, with all its dialectical power, were enough to arouse serious apprehensions, not so much about what the International he led might do, but about the interpretations that would not fail to exploit in an ignoble way his too broad authorizations for tactical elasticity.
Lenin said, “Do you ignore the fact that every revolutionary crisis is accompanied by a parliamentary crisis?” And he insisted on the need to take into account the facts, which dictated that parliament should be regarded as an arena in which class struggles are forcibly reflected and through which we can influence the development of situations in a direction favorable to us. Dismayed by these and other statements, the representative of the abstentionists dared to ask his great contradictor whether such dialectical audacity did not introduce the risk of one day renouncing that condemnation of all participation of proletarian deputies in bourgeois ministries, which radical Marxists had always pronounced. 

* * *

For us, it is clear that Lenin’s thought was a thousand miles away from the developments that neo-opportunism has given to this formula, distorting it completely. Today we are told that every class struggle is not only not reflected in parliament, but can actually develop and find its solution in parliamentary diatribes. One step further, and all the fundamental theses, those of Lenin himself, are repudiated, and with them the fundamental thesis that the transfer of power from one class party to another cannot historically be realized through democracy, but only through revolution. Only the most brazen traitors can insinuate that Lenin’s thought is reconciled with the ignoble claim that it was, in essence, by accident that the Bolsheviks won power in Russia through civil war, and that therefore, in other countries, or even in all of them, it will suffice to take that parliamentary and democratic path of which the texts of Lenin, Bukharin and Trotski pronounced the irrevocable historical condemnation, even when they admitted for the communist parties, expressly constituted with a view to insurrection, the possibility of action within parliaments. 
In subsequent congresses, the desire to reconcile obvious theoretical contradictions with an immense force of political will developed dangerously, especially when Lenin was no longer there to resolve them; and thus the foundations were laid for the catastrophic precipice into opportunism, the multiple phases of which we have experienced over the past decades. 
It is today clear that it is no longer a matter of theoretical prediction, but of ascertaining actual historical facts; and our perspective finds easy confirmation in an in-depth reading of the historic discussion of 1920.

PART 1

SETTING THE PROBLEM: THE YEAR 1919

— The attitude of the P.S.I. Left

The Communist Left did not lend itself in the least to the traditional prejudices of Latin anarcho-syndicalism, while it was perfectly vaccinated against the “infantile disorders” that afflicted Anglo-Saxon communism in 1920. Such maturity was not the privilege of a few leaders, but descended from the very characteristics of pre-1914 Italian socialism, which had long since broken with anarcho-syndicalism (Genoa Congress, 1892) and, thereafter, had never left it the monopoly of the struggle against the reformists (expulsion of the social-imperialists on the occasion of the war in Libya in 1912). These and other circumstances made the 1913 election campaign a vigorous manifestation of revolutionary propaganda. As the article “Against Abstentionism” shows, the representatives of the Left then not only defended participation in the elections, but denounced in the anarchist prescription of abstention a form of apoliticism and neutralism whose only conclusion could be the worst bloc of class collaboration.

The three articles of 1919 echo the elections of the immediate postwar period that in all countries had such a baleful influence on the struggle and organization of the revolutionary proletariat and, in Italy in particular, delayed the process of class party selection. Since then, the anti-parliamentarism of the Communist Left has been based on a dual analysis: that of the situation, on the one hand, and that of the strategy of the class party in the phase of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions, on the other. On the first point, Lenin’s assessment, formulated in the “Letter to the Workers of Europe and America” (Jan. 21, 1919), and that of the Left, are strictly identical: to call the proletariat to the polls in 1919 is to stab the Soviet republics of Bavaria, Hungary and Russia in the back; it is to admit that the struggle must necessarily remain “confined within the limits of the bourgeois order.” The second point is forcefully developed in the article “Revolutionary Preparation or Electoral Preparation,” and further clarified in the article “The Contradictions of Electoral Maximalism,” and will be at the heart of the disagreements over tactics at the Second Moscow Congress. For the Left, in fact, “the incompatibility of the two forms of activity is not a momentary incompatibility,” but characterizes a whole imperialist and fascist phase into which the old-democratic countries have irrevocably entered. Therefore, the rejection of parliamentary tactics must be adopted even regardless of the ebb and flow of revolutionary situations, as a fact imposed on the class party by the objective conditions of its final struggle.

* * *

AGAINST ABSTENTIONISM

Avanti!, July 13, 1913

In the coming electoral battle our party, which faces it alone against all in the name of its whole programme, must not forget to guard and defend itself against a danger no less serious than any other, the abstentionist danger. However much the anarchist movement and the syndicalist movement may not be in a very flourishing condition among us today, nevertheless socialists, and revolutionary socialists above all, must not remain indifferent to the sabotage attempted by the anti-electionists against the Party, and to their denigrating campaign against the sincerely revolutionary direction taken by socialism in Italy after recent events. The whole campaign carried out by the revolutionaries against the reformist degeneration of the Party and its parliamentary action, had to remain and has remained perfectly immune from tenderness toward a rapprochement with anarchist or syndicalist abstentionism. And it is precisely the revolutionaries who must refute the convenient abstentionist arguments based on the errors and weaknesses of a fraction of the party that had seriously deviated and is now almost entirely eliminated from it. 

Revolutionaries have reaffirmed the political value of the revolutionary class struggle, according to Marxist conceptions, in the face of all the equivocal forms of apoliticism and neutralism that had robbed the Party of its subversive physiognomy. Thus they must more than ever uphold the revolutionary necessity of the class political party, the need to politically “color” all working class action in order to direct it to its communist aims. This concept is opposed to the opportunist neutralism of workers’ bodies, advocated by reformism in its crude and vulgar conception that forgets in the most complete way any organic and integral tendency to a goal that is not immediate and limited. Syndicalism and reformism have now met in the concept of trade union apoliticism, which is as much as to say that they have shown us that the proletariat can never accomplish revolution by the strength of its economic organizations alone. Social revolution is a political fact and is prepared on the political ground. In the concept of the general political action of the party, the electoral struggle enters as one of the many sides of socialist activity. It should not exclude all other forms of it. But it is, in our opinion, necessary for the party to demand from all its militants the firm positive affirmation of their opinion and decision. 

One can make very elegant arguments about the influence of the parliamentary environment and the daily “corruption” of elected socialists. We do not dispute such influence. Only we believe that if all voters, according to our uncompromising view, were true “socialists,” the mistake made by the representative should have no effect on them. But if the voters are gleaned from the other parties, lured with promises of a whole range of reformist favoritism and immediate benefits, then it is no wonder that the elected person becomes a renegade.

This which is precisely the charge we make against reformism, is intended to be used by abstentionists as an argument against participating in elections.

Now we make no secret of the grave difficulty of giving the class politics of the proletariat, carried out by the Socialist Party, a character so profoundly different from bourgeois politicking. But true revolutionaries must strive to work toward this end and not desert the struggle. Abstentionism is not a remedy; on the contrary, it is the renunciation of the only method that can give the proletariat a consciousness capable of defending it from the opportunist politicking of non-socialist parties. Electoral neutralism becomes neutralism of conscience and opinion in the face of the great social problems, which although they are built, as we Marxists maintain, on the economic framework, always have a political character.

* * * 

It is not our claim to unfold in a few lines such a complex problem. We only want to sound an alarm against the propagandists of anti-electionism who will come to sabotage our propaganda work at election rallies. We intend to try the political consciousness of the people of Italy in a great anti-bourgeois battle. Ours is the only party that will go down in struggle against the clerical-monarchical-democratic dictatorship. We wait for the election period not because we are fetishists of parliament, but to shake proletarian consciences asleep by all the neutralisms of every school. We feel we are doing profoundly subversive work and aim to slap down all forms of class collaboration.

The syndicalists, who make a blockade concoction to reward with a badge De Ambris, the anarchists, who also drown in the democratic honey of culture, schooling and popular education in good agreement with the bourgeois “intellectuals,” will try to come, posing as monopolists of the revolution, to blame us for compromises because we resort to the weapon of the vote.

We must be prepared to respond so that we will not be robbed of the vote of a few real revolutionaries, which we value more than a hundred equivocal non-socialist votes. These champions of abstentionism are anxiously waiting for Giolitti to open the election campaign to come and launch their reckless tirades, peppered with platitudes, mainly against us, who they say are their “cousins.” But the Socialist Party has no more kinship, neither on the right nor on the left! These anti-parliamentary gentlemen ultimately attach more importance than we do to the action of parliament. We ultimately care more about the streets and the voting hall than about the chamber of Montecitorio. They, on the other hand, are the fervent canvassers of candidate Nobody. And this Mr. Nobody is but the exponent of the most amorphous “bloc”: anarchists, syndicalists, Mazzinians and … intransigent Catholics.

He is the candidate of the immense party of indifference. All people we don’t want to deal with. And we are waiting for the not farcical revolutionaries at the ballot box test. As we will wait for them tomorrow at the barricade test!

EITHER ELECTIONS OR REVOLUTION

Il Soviet, June 29, 1919

While on the one hand many comrades are unhappily beginning to polarize their attention toward the coming ballot fights, on the other hand the current opposed to participation in the elections is spreading in the ranks of the Party, and insistence is being made on all sides on the necessity of the National Congress. 

The Directorate, however, does not pronounce itself, and as the elections approach, the convening of the Congress is increasingly being delayed.

We wish to note that, in a letter to the workers of Europe which appeared in the Trieste “Riscossa», Comrade Lenin writes, among other interesting things: ”…There are today men such as Maclean, Debs, Serrati, Lazzari, etc., who understand that we must put an end to bourgeois parliamentarism… [Trieste censorship].« After this consideration, which is logically inferred from our party’s adherence to the Third International, Lenin writes: 

“The bourgeois parliament, even in the most democratic republic, is nothing but a machine of oppression against millions of workers forced to vote for laws that others make to their detriment. Socialism has admitted parliamentary struggles solely for the purpose of using the forum of parliament for propaganda purposes so long as the struggle must necessarily take place within the bourgeois order.«

Here, too, censorship interrupts the writing. But, we add, the struggle of the proletariat is international, and the tactics of it, as clearly stated by the Moscow program accepted by our Directorate, are internationally uniform. There are already three communist republics, we are therefore in the full historical course of the revolution, outside the period when the struggle took place within the bourgeois order. 

To still call the proletariat to the polls is to declare without question that there is no hope of realizing revolutionary aspirations; and that the struggle will necessarily have to take place within the bourgeois order.

The program of the proletarian dictatorship, and the adherence to the Third International, the Directorate has thus taken them back with its deliberation to participate in the elections. How can one fail to see this baleful contradiction? How can one fail to understand that to say to the proletariat today “to the polls!” is to invite it to disarm from all revolutionary efforts to conquer power?

We cry out loudly: The Congress! The Congress!

This is not the way forward. And as the bourgeoisie is about to strangle the Soviet republics, the illusions of those easy-going comrades of ours, who, though convinced revolutionaries, believing programmatic and theoretical discussions to be sterile (horror!) get away with saying: you won’t get to the elections anyway! 

Practical friends: the elections will be, and while the sacrifice and honor of saving the revolution will remain all to the Russian and Hungarian proletarians who shed their blood without regret, trusting in us, we will lead to the Montecitorio symposium a hundred or so honorable heroes of the bloodless electoral struggle, in the cheerful oblivion of all dignity and faith that the ballot orgies give.

Will this be averted? 

REVOLUTIONARY PREPARATION OR ELECTORAL PREPARATION

Avanti!, August 21, 1919

We believe that we have entered the historical revolutionary period in which the proletariat achieves the overthrow of bourgeois power, for this result is already achieved in many countries of Europe, and in which in the other countries the communists must converge all their efforts to the realization of the same goal.

The communist parties must therefore devote themselves to revolutionary preparation, training the proletariat in not only the conquest, but also in the practice, of political dictatorship, and taking care to enucleate from the bosom of the working class the bodies fit to assume and manage the direction of society. 

This preparation must be accomplished in the programmatic field by forming in the masses an awareness of the complex historical development through which the era of capitalism will yield to that of communism; and in the tactical field by the formation of provisional soviets ready to take over local and central powers, and the setting up of all the means of struggle indispensable to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

During the period dedicated to this preparation, all the efforts of the Communist Party are devoted to creating the environment of the proletarian dictatorship, advocating by propaganda not only of words but especially of deeds the cardinal principle of dictatorship, that is, the rule of society by the proletarian class with the deprivation of all intervention and political rights for the bourgeois minority.

If at the same time one were to adopt the electoral action tending to send the representatives of the proletariat and the party into the elective organs of the bourgeois system, based on representative democracy, which is the historical and political antithesis of the proletarian dictatorship, one would destroy all the effectiveness of revolutionary preparation. 

Even if in election rallies and from the parliamentary gallery the maximalist problem were agitated, the speeches of candidates and deputies would arise on a factual contradiction: claiming that the proletariat should politically direct society without the bourgeoisie, and admitting with the fact that proletarian and bourgeois representatives would continue to meet with equal rights in the bosom of the legislative powers of the state. 

In practice all moral, intellectual, material and financial energies would be dissipated in the maelstrom of electoral contention, and the men, the propagandists, the organizers, the press, all resources of the party would be diverted from revolutionary preparation, for which they are already, unfortunately, insufficient. 

Having established the theoretical and practical incompatibility between the two preparations, it seems to us that there can be no hesitation in the choice, and that electoral intervention can logically be admitted for those alone who have not even the slightest hope in the possibility of revolution.

The incompatibility of the two forms of activity is not a momentary incompatibility, such that the alternating of both forms of action is admissible. One and the other presuppose long periods of set-up, and absorb the entire activity of the movement for a considerable lapse of time. 

The concern of those comrades who consider the hypothesis of the implemented electoral abstention without the revolutionary outcome having been achieved has no reason to be. Even if remaining without parliamentary representatives instead of being an advantage — as we firmly and supported by vast experience believe — were a danger, such a danger would not be even remotely comparable to that of compromising and even only delaying the proletariat’s preparation for the revolutionary conquest of its dictatorship.

Therefore, unless it can be proved that electoral action, not only with its historical setting in theory, but also with its known practical degenerations, doesn’t succeed in being fatal to revolutionary training, we must without regret throw the election method into the rattletraps and without looking back concentrate all our forces on the realization of the supreme maximal objectives of socialism.

THE CONTRADICTIONS OF ELECTORAL MAXIMALISM

Avanti!, September 14, 1919

The comrades of the electoral maximalist fraction claim that for them the electoral question is by no means secondary, nor is it such as to divide the Communists! It does not seem to be so judging from the fact that it was enough to post the abstention proposal for the supporters of electoral participation to flock to it, who for that matter only pass on a few very questionable arguments to each other.

And the maximalist fraction is more concerned with polemicizing with us on this “secondary” topic than with countering the objections that come to it — that come to us — from the reformists. We reserve the right to reply in appropriate quarters to the arguments of Turati, Ciccotti, Zibordi, etc., and limit ourselves for now to beating into the breach the incongruity of maximalist electoralism on common premises. All of us maximalists believe that it is possible-and therefore necessary-to move in the present period to organize the conquest of power by the Italian proletariat, and we see in the Russian Communist Revolution only the first act of the World Revolution. We are thus on the terrain of the Third International and accept its programmatic and tactical task: to spread among the masses an awareness of the process of revolutionary realization, and to prepare the means of action for the violent seizure of power and the subsequent explication of social management by the proletariat.

Is this preparation a thing of slight account? Far from it. What was done for the second part (for material preparation)? Nothing. The comrades do not even bother to discuss the appropriateness of Lenin’s tactical conclusion about the formation of Soviets and the winning of communist majorities in them. What was done about the first part (preparation, say, spiritual)? Little, and with little programmatic clarity. The leadership had made the formula of “proletarian dictatorship” its own, adopting afterwards the imprecise one of “expropriatory strike,” creating in the party and the masses more of an indistinct expectation of who knows what than an organic consciousness of the task to be accomplished. The fault lies not with the Directorate, but with the Party, which had not yet carried out the necessary programmatic review to orient and “select itself”-without which organic tactical preparation is impossible, and it is likely in case of unforeseen events to be surprised and overtaken by them. More: many comrades believe that being convinced of the necessity of a violent collision between classes authorizes them to dispense with an organic programmatic orientation, “before,” “during,” and “after” the insurrection. They are actually anarchoids and deserve the criticism of attributing thaumaturgical virtues to the violent act. Because they limit it in time and make proletarian expectation and triumph culminate in it, they do not see why the preparation of the party and the proletariat for revolution are marred by intervention in the electoral and parliamentary campaign. The Congress should lay the groundwork for the further explication of this revolutionary preparation. Will it do so? Academy: very many among us reply. But meanwhile Lenin from Moscow waits in vain for our “document.” One can see that he too is a scribbler.

Having summarily defined this double preparation: spiritual and material, we declare that the party’s electoral and parliamentary action belittles and undermines it. Just as revolution cannot be understood in the days of insurrection, so cannot electoral participation be understood on voting day. That is why the objection that says: we will give up the ballot only at the time of armed struggle is silly. The election is a political act of the Party that is reflected over four or five successive years, and a few months of total and feverish activity prior to that.

Instead, such a method must be renounced as soon as one is able to replace it with the organic preparation for the conquest of the proletarian dictatorship. The undersigned who … is in less of a hurry than many others, thinks that the moment may be closer than the duration of the next bourgeois legislative assembly. 

Those who say that the Russian Revolution is not destined to be followed by revolution in other countries and in Italy are logical to go quietly to the polls. But those who want — in the Third International — to do work of factual solidarity with the proletariat in Russia and other countries by “subordinating the national demands of the movement to the general ones,” must be for the mobilization of communist forces in order to be able to open hostilities at the appropriate time. That voting is incompatible in the period of hostilities is itself a self-evident thing: what we are advocating is quite different: election action is incompatible with the mobilization of the proletariat for the attainment of its doctrine. Now: either we do this mobilization or we renounce it, and then it must be made clear to comrades in other countries who await our entry into action.

Going back to the preparation: the spiritual one consists of active and intensive propaganda of the communist program, criticizing on the basis of fundamental Marxist arguments the bourgeois system of government, parliamentary democracy, and explaining the bold innovative concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the socialist system of organization of the proletariat into the ruling class — arguing that the crisis of development of society is such that the time has come to break the former system by violent action of the masses to replace it with the latter. To do this in rallies convened precisely to elect representatives to bourgeois representative bodies? This is a baleful contradiction. If it were only a matter of criticism of these institutions, it might go; although the past teaches that on such a path one has always slipped. But when it is a matter of criticizing not only, but demolishing, bringing together Marxistically theory and action, overcoming that antithesis between program and realization that reformism has blown in the minds of so many revolutionaries, then the absurdity becomes evident. We criticize the bourgeois political system and say to you: prepare to suppress it; however, we ask you to send us to participate in it, in its structure, in its functions. It is enormous! This is how you create confusion, not programmatic awareness and clarity in the masses. One intervenes in the cog of the democratic system, one implicitly makes an act of recognition of its functional laws; one has to complain if the voting, the polling, the conduct of parliamentary debates are not carried out according to the laws and rules established by the current constitution, and one strengthens the whole system in its functionality.

The maximalist program talks about helping “from within” the demolition. A theorem of mechanics teaches that a system cannot move in space by the action of forces within the system. But physics has nothing to do with it. It does, however, have to do with logic and experience, which amply prove how socialist parliamentarians have always worked to defend parliamentary prerogatives and norms and the whole system. 

Proposing that proletarians vote already destroys all the most eloquent expositions of the communist program. To vote means, in the present regime, to delegate one’s share of claimed sovereignty for a time, to exhaust the individual’s intervention in politics for all that time. But voters are told that this must not be. Then one must conclude: do not vote. Propaganda of the communist program and method is not a simple matter; its basic concepts are not easily acquired in the collective consciousness. The antithesis between them and the principles of bourgeois democracy must be put into the most lucid evidence. Now the party must put itself in a factual condition that shows how this preaching is merely the projecting in advance of events that are about to take place. Only abstention from elections can meet this delicate need. Otherwise the naive objection that maximalism is but a phraseology to enthuse the masses and get their votes, if not true, will however be the translation of a more complete but analogous truth. 

Is abstention a negative act? Not if it amounts to tangibly proclaiming the shift of party forces to the terrain of realizing the conquest of political power. Abstention seems negative only to those who mistakenly see the positive phase of revolutionary action only in the insurrectionary moment, not to those who realize that this must be preceded by a whole period of political activity on the part of the party, such as to require all its forces. Just as voting is in deplorable contradiction to the spiritual preparation of the proletarian dictatorship (there will be voting in this, too, it is true; but without the bourgeoisie: it is essential, therefore, to deny not the vote, but the system of voting on an equal footing between proletarians and bourgeoisie; and therefore abstention is necessary); so is the existence of parliamentary representation of the party.

The deputies will say what they want; but they will say it with exactly in the same condition of a bourgeois deputy, and the effect of their propaganda will be to confuse rather than clarify the concepts of the communist program.

So far, socialist propaganda has been made (converging in this the forms of programmatic imperfection of reformism and anarchist utopianism) mainly by contrasting the rational structure of communist economics with the irrational and fraught with evil consequences structure of capitalist economics. The two systems were contrasted abstractly, and therefore such preaching could be carried out on any platform. Today, as we live through the period of transformation, we need to bring our propaganda (by enriching it with the wonderful “divinations” of Marxist doctrine) into the realm of the concrete historical process that leads from the regime of bourgeois economy to communism, illustrating this transition. This realist propaganda, a prelude to imminent action, can only be done with arms at the ready, facing the enemy. If the essential key to the revolutionary passage is the overthrow of the bourgeois democratic system, the programmatic preparation of the masses must be done outside and not inside the organs of the system — the elimination of which is the first historical condition of the emancipation of the proletariat.

— As established by Lenin and the Third International

«The bourgeois parliament, even the most democratic in the most democratic republic, in which the property and rule of the capitalists are preserved, is a machine for the suppression of the working millions by small groups of exploiters. The socialists, the fighters for the emancipation of the working people from exploitation, had to utilise the bourgeois parliaments as a platform, as a base, for propaganda, agitation and organisation as long as our struggle was confined to the framework of the bourgeois system. Now that world history has brought up the question of destroying the whole of that system, of overthrowing and suppressing the exploiters, of passing from capitalism to socialism, it would be a shameful betrayal of the proletariat, deserting to its class enemy, the bourgeoisie, and being a traitor and a renegade to confine oneself to bourgeois parliamentarism, to bourgeois democracy, to present it as “democracy” in general, to obscure its bourgeois character, to forget that as long as capitalist property exists universal suffrage is an instrument of the bourgeois state«.

Lenin, Letter to the Workers of Europe and America, January 24, 1919

In the two writings by Zinoviev and Trotsky that open this chapter, the issue of parliamentarism and the struggle for the Soviets is brought into sharp relief against the backdrop of the class struggles of 1919. That year had begun with great revolutionary promise. On January 1, the Spartacists had announced the formation of the German Communist Party, of which Lenin would say: “The moment the Spartacus League took the name of the Communist Party of Germany, the founding of the Communist International became a fact”. But the year 1919 also marks the high point of the German Revolution; the victories, albeit fleeting, of the Soviets in Hungary and Bavaria; the most powerful waves of postwar strikes in Italy; and finally, the beginning of foreign intervention against Russia and the first successes of the young Soviet Republic against the White armies backed by “democratic” England and France.

Thus history inscribed in letters of blood the irreducible opposition between parliamentary democracy and proletarian dictatorship. But would the proletariat have been able to decipher its meaning? For 1919 was also a “great election year.” In Germany, the January elections brought to power the “socialist” executioners of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. In Italy as in France, the reformists’ election campaigns openly posed the dilemma: either elections or revolution. But the masses rarely know how to read the history they make. When the German National Assembly convened in Weimar on February 6, 1919, the Central Council of the Soviets of All Germany decided to hand over its powers to it. Later, in his Memoirs, Prince Max von Baden wrote of the events of late 1918 and early 1919: “I said to myself: the revolution will triumph; we cannot defeat it, but perhaps we could stifle it… If the streets present Ebert to me as the tribune of the people, it will be the republic; if they designate Liebknecht, it will be Bolshevism. But if the Kaiser abdicates and appoints Ebert as chancellor for the monarchy, there will still be a small hope. Perhaps it will be possible to divert the revolutionary energy into the legal framework of an election campaign”.

This was the situation as seen by an old defender of the Empire. Lenin’s International conceived of the role of the masses on the one hand and parliament on the other in the European revolution in no other way. Zinoviev in his circular and Trotsky in his letter on Longuet point out what must be overthrown: not only the parliamentary practice of the heroes of the Second International, but parliament itself, this mill of words churning out democratic illusions; not only the socialist deputies who had betrayed most openly, but the entire policy of social democracy—patriotic, pacifist, and parliamentary. Who does not recognize in the masterful portrait of the centrist Longuet the characteristic traits of the “communists” Cachin and Thorez, Togliatti and Longo, and the favorite themes of the parliamentary performances of which the PCF or the PCI later gave us such a wretched spectacle?

Zinoviev’s circular—whose critical analysis by “Soviet” we publish below—vigorously raises the issue that would be debated a year later at the Second Congress of the Communist International. It demonstrates the necessity of destroying the bourgeois parliamentary machine, and opposes the vain hopes of “organizing new, more democratic parliaments” with a single slogan: Down with parliament! Long live the power of the Soviets! Zinoviev further emphasizes that there is no logical connection between this principled position and the Communist International’s “parliamentary” tactics, which advocate using the parliamentary platform and election campaigns for revolutionary agitation, for the organization of the masses, and for the call to open struggle against the bourgeois state, up to and including armed insurrection. Undermining the edifice from within while waiting to hand it over to the assault of the masses—this, and nothing but this, was the “revolutionary parliamentarism” of Lenin and Liebknecht.

Finally, Zinoviev makes an important observation: “Neither in France, nor in America, nor in England”—the most advanced capitalist countries, where the democratic mechanism has been functioning for many decades now—“have there been communist parliamentarians among the workers”. From this observation, the Italian abstentionist faction had concluded even then that there was a “theoretical and practical incompatibility between revolutionary preparation and electoral preparation” in countries with established democracies (see below, “Revolutionary Preparation or Electoral Preparation,” and also *Storia della Sinistra Comunista*, vol. 1, pp. 406–7).

As Zinoviev’s circular shows, the Communist International believed in the possibility of revolutionary parliamentarism if the proletariat succeeded in creating solid revolutionary parties. “If such a party exists, everything can change,” says Zinoviev. This, then, was the aim, in that year of 1919, of the Communist International’s tactical flexibility on this issue. Under the irresistible pressure of the revolutionary crisis, one could legitimately hope that strong communist parties would emerge in Western Europe, as in the Germany of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, capable not only of setting great examples of revolutionary parliamentarism, but of “doing as in Russia”: disperse all bourgeois constituent assemblies, all the parliamentary fetishes of the petty-bourgeois socialists, and erect the dictatorship of the proletariat upon their ruins.

Circular Letter on Parliamentarism and Soviets

Circular Letter to Comintern-Affiliated Parties on Parliamentarism and the Soviets from Grigorii Zinoviev, President of ECCI, September 1, 1919

Dear Comrades!

The present phase of the revolutionary movement has, along with other questions, very sharply placed the question of parliamentarism upon the order of the day’s discussion. In France, America, England, and Germany, simultaneously with the aggravation of the class struggle, all revolutionary elements are adhering to the Communist movement by uniting among themselves or by coordinating their actions under the slogan of Soviet power. The anarcho-syndicalist groups and the groups that now and then call themselves simply anarchistic are thus also joining the general current. The Executive Committee of the Communist International welcomes this most heartily. In France the syndicalist group of Comrade Pericat forms the heart of the Communist Party; in America, and also to some extent in England, the fight for the Soviets is led by such organizations as the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World). These groups and tendencies have always actively opposed the parliamentary methods of fighting. On the other hand, the elements of the Communist Party that are derived from the Socialist Parties are, for the most part, inclined to recognize action in parliament, too (the Loriot group in France, the members of the SPA in America, of the Independent Labour Party in England, etc.). All these tendencies, which ought to be united as soon as possible in the Communist Party, at all costs need uniform tactics. Consequently, the question must be decided on a broad scale and as a general measure, and the Executive Committee of the Communist International turns to all the affiliated parties with the present circular letter, which is especially dedicated to this question. The universal unifying program is at the present moment the recognition of the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of the Soviet power. History has so placed the question that it is right on this question that the line is drawn between the revolutionary proletariat and the opportun- 2 Zinoviev: Circular Letter on Parliamentarism and Soviets [Sept. 1, 1919] ists, between the communists and the social traitors of every brand. The so-called Center (Kautsky in Germany, Longuet in France, the ILP and some elements of the BSP in England, Hillquit in America) is, in spite of its protestations, an objectively anti-Socialist tendency, because it cannot, and does not wish to, lead the struggle for the Soviet power of the proletariat. On the contrary, those groups and parties which formerly rejected any kind of political struggles (for example, some anarchist groups) have, by recognizing the Soviet power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, really abandoned their old standpoint as to political action, because they have recognized the idea of the seizure of power by the working class, the power that is necessary for the suppression of the opposing bourgeoisie. Thus, we repeat, a common program for the struggle for the Soviet dictatorship has been found. The old divisions in the international labor movement have plainly outlived their time. The war has caused a regrouping. Many of the anarchists or syndicalists, who rejected parliamentarism, conducted themselves just as despicably and treasonably during the 5 years of the war as did the old leaders of the Social Democracy, who always have the name of Marx on their lips. The unification of forces is being effected in a new manner: some are for the proletarian revolution, for the Soviets, for the dictatorship, for mass action, even up to armed uprisings — the others are against this plan. This is the principle question of today. This is the main criterion. The new combinations will be formed according to these labels, and are being so formed already. In what relation does the recognition of the Soviet idea stand to parliamentarism? Right here a sharp dividing line must be drawn between two questions which logically have nothing to do with each other: the question of parliamentarism as a desired form of the organization of the state and the question of the exploitation of parliamentarism for the development of the revolution. The comrades often confuse these two questions, something which has an extraordinarily injurious effect upon the entire practical struggle. We wish to discuss each of these questions in its order and draw all the necessary deductions. What is the form of the proletarian dictatorship? Wereply: The Soviets. This has been demonstrated by an experience that has a worldwide significance. Can the Soviet power be combined with parliamentarism? No, and yet again, no. It is absolutely incompatible with the existing parliaments, because the parliamentary machine embodies the concentrated power of the bourgeoisie. The deputies, the chambers of deputies, their newspapers, the system of bribery, the secret connection of the parliamentarians with the leaders of the banks, the connection with all the apparatus of the bourgeois state — all these are fetters for the working class. They must be burst. The governmental machine of the bourgeoisie, consequently also the bourgeois parliaments, are to be broken, disrupted, destroyed, and upon their ruins is to be organized a new power, the power of the union of the working class, the workers’ “parliaments,” i.e., the Soviets. Only the betrayers of the workers can deceive the workers with the hope of a “peaceful” social revolution, along the lines of parliamentary reforms. Such persons are the worst enemies of the working class, and a most pitiless struggle must be waged against them; no compromise with them is permissible. Therefore, our slogan for any bourgeois country you may choose is: “Down with Parliament! Long live Soviet power!” Nevertheless, a person may put the question this way: “Very well, you deny the power of the present bourgeois parliaments; then why don’t you organize new, more democratic parliaments on the basis of a real universal suffrage?” During the Socialist revolution the struggle has become so acute that the working class must act quickly and resolutely, without allowing its class enemies to enter into its camp, into its organization of power. Such qualities are only found in the Soviets of workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants, elected in the factories and shops, in the country, and in the barracks. So the question of the form of the proletarian power is just this way. Now the government is to be overthrown. Kings, presidents, parliaments, chambers of deputies, national assemblies — all these institutions are our sworn enemies that must be destroyed. Now we take up the second basic question: can the bourgeois parliaments be fully utilized for the purpose of developing the revolutionary class struggle? Logically, as we just remarked, this question is by no means related to the first question. In fact, a person Zinoviev: Circular Letter on Parliamentarism and Soviets [Sept. 1, 1919] 3 surely can be trying to destroy any kind of organization by joining it and by utilizing it. This is also perfectly understood by our class enemies when the exploit the official Social Democratic parties, the trade unions, and the like for their purposes. Let us take the extreme example: the Russian communists, the Bolsheviki, voted in the election for the Constituent Assembly. They met in its hall. But they came there to break up this assembly within 24 hours and fully to realize the Soviet power. The party of the Bolsheviki also had its deputies in the Tsar’s Imperial Duma. Did the party at that time “recognize” the Duma as an ideal, or, at least, and endurable form of government? It would be lunacy to assume that. It sent its representatives there so as to proceed against the apparatus of the Tsarist power from that side, too, and to contribute to the destruction of that same Duma. It was not for nothing that the Tsarist government condemned the Bolshevist “parliamentarians” to prison for “high treason.” The Bolshevist leaders were also carrying on an illegal work, although they temporarily made use of their “inviolability” in welding together the masses for the drive against Tsarism. But Russia was not the only place where that kind of “parliamentary” activity was carried on. Look at Germany and the activities of Liebknecht. The murdered comrade was the perfect type of revolutionist; so was there then something non-revolutionary in the fact that he, from the tribune of the cursed Prussian Landtag, called upon the soldiers to rise against the Landtag? On the contrary. Here, too, we see the complete admissibility and usefulness of his exploitation of the situation. If Liebknecht had not been a deputy he would never have been able to accomplish such an act; his speeches would have had no such echo. The example of the Swedish Communists in parliament also convinces us of this. In Sweden Comrade Hoglund played and plays the same role as Liebknecht did in Germany. Making use of his position as a deputy, he assists in destroying the bourgeois parliamentary system; none else in Sweden has done as much for the cause of the revolution and the struggle against the war as our friend. In Bulgaria we see the same thing. The Bulgarian Communists have successfully exploited the tribune of parliament for revolutionary purposes. At the recent elections they won seats for 47 deputies. Comrades Blagoev, Kirkov, Kolarov, and other leaders of the Bulgarian Communist Party understand how to exploit the parliamentary tribune in the service of the proletarian revolution. Such “parliamentary work” demands peculiar daring and a special revolutionary spirit; the men there are occupying especially dangerous positions; they are laying mines under the enemy while in the enemy’s camp; the enter parliament for the purpose of getting this machine in their hands in order to assist the masses behind the walls of the parliament in the work of blowing it up. Are we for the maintenance of the bourgeois “democratic” parliaments as the form of the administration of the state? No, not in any case. We are for the Soviets. Yes, we are fore this — in consideration of a whole list of conditions. We know very well that in France, America, and England no such parliamentarians have yet arisen from the masses of the workers. In those countries we have up to now observed a picture of parliamentary betrayal. But this is no proof of the incorrectness of the tactics that we regard as correct! It is only a matter of there being revolutionary parties there like the Bolsheviki or the German Spartacists. If there is such a party then everything can become quite different. It is particularly necessary: (1) that the deciding center of the struggle lies outside parliament (strikes, uprisings, and other kinds of mass action); (2) that the activities in parliament be combined with this struggle; (3) that the deputies also perform illegal work; (4) that they act for the Central Committee and submit to its orders; (5) that they do not heed the parliamentary forms in their acts (have no fear of direct clashes with the bourgeois majority, “talk past it,” etc.). The matter of taking part in the election at a given time during a given electorial campaign, depends upon a whole string of concrete circumstances which, in each country, must be particularly considered at each given time. The Russian Bolsheviki were for boycotting the elections for the first Imperial Duma in 1906. And these same persons were for taking part in the elections of the second Imperial Duma, when it had been shown that the bourgeois-agrarian power would still rule in Russia for many a year. In the year 1918, †- These two sentences not included in the version of the document published in Truth. 4 Zinoviev: Circular Letter on Parliamentarism and Soviets [Sept. 1, 1919] before the election for the German National Assembly, one section of the Spartacists was for taking part in the elections, the other section was against it. But the party of the Spartacists remained a unified communist party. In principle we cannot renounce utilization of parliamentarism. The party of the Russian Bolsheviki declared in the spring of 1918, at its 7th Congress, when it was already in power, in a special resolution that the Russian Communists, in case the bourgeois democracy in Russia, through a peculiar combination of circumstances, should once more get the upper hand, could be compelled to return to the utilization of bourgeois parliamentarism. Room for maneuvering is also to be allowed in this respect. [What we wish specially to emphasize is that in all cases the question is really solved outside parliament, on the streets. Now it is clear that strikes and revolts are the only decisive methods of struggle between labor and capital.†] The comrades’ principal efforts are to consist in the work of mobilizing the masses; establishing the party, organizing their own groups in the unions and capturing them, organizing Soviets in the course of the struggle, leading the mass struggle, agitation for the revolution among the masses — all Published by 1000 Flowers Publishing, Corvallis, OR, 2006. • Non-commercial reproduction permitted. http://www.marxisthistory.org Edited with a footnote by Tim Davenport. this is of first line of importance; parliamentary action and participation in electoral campaigns only as one of the helps in this work — no more. If this is so — and it undoubtedly is so — it is a matter of course that it doesn’t pay to split into those factions that are of different opinions only about this, now secondary, question. The practice of parliamentary prostitution was so disgusting that even the best comrades have prejudices in this question. These ought to be overcome in the course of the revolutionary struggle. Therefore, we urgently appeal to all groups and organizations which are carrying on a real struggle for the Soviets, and call upon them to united firmly, even despite the lack of agreement on this question. All those who are for the Soviets and the proletarian dictatorship will unite as soon as possible and form a unified communist party.

With communist greetings,

G. Zinoviev, President of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

Jean Longuet

A fortunate accident and Jean Longuet’s courteousness, which has become proverbial, provided me with a stenographic text of a speech delivered on September 18 [1919] by this Socialist Deputy in the French Chamber of Deputies as it was last constituted. This speech is entitled, Against Imperialist Peace – For Revolutionary Russia! For half an hour I was plunged by Longuet’s pamphlet into the French parliamentary atmosphere in the epoch of the bourgeois republic’s decline, and it led me to recall the refreshing contempt with which Marx used to refer to the artificial atmosphere of parliamentarianism.

In order immediately to placate his opponents, Jean Longuet begins by reminding his “colleagues” that never, never did he lose his sense of proportion nor his courtesy before the assembled body. He associates himself entirely and wholeheartedly “with those correct considerations which were upheld here by our colleague Viviani with his wonderful eloquence.” When Longuet tries to set to work with his lancet of criticism, the most brazen swashbucklers of imperialism instantly try to gag him by shouts of Alsace-Lorraine. Ah, but urbanity is the outstanding trait of Jean Longuet! Out of considerations of urbanity he seeks first of all to find a common ground with his opponents. Alsace-Lorraine! Why didn’t he, Longuet, just say that he himself finds a number of fortunate paragraphs in the peace treaty? “An insinuation has just now been made here concerning Alsace-Lorraine. We’re all in accord on this score.” And Jean Longuet hides instantly in his vest pocket his critical lancet, which bears a remarkable resemblance to a nail-file.

In his criticism of the peace treaty Longuet proceeds from the same concept of the nation as the one proffered by none other than Renan, that reactionary Jesuit without a God. From Renan who serves to assure a common ground with the nationalist parliament,

Longuet passes on to the liberationist principle of the self-determination of nations, which had been “advanced by the Russian revolution and embraced by President Wilson.”

“It is precisely this principle, Monsieurs, yes, this noble high principle of Renan, Lenin and Wilson” that Jean Longuet would like to see embodied in the [Versailles] peace treaty. However, “in a certain number of cases (these are the actual words: in a certain number of cases) the principle of self-determination of nations remained unrealized in the peace treaty.” This circumstance makes Longuet sad.

The courteous orator is heckled; he is called an advocate of Germany. Jean Longuet energetically defends himself against the charge that he is a defender of Germany, that is, a defender of a crushed and an oppressed country, as against France, in the person of her ruling executioners. “My friends in Germany,” exclaims Longuet “were those who rose up against the Kaiser, those who suffered years of imprisonment, and some of whom gave their lives for a cause which we are defending.” Just what “cause” is referred to here – whether it concerns “the restoration of the right trampled upon in 1871” or the destruction of the bourgeois system – Longuet omits to say. The corpses of Liebknecht and Luxemburg are used by him to fend off the attacks of French imperialists. If during their lifetimes these heroes of German Communism were a constant reproach to all the Longuets, who were shareholders in the imperialist bloc, containing the Russian Czar in one of its wings, then after their deaths they serve most conveniently for gulling the French workers with one’s claim of their alleged friendship and for tossing their heroic martyrdom as a bone to propitiate the enraged watchdogs of French imperialism.

And immediately following this operation Jean Longuet addresses himself to “the eloquent speech of our friend Vandervelde.” I count: exactly three lines in the text separate the reference to the martyred memory of Liebknecht and Luxemburg from the reference to “our friend Vandervelde.” Where life itself has dug an abyss, leaving between Liebknecht and Vandervelde nothing save the contempt of a revolutionist toward a traitor, there the courteous Lon-guet with a single gesture of friendship puts his arms around both the hero and the renegade. Nor is this all. In order to legitimize his respect for Liebknecht – in the parliamentary sense of the word – Longuet calls as witness His Majesty’s Minister Vandervelde who recognized – and who should know this better than Vandervelde? – that two people had saved the honor of German Socialism: Liebknecht and Bernstein. But Liebknecht, after all, considered Bernstein a paltry sycophant of capitalism. But Bernstein, after all, considered Liebknecht a madman and a criminal. What of it? On the footboards of expiring parliamentarianism, in the artificial atmosphere of falsehood and conventionality, courteous Jean Longuet effortlessly couples Liebknecht with Vandervelde and with Bernstein just as he had a while earlier effected a merger between Renan, Lenin and Wilson.

But the parliamentary lieutenants of imperialism are in no haste to take their stand upon a common ground, which Longuet has fertilized with his eloquence. No, they refuse to yield an inch of their position. Whatever may have been Vandervelde’s testimonials to Liebknecht and Bernstein, the Belgian Socialists did, after all, vote for the peace treaty. “Tell us, Monsieur Longuet, whether the Belgian Socialists voted for the peace treaty? Yes or no? (Hear! Hear!)” Jean Longuet himself is preparing, in order to belatedly repair his Socialist reputation, to vote against the treaty, whose appearance he had prepared by his entire previous conduct. For this reason he simply does not answer this yes-or-no question. Did your Belgian “friends” vote for the infamous, ignoble Versailles Treaty, so utterly permeated with cruelty, greed and baseness? Yes or no? Jean Longuet keeps silent. So long as a fact is not mentioned from a parliamentary tribunal, it is virtually non-existent. Jean Longuet is not obliged to cite the ignoble actions of his “eloquent friend Vandervelde,” so long as he is able to quote from Vandervelde’s stylized speeches.

And so … Vandervelde! Belgium! Violation of Neutrality! “We all stand united here.” We all brand this violation of a small country’s independence. True, the Germans issued their protests somewhat belatedly. Alas, such is the march of history. “Only slowly, only gradually,” with melancholy, Longuet explains, “does the consciousness of a raped and a deceived people awaken. Wasn’t that the case in our own country 47 years ago after the Empire?” Just at that moment the vigilant lieutenants of capitalism prick up their ears lest Longuet say: “Don’t our own people suffer your rule up to the present day? Aren’t our people deceived, scorned and oppressed by you? Isn’t it converted by you into an international hangman? Was there ever an epoch, was there ever a people which was constrained by the will and the violence of its government to play a more ignominious, criminal and hangman’s role than is now being played by the enslaved people of France?” At just that moment our most courteous Jean Longuet by merely turning a phrase unloaded 47 years from the shoulders of the French people in order to unmask the criminal clique of oppressors, deceiving and trampling upon the people, not among Clemenceau’s government of victory but rather among the government of Napoleon III, long ago overthrown and since far surpassed in vileness.

And here again the deputy’s hands wield a harmless little lancet. “You are supporting Noske and his 1,200,000 soldiers, who may on the morrow provide the cadres for a great army against us.” An amazing charge! Why shouldn’t the representatives of the Bourse (the French stock market) support Noske who is the German watchman of the Bourse? They are united in the league of hate against the revolutionary proletariat. But this question, the only one that is real, doesn’t exist for Longuet. He dangles before his colleagues the threat that Noske’s army will move “against us.” Against whom? Noske strangles Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and their party. “Against us” – against the French Communists? No, against the Third Republic, against the joint state enterprise of Clemenceau-Barthou-Briand-Longuet.

And again, Alsace-Lorraine. Again, “we are all united on this score.” Of course, it is sad that no plebiscite was held. All the more so since “we” had absolutely nothing to fear from a plebiscite. Incidentally, the coming elections will take the place of a plebiscite. And in the meantime, Millerand will have had the opportunity of carrying out the necessary patriotic, purgative and educational work in Alsace-Lorraine in order thus to effect by means of a future “plebiscite” a complete reconciliation between Longuet’s courteous and legalistic conscience and the stark reality of the Foch-Clemenceau policy. Longuet pleads for only one thing – that the work of purgation be done with a sense of proportion in order not to “abate the profound sympathies of Alsace-Lorraine towards France.” A small dose of humanitarianism for Millerand – and everything will be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

French capitalism has seized the Saar coal basin. Here has been no “restoration of violated laws”; here, not a single case-hardened reporter has been able to discover any “profound sympathies.” This is theft committed in broad daylight. Longuet is very hurt. Longuet is very sad. Apart from the humanistic side of the matter, “the coal of the Saar basin, we are told by the specialists, is not of the best quality.” Was it really impossible – chides Longuet – to obtain the coal “we” need from crucified Germany, from the Ruhr basin, coal of a far better quality, and without incurring parliamentary difficulties in connection with national self-determination? The honorable deputy is, as we see, not bereft of practical sense.

Jean Longuet is, of course, an internationalist. He admits it himself. And who should know better? But what is internationalism? “We never understood it in the sense of the degradation of the fatherland; and our own fatherland is beautiful enough to have no need of counterposing itself to the interests of any other nation. (Chorus of friends: Hear! Hear!)”

This beautiful fatherland, which happens to be at the disposal of Foch-Clemenceau, is in no case hindered by Longuet’s internationalism from utilizing the superior coal of the Ruhr. The sole requirement is: the observance of those forms of parliamentary symmetry which, you will notice, evokes the approbation of all our friends.

Jean Longuet passes on to England. If in appraising the politics of his own country he advanced the authority of Renan, then Longuet likewise appears on the arena of Great Britain’s policy in highly respectable company. Inasmuch as it is necessary to mention Ireland, “wouldn’t it be permissible to recall the great statesmen of England: Gladstone and Campbell-Bannerman? Should England grant freedom to Ireland, nothing would stand in the way of the unification of these countries in a federation.” Having assured Ireland’s welfare through the method of the great Gladstone ’ Longuet runs up against new difficulties: France herself possesses more than one Ireland. Longuet mentions Tunis. “Allow me to remind you, Monsieurs, that for the sake of France this country has borne the most honorable and greatest sacrifices in the course of the war. Out of 55,000 warriors given France by Tunisia, about 45,000 have been killed or wounded – these are official figures. And we have the right to say that this nation… by her sacrifices has conquered for herself the right to a larger share of justice and a greater freedom. (Chorus of friends: Hear! Hear!) “ The poor, unfortunate Arabs of Tunisia, whom the French bourgeoisie flung into the fiery cauldron of war, this black cannon fodder, fell – without a flicker of ideas – at the Marne and the Somme, perishing along with the imported Spanish horses and American steers. And this revolting smear, one of the vilest in the whole vile picture of the world shambles is depicted by Jean Longuet as a supreme and honorable sacrifice which ought to be crowned with the gift of freedom. After the feeble and idle chatter about internationalism and self-determination, the right of the Tunisian Arabs to a shred of freedom is treated as if it were a tip to be thrown to its slaves by the sated and magnanimous Bourse, at the request of one of its parliamentarian brokers. Where then are the limits of parliamentary degradation?

But now we come to Russia. And here Jean Longuet, with a tact-fulness that distinguishes him, begins by bowing low before none other than Clemenceau. “Haven’t all of us here unanimously applauded Clemenceau. when he read from the tribunal of this Chamber the clause relating to the abrogation of the infamous Brest-Litovsk Treaty?” On recalling the Brest-Litovsk peace, Jean Longuet loses all self-control. “The Brest-Litovsk peace is the monument to the bestiality and ignominy of Prussian militarism.” Longuet hurls thunder and lightning. The reason is rather simple: Parliamentary bolts of lightning against the Brest-Litovsk peace which has long ago been swept away by the revolution provides a very favorable and happy background for the deputy’s delicate critical opera-tions on the peace of Versailles.

Jean Longuet favors peace with Soviet Russia. But, naturally, not in any compromising sense. No, Longuet has sure knowledge of a good road to this peace. It is the road of none other than Wilson who has sent his plenipotentiary Bullitt to Soviet Russia. The meaning and content of Bullitt’s mission are sufficiently well known today. His conditions represented a harsher version of the Brest-Litovsk clauses of Kühlmann and Czernin. Included were both the dis-memberment of Russia and cruel pillage of her economy. But let us choose a different topic for discussion. Wilson is, as everybody knows, in favor of the self-determination of nations, and as for Bullitt … “I consider Mr. Bullitt to be one of the most forthright, one of the most honest, well-intentioned men whom I have had the good fortune to meet.” What a consolation it is to learn from Longuet that the American stock market still disposes of men of probity while in the French parliament there are still to be found deputies who know the true worth of American virtue.

Having paid the tribute of gratitude to Clemenceau and Bullitt for their kindness to Russia, Longuet does not refuse to address a few words of encouragement to the Republic of the Soviets. “No one will believe,” says he, “that the Soviet regime could have maintained itself for two years unless it had the backing of the broadest masses of the Russian people. It could not have built an army of 1,200,000 soldiers, led by the best officers of old Russia, and fighting with the ardor of the volunteers of 1793.

This point in Longuet’s speech is the apogee. Recalling the armies of the Convention,” he becomes submerged in national tradition, uses it as a cover for all the class contradictions, embraces Clemenceau in heroic recollections, and at the same time provides a historical formula to effect indirectly the legal adoption of the Soviet State and the Soviet Army.

Such is Longuet. Such is official French Socialism. Such is the parliamentarianism of the Third Republic in its most “democratic” aspect. Conventionalities and phrases, senility and evasiveness, courteous falsehoods, arguments and tricks of a shyster lawyer who, however, seriously takes the planks of the speakers’ stand for the arena of history. Today, when class is openly pitted against class, when historical ideas appear armed to the teeth and all litigation is settled by cold steel, “Socialists” of the Longuet type are an outrageous mockery of our epoch. We have just seen him as he is: he kowtows to the Right; bends curtsies to the Left; pays homage to the great Gladstone who deceived Ireland; kneels before his (physical) grandfather, Marx, who despised and hated the hypocrite Gladstone; lauds the Czarist favorite Viviani, the first Minister President of the imperialist war; combines Renan with the Russian Revolution, Wilson with Lenin and Vandervelde with Liebknecht; slips under the “rights of nations” a foundation consisting of Ruhr coal and Tunisian skeletons; and in performing all these incredible wonders, compared with which swallowing fire is child’s play, Longuet remains true to himself as the courteous incarnation of official Socialism and the crown of French parliamentarianism.

Dear friend! It is high time to put an end to this protracted misunderstanding. The French working class is faced with problems far too great, with tasks far too important and far too sharply posed to tolerate any longer a combination of contemptible Longuetism with the great reality of the proletarian struggle for power. We need above all clarity and truth. Every worker must clearly understand just who are his friends and enemies; he must clearly know where his reliable comrades-in-arms are and where the base traitor is to be found. Liebknecht and Luxemburg are with us, while Longuet and Vandervelde must be mercilessly thrown into that filthy bourgeois heap from which they seek so vainly to crawl to the socialist road. Our epoch demands ideas and words of full weight as the prerequisites for fully-weighted deeds. We have no need any longer for the obsolete decorations of parliamentarianism, its chiaroscuro, its optical illusions. The proletariat of France needs the clean, brave air of the proletarian streets; it needs clarity of thought in its brain, a firm will in its heart and – a rifle in its hands.

A definitive settlement with Longuetism is the unpostponable demand of political hygiene. And while I have reacted to Longuet’s speech with an emotion for which there is no appropriate label in the courteous lexicon of parliamentarianism, here at the close of my letter I am able to think with joy of the superb cleansing job which the ardent French proletariat will accomplish throughout the utterly bespattered edifice of the bourgeois republic, when it finally proceeds to the solution of its last historical task.

Trotski

[Referring to this “letter,” on February 14, 1920, Lenin would step up his denunciation of Longuetism—and, more generally, of democratic-parliamentary and centrist positions in France, Germany, and Austria—in “Notes of a Publicist,” which appeared in issue 9 of the same journal. Ed.]

Part II

TWO CLARIFICATIONS OF IL SOVIET

“Participation in elections to the representative organs of bourgeois democracy and participation in parliamentary activity, while always presenting a continuous danger of deviation, may be utilised for propaganda and education of the movement during the period in which there does not yet exist the possibility of overthrowing bourgeois rule and in which, as a consequence, the party’s task is restricted to criticism and opposition. In the present period, which began with the end of the world war, with the first communist revolutions and the creation of the Third International, communists pose, as the direct objective of the political action of the proletariat in every country, the revolutionary conquest of power, to which end all the energy and all the preparatory work of the party must be devoted.
    In this period, it is inadmissible to participate in these organs which function as a powerful defensive instrument of the bourgeoisie and which are designed to operate even within the ranks of the proletariat. It is precisely in opposition to these organs, to their structure as to their function, that communists call for the system of workers’ councils and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
    Because of the great importance which electoral activity assumes in practice, it is not possible to reconcile this activity with the assertion that it is not the means of achieving the principal objective of the party’s action, which is the conquest of power. It also is not possible to prevent it from absorbing all the activity of the movement and from diverting it from revolutionary preparation…”

From Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction, May 1920

The Zinoviev circular did not appear in the socialist press until the early months of 1920; it was, on the other hand, crystal clear, in repeated hammering statements by leading Bolshevik exponents, that the tactical question of “revolutionary parliamentarism” took a back seat in the face of the crucial problems of party formation on the basis of the insurmountable demarcation line of the violent seizure of power, proletarian dictatorship, and centralization, which of all this represented, for Lenin, Trotsky and all true communists, the necessary premise: therefore, of principled anti-democracy.

For the abstentionists of the Communist Fraction of the P.S.I., it was of the utmost importance to make it clear that, on those points of doctrine, not only was there no hesitation for them, but that their proclamation and defense constituted the true center of gravity of the current represented, with a broad national base, by the “Il Soviet”. The Fraction was opposed to electoral maximalism, which in questions of principle swerved fearfully and made participation in elections, against the directives of the Bolsheviks, such an imperious prejudice as to force unity with the reformist right and the sacrifice of real and not rhetorical revolutionary preparation of the masses in the red-hot postwar period. But it also opposed anarchism, syndicalism-revolutionaryism and workerism, deniers in various ways and degrees of the party and dictatorship or, even, of political struggle. It mattered to reiterate — as precisely in the two texts we publish, preludes to the Second World Congress — how communist abstentionism descended not from theoretical principles diverging from the most orthodox Marxism, but, in the framework of the latter, reaffirmed in all its extension and power, from an assessment of the negative and even ruinous weight of the electoralist tradition in countries with advanced capitalism and secular democratic political structure.

In them, and only in them — where the prospect was pure proletarian revolution, unlike in Tsarist Russia, or in countries where bourgeois revolution was still waiting to take place — abstentionism constituted, in our view, an indispensable instrument of ideological preparation of the masses for the revolutionary battle, a decisive means of selection from the Right and the more equivocal Center within the old socialist parties, and a test of the seriousness of adherence to the Third International outside superficial enthusiasms and all too interested “fashions,” in short, a practical reagent in the prophylaxis against the Longuetism of the Longuets and the crypto-Longuetism of the Cachins, the Frossards, the Serratis or the Smerals.

Time has given bitter confirmations of that critical assessment — in frank and serene polemic with Moscow, but in perfect parallelism with the great theses of principle vigorously proclaimed by the Bolsheviks — and the texts we reproduce can rightly be considered anticipators of a future in which it will become not the subject of a debate, but one of the cornerstones of proletarian redemption and its world victory.

1

Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party
Central Committee
Borgo Sant’Antonio Abate 221
Naples

To the Moscow Committee of the III International.

Our fraction was formed after the Bologna Congress of the Italian Socialist Party (6-10 October 1919), but it had issued its propaganda previously through the Naples newspaper il Soviet, convening a conference at Rome which approved the programme subsequently presented to the Congress. We enclose a collection of issues of the journal, plus several copies of the programme together with the motion with which it was put to the vote.

It should be noted at the outset that throughout the war years a powerful extremist movement operated within the Party, opposing both the openly reformist politics of the parliamentary group and the General Confederation of Labour and also those of the Party leadership, despite the fact that they followed an intransigent revolutionary line in accordance with the decisions of the pre-War congresses. The leadership has always been split into two currents vis-a-vis the problem of the War. The right-wing current identified itself with Lazzari, author of the formula «neither support nor sabotage the war», the left-wing current with Serrati, the editor of Avanti!. However, the two currents presented a united front at all meetings held during the war, and although they had reservations concerning the attitude of the parliamentary group, they did not come out firmly against them. Left elements outside the leadership struggled against this ambiguity, being determined to split the reformists of the group away from the Party and not even the 1918 Congress of Rome, held just before the Armistice, to adopt a more revolutionary attitude, was able to break with the transigent politics of the deputies. The leadership, despite the addition of extremist elements like Gennari and Bombacci, did not effect much change in its line; indeed, this was weakened by a soft attitude towards some of the activities of a right wing hostile to the orientation of the majority of the Party.

After the war, apparently the whole Party adopted a «maximalist» line, affiliating to the III International. However, from a communist point of view, the Party’s attitude was not satisfactory; we beg you to note the polemics published in il Soviet taking issue with the parliamentary group, the Confederation (in connection with the «constituent assembly of trades») and with the leadership itself, in particular concerning the preparations for the 20-21 July strike. Together with other comrades from all over Italy, we at once opted our electoral abstentionism, which we supported at the Bologna Congress. We wish to make it clear that at the congress we were at variance with the Party not only on the electoral question, but also on the question of splitting the Party.

The victorious «maximalist electionist» faction too had accepted the thesis that the reformists were incompatible with the Party, but failed to act on it for purely electoral calculations – notwithstanding the anti-communist speeches of Turati and Treves. This is a powerful argument in favour of abstentionism: unless electionist and parliamentary activity is abandoned, it will not be possible to form a purely Communist Party.

Parliamentary democracy in the Western countries assumes forms of such a character that it constitutes the most formidable weapon for deflecting the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. The left in our Party has been committed to polemicizing and struggling against bourgeois democracy since 1910-11, and this experience leads us to the conclusion that in the present world revolutionary situation, all contact with the democratic system needs to be severed.

The present situation in Italy is as follows: the Party is waging a campaign against the war and the interventionist parties, certain of deriving great electoral advantages from this policy. But since the present government is composed of bourgeois parties which were hostile to the war in 1915, a certain confluence results between the Party’s electoral activity and the politics of the bourgeois government. As all the reformist ex-deputies have been readopted as candidates, the Nitti government, which has good relations with them as may be seen from the most recent parliamentary episodes, will trim its behaviour to ensure that they are preferred. Then the Party, exhausted as it is by the enormous efforts it has made in the present elections, will become bogged down in polemics against the transigent attitude of the deputies. Then we will have the preparations for the administrative elections in July 1920; for many months, the Party will make no serious revolutionary propaganda or preparations. It is to be hoped that unforeseen developments do not intervene and overwhelm the Party. We attach importance to the question of electoral activity, and we feel it is contrary to communist principles to allow individual parties affiliated to the III International to decide the question for themselves. The international communist party should study the problem and resolve it for everyone.

Today we are resolved to work towards the formation of a truly communist party, and our fraction inside the Italian Socialist Party has set itself this goal. We hope that the first parliamentary skirmishes will bring many comrades towards us, so that the split with the social-democrats may he accomplished. At the congress, we received 3,417 votes (67 sections voting for us), while the maximalist electionists won with 48,000 votes and the reformists received 14,000. We are also at variance with the maximalists on other issues of principle: in the interests of brevity we enclose a copy of the programme adopted by the congress, which is the Party’s programme today (not one member left the Party as a result of the changes in the programme), together with some comments of our own.

It should be noted that we are not collaborating with movements outside the Party, such as anarchists and syndicalists, for they follow principles which are non-communist and contrary to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Indeed, they accuse us of being more authoritarian and centralist than the other maximalists in the Party. See the polemics in il Soviet. What is needed in Italy is a comprehensive clarification of the communist programme and tactics, and we will devote all our efforts to this end. Unless a party that concerns itself solely and systematically with propagandizing and preparing the proletariat along communist lines is successfully organized, the revolution could emerge defeated.

As far as the question of tactics is concerned, in particular the setting up of Soviets, it appears to us that errors are being committed even by our friends; what we are afraid of is that nothing more will be accomplished than to give a reformist twist to the craft unions. Efforts are in fact being made to set up workshop committees, as in Turin, and then to bring all the delegates from a given industry (engineering) together to take over the leadership of the trade union, by appointing its executive committee. In this way, the political functions of the workers’ councils for which the proletariat should be prepared arc not being tackled; whereas, in our view, the most important problem is to organize a powerful class-based party (Communist Party) that will prepare the insurrectionary seizure of power from the hands of the bourgeois government.

It is our earnest desire to know your opinion concerning: (a) parliamentary and municipal electionism and the prospects for a decision on this question by the Communist International; (b) splitting the Italian party; (c) the tactical problem of setting up Soviets under a bourgeois regime, and the limits of such action.

We salute both yourselves and the great Russian proletariat, the pioneer of universal communism.
 
 

Naples, 10 November 1919.

2

Naples, 11 January 1920.

Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party
Central Committee
Borgo Sant’Antonio Abate 221

To the Central Committee of the Communist III International, Moscow.
 

Dearest Comrades,

We sent you a previous communication on 11 November. We are writing in Italian in the knowledge that your office is run by Comrade Balabanov, who has an excellent knowledge of the language.

Our movement is made up of those who voted in favour of the abstentionist tendency at the Bologna congress. We are again sending you our programme and its accompanying motion. We hope you received the collection of our newspaper il Soviet, and this time we are sending you copies of Numbers 1 and 2 of the new series which began this year. The object of this letter is to let you have some comments of ours on Comrade Lenin’s letter to the German communists, published by Rote Fahne on 20 December 1919 and reproduced by Avanti! on the 31st, to give you a clearer idea of our political position.

First of all, let us draw your attention once again to the fact that the Italian Socialist Party still contains opportunist socialists of the Adler and Kautsky ilk, of whom Lenin speaks in the first part of his letter. The Italian party is not a communist party; it is not even a revolutionary party. The «maximalist electionist» majority is closer in spirit to the German Independents. At the congress we differentiated ourselves from this majority not only on the issue of electoral tactics, but also on the question of excluding the reformists led by Turati from the party. Hence the division between ourselves and those maximalists who voted in favour of Serrati’s motion at Bologna is not analogous to the division between the supporters of abstentionism and the supporters of electoral participation within the German Communist Party, but corresponds rather to the division between Communists and independents.

In programmatic terms our point of view has nothing in common with anarchism and syndicalism. We favour the strong and centralized Marxist political party that Lenin speaks of. Indeed we are the most fervent supporters of this idea in the maximalist camp. We are not In favour of boycotting economic trade unions but of communists taking them over, and our position corresponds to that expressed by comrade Zinoviev in his report to the Congress of the Russian Communist Party, published by Avanti! on 1 January.

As for the workers’ councils, these exist in only a few places in Italy and then they are exclusively factory councils, made up of workshop delegates who are concerned with questions internal to the factory. Our proposal, on the other hand, is to take the initiative in setting up rural and municipal Soviets, elected directly by the masses assembled in the factories or villages; for we believe that in preparing for the revolution, the struggle should have a predominantly political character. We are in favour of participating in elections to any representative body of the working class when the electorate consists exclusively of workers. On the other hand, we are against the participation of communists in elections for parliaments, or bourgeois municipal and provincial councils, or constituent assemblies, because we arc of the opinion that it is not possible to carry out revolutionary work in such bodies; we believe that electoral work is an obstacle in the path of the Working masses, forming a communist consciousness and laying the preparations for the proletarian dictatorship as the antithesis of bourgeois democracy.

To participate in such bodies and expect to emerge unscathed by social-democratic and collaborationist deviations is a vain hope in the current historical period, as is shown by the present Italian parliamentary session. These conclusions arc reinforced by the experience of the struggle waged by the left wing in our Party from 1910-11 to the present day against all the manoeuvrings of parliamentarism, in a country which has supported a bourgeois democratic regime for a long time: the campaign against ministerialism; against forming electoral political and administrative alliance with democratic parties; against freemasonry and bourgeois anticlericalism, etc. From this experience we drew the conclusion that the gravest danger for the socialist revolution lies in collaborating with bourgeois democracy on the terrain of social reformism. This experience was subsequently generalized in the course of the war and the revolutionary events in Russia, Germany, Hungary, etc.

Parliamentary intransigence was a practical proposition, despite continual clashes and difficulties, in a non-revolutionary period, when the conquest of power on the part of the working class did not seem very likely. In addition, the more the regime and the composition of parliament itself have a traditional democratic character, the greater become the difficulties of parliamentary action. It is with these points in mind that we would judge the comparisons with the Bolsheviks’ participation in elections to the Duma after 1905. The tactic employed by the Russian comrades, of participating in elections to the Constituent Assembly and then dissolving it by force, despite the fact that it did not prove to be the undoing of the revolution, would be a dangerous tactic to use in countries where the parliamentary system, far from being a recent phenomenon, is an institution of long standing and one that is rooted firmly in the consciousness and customs of the proletariat itself.

The work required to gain the support of the masses for the abolition of the system of democratic representation would appear to be – and is in fact – a much greater task for us in Italy than in, say, Russia or even Germany. The need to give the greatest force to this propaganda aimed at devaluing the parliamentary institution and eliminating its sinister counter-revolutionary influence has led us to the tactic of abstentionism. To electoral activity we counterpoise the violent conquest of political power on the part of the proletariat and the formation of the Council State: hence our abstentionism in no way diminishes our insistence on the need for a centralized revolutionary government. Indeed, we are against collaborating with anarchists and syndicalists within the revolutionary movement, for they do not accept such criteria of propaganda and action.

The general election of 16 November, despite the fact that it was fought by the PSI on a maximalist platform, has proved once again that electoral activity excludes and pushes into the background every other form of activity, above all illegal activity. In Italy the problem is not one of uniting legal and illegal activity, as Lenin advises the German comrades, but of beginning to reduce legal activity in order to make a start on its illegal counterpart, which does not exist at all. The new parliamentary group has devoted itself to social-democratic and minimalist work, tabling questions, drafting legislation, etc.

We conclude our exposition by letting you know that in all likelihood, although we have maintained discipline within the PSI and upheld its tactics until now, before long and perhaps prior to the municipal elections, which are due in July, our traction will break away from the party that seems set on retaining many anti-communists in its ranks, to form the Italian Communist Party, whose first act will be to affiliate to the Communist International.
 

Revolutionary Greetings.

LENIN’S LETTER

Il Soviet, January 11, 1920)

The tremendous influence exerted by the wise word of the great communist compels us to comment on this latest letter published in the Avanti! a few days ago, addressed to the German communists, in which he advises them to participate in the bourgeois parliament. Already on another occasion Lenin in a short letter to Comrade Serrati had expressed his approval of the Italian Socialist Party’s intention to participate in the parliamentary elections, thus contrasting with our decidedly abstentionist point of view. Lenin, who knows how great, and deservedly so, is his prestige, hastens in both letters, very wisely, to premise that he has very scanty information, and this is to caution those who might wish to make excessive assessment of his judgment, which he certainly admits is possibly inaccurate due to lack of precise data. 

Of Italian socialism he, who was in Zimmerwald, knows the party’s decisive aversion to the war, which together with its adherence to the Third International has made the party itself outside our country acquire a credit greater than its merits by making it pass for a party with a strong revolutionary character; which is just not absolutely accurate. 

The repercussion of the war phenomenon was, within the party, more than a product of theoretical evaluation, mainly sentimental in nature and therefore often absurd and contradictory.

There are not a few of our comrades and of the best who, staunch opponents of war, declare themselves equally relentless opponents of all violence for whatever reason exercised. Were opposed to the war many of the most tenacious reformists who accept the concept of the defense of the homeland. Many out of calculation, out of prudence, a few out of deep intimate conviction. Therefore, the opposing attitude never went beyond a verbal exercise. During the crisis of Caporetto, no attempt was made to try to take advantage of the difficult moment of the bourgeoisie, which encountered no obstacle to overcome the perilous pass. On the contrary, the party scrambled at that hour and after to exonerate itself of the responsibility that the bourgeoisie wanted to place on it for having participated in provoking that phenomenon, without claiming that little which could be due for the contrary propaganda constantly made, which couldn’t fail to bear some fruit.

In those days Turati, speaker of the parliamentary group, echoed the words of the prime minister inciting resistance, exclaiming: The fatherland is on the Grappa, and in the newspaper he wrote of the danger of the second enemy (the foreigner) without the party raising protest, indeed with the almost general consent of the it. 

How few in that hour held firm within their soul and did not invoke the liberating democratic victory of the Entente arms that would fulfill the Wilsonian gospel! The cleverest kept silent and waited for the propitious hour of the electoral struggle to put themselves forward to the masses with a stainless certificate of opposition to the war, where the most imprudent spoke out and today pay the price.

And that is as far as war aversion is concerned, the credit for which belongs to only a very few. Let us not speak of joining the Third International. The sincerity of this membership and the consciousness of it is in the way the vote was taken, that is, by acclamation.

Those who are distant and have little accurate information, including therefore comrade Lenin, believe that the Italian party is homogeneously and authentically revolutionary, that is, that it has already purged itself of all the old Social Democratic dead weight. 

Who knows what considerations Lenin would make if he knew, for example, that the Italian Communists, to whom he believes he is addressing himself, are not such but simply socialists (by now the importance that the diversity of the denomination has assumed is no longer questioned by anyone), or if, for example, he knew that there are social democrats in the party who are far to the right of the renegade traitor Kautsky and who are far more explicitly and tenaciously declared enemies of Bolshevism than he is; and all of this at the behest of the director of Comunismo and the maximalists, in opposition to the proposals of our fraction, on the sole ground that the unity of the party should not be broken in the imminence of the battle with … ballots for winning more seats in the national parliament.

Lenin says that there can be no peace, that one cannot work together with Kautsky, Adler, etc.; here with us it is not a question of working together; unfortunately, it is a question of living together in the same party, with the same discipline and, irony!, even with the same program… the electoral one. 

So too, it is not a question of uniting illegal and legal work; unfortunately, we do only the latter, which is the only one that many parts of the party consider useful and necessary to have to do because it is the only truly revolutionary one. 

About the participation in the bourgeois parliament recommended to the German Communists, it is not worth recalling the varied behaviour held by the Bolsheviks in relation to the Duma, as these are not behaviours that can be evaluated by analogy.

For us, the fundamental reason for non-participation lies above all in the evaluation of the historical period one is passing through, believing, as we have at other times amply developed, that in the revolutionary period the one and only task of the Communist Party is to devote its every activity to the preparation of revolutionary action tending to violently overthrow the bourgeois state and to prepare for the realization of communism. 

A question of such cardinal importance involves the whole substantial function of the party, as appeared sharply in Germany in the hour of the collapse of the old empire, during which those like Scheidemann, Kautsky, etc., who wanted parliamentary action appeared and were consequently opportunists. 

In countries where democracy has no tradition, as in Russia, this appearance is manifested in those critical hours; in our countries, where democracy has lived for a long time, there is no need to wait for these crises in order to judge the conduct of certain fractions, which have constantly done opportunistic, collaborationist and anti-revolutionary work, such as the parliamentary function demands and imposes. 

It amazes us that Lenin lumps together, as if they were the same thing, the renunciation of participation in bourgeois parliaments and that of reactionary trade unions, factory councils, etc., which some German Communists advocate. FIN QUI

For us these are two things that cannot go together: parliament is a bourgeois organ, nor can it have any other function except in the interests of the bourgeoisie; it must therefore disappear with the fall of bourgeois rule. The workers’ union, on the contrary, is a purely class organ, which although, due to recklessness of the leaders, carries out reactionary activities can, indeed must, be recalled to its true function.

Intervention in parliament for communists is of no interest since it is to be destroyed; not so the trade union, workers’ council, etc., which do revolutionary work under bourgeois rule, insofar as they are imbued with communist spirit and act on communist directives under the impetus and control of communists; for equally they will be useful and positively factual organs under communist rule not only because of the form of their constitution.

If the German Communists want to boycott these workers’ bodies, it is also possible that they are compelled to do so for reasons of defense and preservation, in order to evade the persecution of the socialrogue Noske who has unleashed his spies in these bodies.

But if, on the other hand, they were doing this out of a tendency to the anarchist-individualist conception of the revolution, then we need not remind that we are resolutely opposed to such an attitude since we are in perfect agreement with Lenin on the necessity of having a strong, centralized political party which is the brain, soul and sure guide of the proletariat in the struggle for its redemption.

To this end we continue our tenacious action for the division of communists from social democrats, a division which for us is an indispensable factor for the victory of communism.

THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL AND PARLIAMENT

Il Soviet, April 11, 1920

The circular of the E.C. of the Communist International signed by Zinoviev and published in Comunismo Nos. 8 and 9 compels us to return once again to the vexed question of parliamentarianism. On it the circular in its first words thus expresses, “The present stage of the revolutionary movement has placed on the agenda, in the most bitter form, among other questions, that of parliamentarianism.”

Let these words count as an answer for those who say that we have made it a kind of nightmare, that we alone give it undue importance, while it is a matter of tactics and not of program, and therefore of secondary character.

We have already said several times that for us questions of tactics are of the greatest value, because they indicate the action that parties should take; these discuss questions of program precisely in order to derive tactical directives from them, otherwise instead of being political parties they would be congregations of dreamers.

Between the social democrats and the communists what divides them is not the distant goal they both want to achieve, but precisely the tactics, and the division is so deep that in Germany and elsewhere no little blood has run between the two parties. Nobody can argue that this is secondary and of little importance.

We agree in admitting that the question of parliamentarianism should be separated into two issues. On the first, that is, on the necessity of overthrowing parliamentarianism in order to give all power to the Soviets, there should be no disagreement among the parties (and therefore among their members), adherents of the Third International, because this constitutes the cornerstone, the backbone of its program. We say should because this duty is shirked by the P.S.I., of which a notable section blatantly supports the opposite concept and another no less notable one has not realized at all the profound antithesis there is between parliamentarianism and Sovietist power. Perhaps because of the knowledge of this equivocal hybridity that exists in our Party the comrades of the Third International, while addressing other parties, do not deal with the Italian one. Do they wait for it to come out of the equivocation? And they can go whistle for it waiting!

As for the second question, that “bourgeois parliaments may be exploited for the purpose of the unfolding of class struggle,” it does not seem to us accurate, according to what the circular states, that it bears no relation to the first question.

If it is recognized that there is a profound antithesis between the parliamentary and soviet conceptions, it must also be recognized that it is necessary to spiritually prepare the masses to realize this antithesis, to familiarize themselves with the idea of the necessity of overthrowing the bourgeois parliamentary regime and establishing soviets. Parties supporting this program can effectively carry out their propaganda on the sole condition that they do not absolutely devalue it by action, accepting themselves to participate in the function of parliaments. This is especially so in countries where such participation has been enhanced by the long custom and credit given to these bodies by precisely those parties that would like to advocate an opposite concept in this regard today.

These parties have persistently educated the masses to give supreme importance to parliaments, preaching that all state power belongs to them and that, if only one succeeds in winning a majority, one is the absolute master of power.

All the more reason why an election campaign with an anti-parliamentary content cannot be waged together under the same banner, in the name and with the discipline of the same party, by those who, at least in words, call for the overthrow “from within” of the bourgeois parliament and those who continue to view it from the standpoint of social democracy.

The examples Zinoviev gives in support of his argument are not convincing. To say that the Russian Bolsheviks participated in the constituent elections to sweep it away 24 hours later is not to prove that bourgeois parliamentarianism was exploited to the advantage of the revolution. Evidently the Bolsheviks participated in the elections because at that time they did not feel they had sufficient strength to prevent the constituent elections, otherwise this they would have done. As soon as they became aware that they were strong enough, they decided on action. This strength they could not acquire by virtue of their participation in the struggle, nor could they acquire at least the consciousness of it, because the election results were not, and fortunately so, favorable to them. Perhaps, if this had been the case, the constituent assembly would not have been torn down.

To demonstrate the futility of the constituent and any parliament, or rather, to demonstrate the usefulness of bringing them down, we accept that it may benefit to intervene in electoral struggles, but only in the negative sense, that is, without candidates. Only in this way can the demonstration of anti-parliamentarianism have real efficacy with the masses, because it is concordant in theory and practice, not contradictory as that which can be made by that renewed siren, the would-be anti-parliamentarian parlamentarian.

So, too, it is of no use remembering that the Bolsheviks participated in the Tsarist Duma before the war, in a profoundly different historical condition, when the possibility of the coming overthrow of the bourgeois regime was not even a dream; nor is it accurate to say that the quality of parliamentarianism benefited Liebknecht’s revolutionary work during the war, when this quality only forced him into an initial forced vote in favor of military credits. Alongside him and with him, not a few other martyrs faced the same struggle, all of which took place outside parliament, where they were not even allowed to speak.

The argument of the relative immunity that parliamentary privilege can give to someone who can enjoy it cannot appear in the mind of someone who feels in himself the deep faith to devote himself to the cause of revolution, which requires unlimited spirit of sacrifice.

On the other hand, when the parliamentarian really does revolutionary and dangerous work, he loses his guarantee, as Liebknecht himself proved, as did the deputies of the Czarist Duma or the Bulgarian parliament, etc. As for the landmines which Communist MPs lay against the enemy while in his camp, and which are their votes, speeches, bills, agendas, perhaps shouts, punches and the like, there is no need to fear: with them, at most, one blows up … a ministry.

The E.C. of the Third International, believing that the anti-parliamentarians are syndicalists and anarchists, takes care to include these in the Communist Party in order to raise to a certain extent those from the socialist parties who are more disposed to parliamentary action than to illegal action, to which they tend more than the others. Therefore, while it insists on declaring that the real solution is outside parliament, in the street, it advises the former on parliamentary action and all on unity, lest we weaken revolutionary forces which it shows that after all it considers more effective and decisive than the latter.

Without repeating once again how different our anti- parliamentarianism is from that of the syndicalists and anarchists, we conclude that we believe, in perfect agreement with the E.C. of the Third International, that the question of parliamentarianism must be defined as a general norm. If, however, the E.C. believes it has solved it with its circular, we maintain that we cannot accept its resolution, which solves nothing, but leaves things as they are with all their harmful consequences. The question must be posed at the next congress of the Third International, so that everywhere the parties adhering to it adopt and practice its resolutions in a disciplined manner.

There will be no shortage at the congress of those who will make known all the reasons which we advise, in our opinion, the Third International to adopt in relation to parliamentarianism the abstentionist tactics which we advocate.

On the question of parliamentarianism

Il Soviet, April 25, 1920

The article we publish here, translated from ‘Kommunismus’, the organ of the 3rd International for south-eastern Europe, is a very valuable contribution to the question of parliamentarianism and corresponds to a great extent to our views.

We reproduce it in the certainty of pleasing our readers, who will not fail to appreciate the importance of these very important writings in the discussion of this vital subject, which — like this one — make it clear how much Italian electoral maximalism is at fault with the international communist doctrines and organs.

I.

It is now generally agreed that the question of parliamentarianism is not a question of principle, but only a question of tactics. Although this thesis is undoubtedly correct, it nevertheless has many obscure points. Quite apart from the fact that it is enunciated almost exclusively by those who are in practice for parliamentarianism — so that adherence to it almost always means adherence to parliamentarianism — little is said when it is said that a question is not a question of principle but only a question of tactics. Especially since, in the absence of a true theory (of knowledge) of socialism, the relationship of a tactical question to principles is quite obscure.

Without wishing to deal even briefly with this problem here, the following must nevertheless be considered certain. Tactics means the practical implementation of established principles. Tactics is thus the link between the final goal and the immediate reality. It is thus determined on the one hand by the firmly established principles and aims of Communism, and on the other by the constantly changing historical reality. When speaking of the great pliability of communist tactics (at least in relation to what this should be), for the exact understanding of this concept it must not be forgotten that the pliability of communist tactics is a direct consequence of the rigidity of communist principles. It is only because the immutable communist principles are destined to vitally and fruitfully transform the ever-changing reality that they can retain such pliability. Every ‘realist policy’, every action that is not guided by principles, becomes rigid and schematic the more it is deemed original by unprincipled men (e.g. German imperialist policy), because the immanent in the changeable, the driving force in the complexity of facts, are things that ‘realist policy’ cannot fix. If political action is not guided by a theory capable of fruitfully influencing events and becoming fruitful for them, in its place comes custom, copying, routine, unfit to adapt to the needs of the moment.

Precisely because of this cohesion with theory and principles, communist tactics differ from any bourgeois or social-democratic petty-bourgeois ‘realist politics’. If, therefore, for the communist party a problem is posed as a tactical problem, the question must be asked: 1. to which principles the problem in question is linked! – 2  in accordance with this principle, in what historical situation can this tactic be employed! — 3. again in accordance with the principles, what nature should the tactic be! 4. how one must consider the connection of a single tactical question with other particular tactical questions — again in connection with questions of principle!

II.

In order to define parliamentarianism more precisely as a tactical problem of communism, one must always start on the one hand from the principle of the class struggle, and on the other hand from the concrete analysis of the present and real state of the material and ideological power relations of the classes in struggle. This gives rise to two decisive questions: 1. when, in general terms, can parliamentarianism be considered as a weapon, as a tactical means of the proletariat! — 2° how is this weapon to be used in the interest of the proletarian class struggle!

The class struggle of the proletariat denies bourgeois society by its very nature. This in no way means indifferentism towards the state, rightly mocked by Marx, but on the contrary, that a form of struggle must be adopted in which the proletariat does not get its hands tied by the forms and means that bourgeois society has moulded for its own ends, that is, a form of struggle in which the initiative is fundamentally on the side of the proletariat. It must not be forgotten, however, that this form of proletarian struggle can only rarely be developed in all its purity, mainly because the proletariat, although as a result of its historical-philosophical mission is in perpetual struggle against the very existence of bourgeois society, nevertheless in actual historical situations it often finds itself reduced to the defensive against the bourgeoisie. The idea of the proletarian class struggle is in itself a great offensive against capitalism, and history makes this offensive appear as a necessity for the proletariat. The tactical position, in which the proletariat finds itself from time to time, can therefore be defined in the simplest way according to whether it is offensive or defensive in character. From what has been said so far, the consequence flows spontaneously that in a defensive situation tactical means must be used, which by their very nature are in contradiction with the idea of the proletarian class struggle. Therefore the use of such means, which is inevitable, is always combined with the danger that they may damage the purpose for which they are used, the class struggle of the proletariat.

Parliament, the characteristic instrument of the bourgeoisie, can therefore only be a defensive weapon of the proletariat. This undoubtedly answers the question of when it should be used: at a stage in the class struggle when, due to both external relations of force and internal ideological immaturity, it is not possible for the proletariat to fight the bourgeoisie with its own specific means of attack. Acceptance of parliamentary activity therefore means for every communist party the consciousness and confession that revolution cannot be thought of in the short term. The proletariat, forced onto the defensive, can then use the parliamentary forum for agitation and propaganda; it can use the possibilities, ensured by bourgeois freedom for members of parliament, as a substitute for the other forms of manifestation that have been suppressed; parliamentary struggles with the bourgeoisie can serve to gather the forces to prepare for the real struggle against the bourgeoisie. It is easy to understand that such a phase may at present be of relatively long duration, but this does not alter the fact that for a communist party parliamentary activity can never be anything other than a preparation for the real struggle, not the struggle itself.

On the question of parliamentarianism Pt. 2

Il Soviet, May 2, 1920

III.

More difficult than determining when parliamentary activity can be used is to determine what the course of action of a communist fraction in parliament should be. (After all, the two questions are closely linked). One is routinely referred (most recently Radek. Die Entwicklung der Weltrevolution — The Development of the World Revolution — p. 29 to) the examples of Karl Liebknecht and the Bolshevik fraction in the Duma. But precisely these two examples show how difficult it is for communists to find the right path and what sum of extraordinary aptitudes it presupposes in communist parliamentarians. The difficulty can be expressed briefly as follows: the communist parliamentarian must fight parliament in parliament itself — and with a tactic, which at no time lies on the terrain of the bourgeoisie and parliamentarism. This is neither about protesting against parliamentarism, nor about fighting in the sessions, (all of which remain parliamentary, legalitarian, pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric), but about fighting parliamentarianism and bourgeois rule with deeds in parliament itself.

These revolutionary acts can have no other purpose than to ideologically prepare the proletariat’s move from the defensive to the offensive; that is to say, with these acts one forces the bourgeoisie with its social-democratic auxiliaries to uncover its class dictatorship in such a way, that it can become dangerous for the duration of the dictatorship itself.

Hence the communist tactic of unmasking the bourgeoisie in parliament consists not in verbal criticism (which in many cases constitutes empty pseudo-revolutionary phraseology, easily tolerated by the bourgeoisie), but in provoking the bourgeoisie to proceed openly, to uncover itself through action, which at a given moment may become unfavourable to it. Since parliamentarianism is for the proletariat a defensive tactic, it must be directed in such a way that the tactical initiative nevertheless remains with the proletariat, and that the assaults of the bourgeoisie become dangerous for it. (Engels certainly thinks of such tactics in his preface, so often misunderstood – in most cases deliberately — to Klassenkampfe im Frankreich (Class Struggles in France) when he says that the parties of order are falling apart together with the legal institutions they have created. His is undoubtedly the description of a defensive position).

I hope this brief and summary exposition has shown with sufficient clarity the great difficulties of such a tactic. The first difficulty, which confronts parliamentary groups almost without exception, is the following: actually managing to emerge from parliamentarianism in parliament itself. Because the most acute criticism of any action of the ruling classes remains mere wordplay, mere pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, if it does not come out of the parliamentary arena, if it does not have the effect of igniting the real class struggle at that moment, of highlighting the class contrasts and thus the ideology of the proletariat.

Opportunism — the greatest danger of parliamentary tactics — has its ultimate roots precisely in this, that every parliamentary tactic, which in its essence and its effects does not go beyond parliament, or does not at least have the tendency to jump out of the parliamentary camp, is opportunistic. Even the most severe criticism, which is exercised within the parliamentary field, cannot change this. On the contrary, this leads to the opposite effect. It is precisely by making a severe criticism of bourgeois society appear possible within the confines of parliament that one contributes to the disturbance of the proletarian class consciousness, which is in the bourgeoisie’s desire.

The pretense of bourgeois parliamentary democracy boasts precisely that parliament appears not as an instrument of class oppression, but as the organ of ‘all the people’. Since all wordy radicalism — through the illusion of its parliamentary possibilism — reinforces the illusions of the unconscious strata of the proletariat in relation to that illusion, it is opportunistic and must be rejected.

Parliament must therefore be sabotaged as such and parliamentary activity must be brought out of parliamentarianism. Assigned such a task to the parliamentary demeanour of the communists, another tactical difficulty appears, which, even when the danger of opportunism appears to have been overcome, is such in itself as to seriously undermine communist work. The danger consists in this, that in spite of every effort that the parliamentary communist fraction can make, the initiative and therefore tactical superiority always remains on the side of the bourgeoisie.

But tactical superiority gives the one of the contenders who has managed to achieve it, the possibility of forcing the opponent to fight under the conditions most favourable to himself. Now, it has already been demonstrated, that the limitation of the struggle to the parliamentary camp is a tactical victory for the bourgeoisie. So the proletariat in many cases is placed in the alternative, either to evade the decisive struggle by remaining on the parliamentary terrain: danger of opportunism; or to carry out the exit from parliamentarianism and the appeal to the masses at a time when this is favourable to the bourgeoisie. The most obvious example of the insolubility of this problem is offered by the current situation of the Italian proletariat. The elections, done openly under the communist banner and with agitation in grand style, have given the Party many mandates. But now, what to do! Either take part in the positive work of parliament, as Turati and the like wish, resulting in the victory of opportunism and infirmity in the revolutionary movement. Or openly sabotage parliament, with the consequence of coming sooner or later to a direct confrontation with the bourgeoisie, without the proletariat having the chance to choose the moment of conflict. Make no mistake. We don’t start from the ridiculous assumption that one can «choose the moment» for revolution; on the contrary, we believe that revolutionary explosions are spontaneous actions of the masses, in which the Party’s only task is to give consciousness of the direction and aim. But precisely this spontaneity is compromised by the fact that the initial point of conflict lies in parliament. Parliamentary action either resolves itself into empty demonstrations (the repetition of which in the long run tires and numbs the masses) or succeeds in provoking the bourgeoisie. The Italian fraction, for fear of the latter eventuality, vacillates here and there aimlessly between empty demonstrations and the vague opportunism of pseudo-revolutionary phrases. (Alongside these tactical errors of method, however, substantial tactical errors have certainly also been made, so to speak: e.g. the petit-bourgeois demonstration for the Republic).

IV.

It is clear from this example how dangerous an electoral victory can be for the proletariat. For the most serious danger for the Italian party lies in this, that its anti-parliamentary activity in parliament can very easily lead it to overrun parliament — even though the proletariat does not yet possess the maturity of ideology and organisation that is necessary for the decisive struggle. The contrast between electoral victory and unpreparedness clearly illustrates the weakness of the argument in favour of parliamentarism, according to which it is a kind of review of proletarian forces. For if the votes obtained were truly communist, the previous observations would naturally fall, since it would mean that the ideological preparation is already done.

From this it also appears that electoral agitation does not escape doubt even as a simple means of propaganda. Communist party propaganda must serve to enlighten class consciousness. It must therefore be aimed at accelerating the process of differentiation in the proletariat as much as possible. Only in this way can we achieve, on the one hand, the qualitative development of the solid conscious core of the revolutionary proletariat (the Communist Party); on the other hand, that the Party through the objective lesson of revolutionary action attracts to itself the semi-conscious strata and leads them to the revolutionary consciousness of their situation. Electoral agitation is in this respect an extraordinarily dubious means. For not only is casting a vote not action, but, what is far worse, it is the illusion of action; and thus it acts not in the sense of forming the conscience, but in that, on the contrary, of obscuring it. The result is an army that is large in appearance, but at the moment, when serious resistance becomes necessary, it disperses completely (German Social Democracy in August 1914).

This state of affairs necessarily stems from the typically bourgeois nature of parliamentary parties. Like the entire organisation of bourgeois society, so too the bourgeois parliamentary parties ultimately aim, albeit rarely consciously, to obscure class consciousness.

The bourgeoisie, forming a tiny minority in the population, can only maintain its dominance by attracting all the materially and ideologically uncertain strata to its fold. Consequently, the bourgeois parliamentary party is the result of disparate class interests (although for capitalism the apparent compromise is always more relevant than in reality). Now, this party structure is also almost always imposed on the proletariat when it participates in the electoral struggle. The specific function of any electoral mechanism, which necessarily works for the greatest possible ‘victory’, almost always acts in order to aim propaganda at winning over ‘sympathisers’. And even when this does not occur, or at least does not occur consciously, nevertheless there remains in the whole electoral technique a tendency to lure ‘sympathisers’ which conceals within itself the gravest danger: that of separating sentiment from action and thus arousing an inclination towards the bourgeoisie and opportunism. The Communist Party’s educational action on the inert and wavering strata of the proletariat can only become truly fruitful if it, through the objective teaching of revolutionary practice, strengthens revolutionary conviction in them. Any electoral campaign, in correspondence with its bourgeois nature, shows a diametrically opposite direction, which only in very rare cases can be avoided. The Italian party has also been subject to this danger. The right wing considered adhesion to the 3rd International and the call for the Republic of Workers’ Councils as mere electoral phrases. The process of differentiation, the actual winning over of the masses to communist action can therefore only begin later, and probably under unfavourable circumstances. And above all the electoral phrases, by the very fact that they are not in immediate relation to action, show a marked tendency [MISSING WORD] towards the conciliation of contraries, the unification of divergent tendencies. It is these specific qualities (of electoral action) that must be taken into very serious account, especially in the present situation of the class struggle, in which it is a question of the real and active unity of the proletariat, not the apparent unity of the old parties.

V.

One of the almost insuperable difficulties of communist action in parliament consists in the excessive autonomy and independence that is usually attributed to parliamentary groups in party life. One can certainly understand that this is an advantage for the bourgeois parties, but this is not the place here to give a particular demonstration of this. (This question ties in with that of the advantages that are secured for the bourgeoisie by the so-called division of powers). But what is useful for the bourgeoisie, is almost without exception dangerous for the proletariat. So here too, if there is to be any hope of escaping the dangers inherent in parliamentary tactics, it is necessary for parliamentary activity to be subjected in its full extent and without limitation to the extra-parliamentary central management. This seems intuitive from a theoretical point of view, but nevertheless experience teaches us that the relationship between the party and the parliamentary fraction is almost without exception inverted, and that the party is drawn in tow of the parliamentary fraction. This was, for example, the case with Liebknecht during the war when he, of course in vain, appealed against the parliamentary fraction in the Reichstag to the obligations imposed by the Party programme (Klassenkampf gegenden Krieg [Class struggle against war], 53).

On the question of parliamentarianism Pt. 3

Il Soviet, May 16, 1920

VI.

Even more difficult than the relations between the parliamentary fraction and the Party are those between the former and the Workers’ council (Soviet). The difficulty of a straightforward approach to this problem again throws clear light on the problematic nature of parliamentarianism in the class struggle of the proletariat. The Workers’ councils as organisations of the entire proletariat (conscious as well as unconscious) by the mere fact of their existence surpass bourgeois society. By their very nature they are revolutionary organisations of the expansion, capacity for action and power of the proletariat, and as such true thermometers of the development of the revolution. Since everything that is done and achieved in Workers’ councils is wrested from the resistance of the bourgeoisie, it is therefore of great value not only as a result, but primarily as an educational means of conscious class action. It therefore appears as the height of ‘parliamentary cretinism’ to make attempts (such as those of the U.S.P.D. [Independent Socialist Party of Germany] to ‘anchor the Workers’ councils in the constitution’, to assign them a certain legal activity. Legality kills the Workers’ council. The Workers’ council exists as an offensive organisation of the revolutionary proletariat only insofar as it threatens the existence of bourgeois society and fights step by step to prepare the destruction of this and the construction of proletarian society. Any legalisation, i.e. inclusion of it in bourgeois society with certain limits on its powers, turns it into a shadow of the Workers’ council; it becomes a mess of a political chattering club, a rejection and caricature of parliament.

Therefore, in general, the Workers’ council and the parliamentary fraction can co-exist side by side as tactical weapons of the proletariat. It would be easy to deduce, from the offensive character of the former and defensive character of the latter, the theory that they complement each other. (Max Adler’s proposal to make the Workers’ council a second chamber). Such attempts at reconciliation overlook, however, that the offensive and defensive in the class struggle are dialectical concepts, each of which contains a whole mode of action (and thus, in both cases, individual offensive and defensive actions), and can only be used in a certain phase of the class struggle, but then one excludes the other. The difference between the two phases can thus be defined briefly, but also clearly as far as the question under discussion here is concerned: the proletariat is on the defensive until the process of the dissolution of capitalism has begun. When this phase of economic evolution has begun, the proletariat is forced onto the offensive, and it makes no difference whether this attitude has been consciously determined or not, and whether or not it appears to be approvable and ‘scientifically’ founded.

But since the evolutionary process of ideology certainly does not coincide with that of the economy, and never runs parallel with it, the objective possibility and necessity of the offensive phase of the class struggle rarely finds the proletariat prepared. As a result of the economic situation, the action of the masses does indeed spontaneously take a revolutionary direction, but by the ruling class, which is neither willing nor able to free itself from the habits of the defensive stage, it is always conducted along false paths, or sabotaged at all. Consequently, in the offensive phase of the class struggle, not only the bourgeoisie and the strata headed by it stand against the proletariat, but also its earlier leaders. Therefore the object, against which criticism must be directed, is no longer in the first place the bourgeoisie, already judged by history, but the right and the centre of the proletarian movement, social democracy, without whose help capitalism in no country would have the slightest hope of overcoming, even temporarily, its present crisis. FIN QUI

But the criticism of the proletariat is at the same time an active criticism, an educational work of revolutionary action, an objective teaching. To this end, Workers’ councils are the best instrument one can think of. For more important than any single advantage they can gain for the proletariat is their educational function. The Workers’ council is the death of social democracy. While in parliament it is always possible to cover up real opportunism with revolutionary phrases, the Workers Council is forced into action, or it ceases to exist. This action, whose conscious leader must be the communist party, achieves the dissolution of opportunism, i.e. the kind of criticism needed today. No wonder social democracy feels terror of self-criticism, to which it is forced by the Workers’ councils. The development of the Workers’ councils in Russia from the first to the second revolution clearly shows where this development must lead.

With this, the reciprocal position of the Workers’ council and parliament would remain theoretically and tactically defined. Where a Workers’ council is possible (albeit in a very limited space), there parliamentarianism is superfluous. Indeed this is dangerous, for it is in the nature of it that within it only the criticism of the bourgeoisie is possible, not the self-criticism of the proletariat. But before the proletariat can reach the promised land of emancipation, it must pass through the acid test of this self-criticism, in which it strips itself of the figure of the capitalist age, which manifests itself in its fullest form precisely in social democracy, and thereby attain its own purification.

G. Lukacz

Former People’s Commissar of Hungary

________________________________

We have already premised on this interesting study that it only partly corresponded to our views. Indeed, we could not make our own the considerations contained in the last part, for reasons that it would be superfluous to repeat.

LENIN AND PARLIAMENTARIANISM

Il Soviet, July 11, 1920

We perfectly agree with what Lenin wrote in his letter published in issue 17 of Comunismo that the fundamental programme that can and must unite the true revolutionaries of the workers’ spheres is the struggle for the soviet regime. Now it is precisely with reference to this fundamental problem that the question of parliamentarianism must be examined, namely whether and to what extent the participation of communists in parliaments is useful to this struggle.

Lenin cuts short the question and judges definitely and repeatedly non-participation to be a mistake, basing his sharp assertion on two episodes in the Russian movement: the Bolsheviks’ participation in the Constituent Assembly after the fall of tsarism and their participation in the tsarist Duma. For us, these two episodes cannot be considered in the same way.

At the time of the tsarist Duma we were not in a revolutionary period, bourgeois power appeared firmly in place and there were no signs of the proletariat’s possibility of a more or less imminent revolutionary seizure of power. The representatives of the proletariat in it did a work of criticism of the bourgeois system that could not otherwise be done effectively, and they did revolutionary propaganda.

In Russia the parliamentary regime has never functioned in all its development as it has in western countries with all its disastrous consequences. The Bolsheviks participating in the Constituent Assembly brought the same spirit of violent revolutionary opposition that had not been allowed to fade during their tenure in the tsarist Duma. The value as revolutionary experience that parliamentary action during the Constituent Assembly would have had is stated too generically and no one has been able to say what it consisted of. On the other hand, the period of life of the Constituent Assembly was too short for the experiment to yield results of much value. 

To invite the communists in democratic countries to practise propaganda in the parliaments for the Soviets similar to the revolutionary and republican propaganda which the Bolsheviks practised in the Duma, means for us not to want to take into account the different historical period in which the struggle is taking place today in the midst of the revolutionary period and therefore very different from the period of development and strengthening of bourgeois power, characterised precisely by the birth of that parliamentarianism whose normal and complete development was prevented by the precipitous onset of the war and the proletarian revolution.

Lenin says that ‘perhaps this (i.e. revolutionary propaganda for the Soviets in parliaments) is not easy to achieve in England or in any country with a parliamentary system’ and adds: ‘but that is another question’. No, unfortunately, that is precisely the question. If we discuss parliamentarianism, it is not for the sake of abstract theories, it is solely because for us it is an urgent tactical question, for we are precisely in one of those countries with a parliamentary regime in which bourgeois democracy, as Lenin so aptly put it, ‘has learnt to delude the people, to deceive them with a thousand manoeuvres, to designate bourgeois parliamentarianism as true democracy, etc.’. 

In this work of overvaluing the parliamentary function, bourgeois democracy has found and still finds its greatest ally everywhere, in these countries, in the socialist parties, which have tenaciously and insistently used parliamentary action to obtain some benefit for the working masses and have educated these to the most complete trust in the persevering work spent in their interest.

Even now, the Italian socialist party (without taking into account the large social-democratic bloc that it consciously retains within its ranks and which is decidedly opposed to the Soviet regime), while declaring itself in its majority to be maximalist, communist etc., gives the greatest importance to parliamentary action and subordinates all other political action to it. 

In these countries, preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is so profoundly antithetical to bourgeois democracy, cannot take place without intensive work to destroy all the illusions they harbour about democracy and which have been inoculated in them precisely by the socialist parties; and this work cannot be done without breaking with tradition, by abandoning the methods of democracy itself. The obstacle to the revolutionary preparation and revolutionary spirit of the masses as a result of long democratic education is enormous, and the difficulties in overcoming it are in proportion to the duration of it and require much of the energy that parliamentarianism absorbs to no avail.

Not to mention that abstentionism also serves to free the party from the careerists in good or bad faith who lurk in it and from demagogues. The long and complex experience of countries with a parliamentary regime is all negative about the revolutionary possibility of parliamentary action. The long and complex experience of countries with a parliamentary regime is all negative with regard to the revolutionary possibility of parliamentary action, and positive with regard to the dangers of social-democratic deviation, collaborationism, etc. Against this experience Lenin’s assertion alone, however authoritative, cannot suffice if it is not backed up by experience or convincing arguments.

Comrade Graziadei, showing a few days ago to French socialists the situation of the Italian Socialist Party and making allusion to the function of the Third International, recalled Lenin is so favorable to a reasonable autonomy of practical action in different countries that he congratulated the decision made by the Congress of Bologna to participate in the general elections of the bourgeois parliament, a resolution, however, fought against by a committed minority to better interpret the thought of the great politician of socialist Russia.

This minority having defended and amply discussed the thesis of non-participation in legislative elections in this journal even before showing it to the Congress of Bologna, some light must be shed on this inaccurate assertion by Comrade Graziadei.

The abstentionist communist tendency has never, no matter what they say, pretended to be the most faithful interpreter of Lenin’s thought. It has always maintained that Russian Bolshevism has nothing new from a theoretical point of view, like Lenin himself has recognized; Bolshevism is in fact nothing other than the return of Marxism at its most rigid and severe: in all his declarations and his polemics, it is to the rest of it that Lenin constantly appeals.

The frequent coincidence between our directives and those of Lenin demonstrate that the two currents stem from the same trunk and develop in the same direction.

If we have supported and continue to support the P.S.I.’s non-participation in parliament and other organs of the bourgeois State, it is because we judge that the current historical period is revolutionary, that in such a period, the specific function of the party is to demolish the bourgeois State, and it must fulfill that task.

Our view coincides exactly with one of the conclusions from Lenin’s report to the Congress of Third International in Moscow.

We put a much greater value on non-participation than did Lenin, for we consider that non-participation is all the more necessary and imperative now that the western countries have been plunged much longer in the delights of the precious democratic civilization of Turati and his ilk, and its roots are particularly difficult to tear out.

We believe that the evident contradiction between the conclusions of the report and the two letters by the very same Lenin results from the small significance that he attributed to democratic institutions, which in Russia only had a brief and precarious life and, not being familiar with the masses, had not been able to exercise as great an influence on them as it did with us, where it was further reinforced by left parties and in particular by the P.S.I. who for years have worked assiduously to value these institutions.

As for autonomy of tactics in diverse nations, we are resolutely against it. For some time, on the contrary, we insist that the representatives of the parties of the Third International reconvene in congress, precisely to reach an agreement on tactics and unity.

The absence of a rigorous uniformity in tactics was one of the causes of the great feebleness of the pre-war International and it has had the most painful and miserable consequences.

To repeat the same error in the Third International would mean exposure to new surprises and cruel disillusionments.

Uniformity of tactics has for us a capital importance. Among questions of tactics, the one of participation or not in bourgeois elections has primary importance, for it marks the clear separation from the partisans of social-democracy and the partisans for the dictatorship of the proletariat: it is on these two profoundly antithetical conceptions that socialists must polarize; any transaction between them is equivocal and engenders confusion. Subsequent connivance of these two groups in the same party is a cause of weakness for both, but it is certainly noxious for the communist tendency that, appearing most recently, must isolate itself and have its own physiognomy, if it wants to make its own place.

All of the comrades of our tendency are thoroughly studying this delicate moment of its life and its development, and they weigh the dangers and, if there are any, advantages of participation in elections to be able to judge the issue seriously.

Over feelings and habits, there are the great duties of the hour, that allow no weaknesses, no shilly-shallying, no accommodations, but require firm, frank, rectilinear resolutions, exclusively inspired by the supreme interests of the proletarian cause.

Part III

AT THE SECOND CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL

“The revolutionary epoch demands that the proletariat use methods of struggle capable of focusing its militancy – namely, methods of mass struggle which lead logically to direct confrontation and open battle with the bourgeois state machine. All other methods, including the revolutionary utilization of the bourgeois parliament, must be subordinated to this aim”.

The Platform of the Communist International, approved at the First Congress of the C.I., 1919.

“Our abstentionism derives from the great importance we attach to the political task that in the present historical period falls to the Communist Parties: insurrectional conquest of political power, establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviet system. Since the greatest obstacle to this struggle are the traditions and political parties of bourgeois democracy and the offshoots that through socialism of the II International type bind this to the working masses, we maintain that it is indispensable to severe all contacts between the revolutionary movement and the bourgeois representative organs: isolation from the rotting carrion of parliamentary democracy”.

Trends in the Third International, in “Il Soviet,” May 23, 1920. 

The Second Congress of the Communist International had been convened for objectives that went far beyond the question of whether or not to participate in parliament with an antiparliamentary purpose, which was recognized by the Bolsheviks as being of secondary importance compared to the great tasks posed to the revolutionary proletariat by the First Imperialist War and the period of violent social upheavals it inaugurated. 

It was a question of giving a sure and homogeneous direction to the parties that had either already joined the International in the year since its founding, or were disposed to enter under the suggestion of the great Russian revolutionary experience and under the irresistible impetus of the masses everywhere that had descended in struggle against a capitalism that had asked of them the sacrifice of life on the battlefields and now rewarded them with misery, unemployment, and violence. As is said in the preamble to the “conditions of admission,” the danger for the young world organization of the proletariat was not that it could not be the pole of attraction for the revolutionary masses, who looked on it and on Moscow everywhere with enthusiasm and hope, but that it would “become, in a sense, fashionable,” drawing into its ranks parties and organizations that a long parliamentary, reformist, democratic tradition made impervious to the ends and means sculpturally summarized in the preamble to its Statutes: “The Communist International gives itself for its end the armed struggle for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of the international republic of Soviets, the first stage on the road to the complete suppression of every governmental regime. ..; regards the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only available means of wresting humanity from the horrors of capitalism … and the power of the Soviets as the form of dictatorship of the proletariat that history dictates”; draws from the imperialist war the renewed confirmation that “the emancipation of the workers is not a local, nor a national, but a social and international task…; it breaks forever with the tradition of the Second International for which in reality there was only the peoples of the white race,” proposing to ensure by its organizing mechanism “the workers of every country the possibility of receiving at all times, from the organized workers of other countries, all possible help.” 

At a time when the Longuets and the Dittmanns, the Macdonalds and the Serratis, were paying verbal homage to these luminous objectives, showing in the act, by their stubborn reluctance to break with the Right, that they considered them a book closed with seven seals (nor, moreover, could it be supposed that, like Paul on the road to Damascus, they had suddenly converted to it, and as penitents anxious to redeem themselves were now knocking at the doors of the Communist International), there was an urgent need to raise an insuperable dike both against the infiltration of opportunism into the ranks of an army that had come into the field to overthrow it, and against its possible return in force, in less ardent situations, for we had not from the outset drawn with sufficient clarity the insurmountable boundary, carved out by history within the workers’ movement, between gradualism and communism, between reform and revolution, between democracy and class dictatorship. In short, there was an urgent need to re-establish the cornerstones of integral Marxist doctrine, beating the treacherous right and the devious center and, a thousand times lighter task, hammering these fundamental principles, these indispensable weapons of revolutionary victory into the young and healthy proletarian forces which, in reaction to them, harbored serious preconceptions about the question of power, the party, the dictatorship. 

All the theses of the Second Congress were aimed at such work of clearing the ground from the bad grass of reformism, from its long devastating action, and in parallel from the diseases generated in the opposite direction — anarcho-syndicalism, workerism, anti-partyism; the theses on the role of the Communist Party in the proletarian revolution, on parliamentarianism, on the national and colonial question, on the work in the proletarian economical organizations, on the conditions to establish soviets, on the fundamental tasks of the C. I., the Statutes and the famous 21 Points. It is well known that to it the abstentionist Communist fraction gave not only enthusiastic adherence, but a major contribution, fighting (largely successfully) for the conditions of admission to be not softened — as it seemed at times to be intended — but made much more binding and categorical. It was able to do so because, as the texts published in volumes I and I bis of our History of the Left document, it had made those cornerstone principles its banner far before 1920, and the theses it adopted in May in Florence reaffirmed them without possibility of equivocation, in a parallel, that no international current could yet boast of, with the fundamental theses consigned in those years to history — to mention no more — in Lenin’s State and Revolution and The Renegade Kautsky, and in Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism. 

Dissent persisted on the question of “revolutionary parliamentarism,” but no one — least of all the superopportunist PCI leaders who claim to refer to communism — has the right to turn this tactical dissent into an antithesis of principle, or — which is the height of impudence — to set themselves up as champions of Leninist orthodoxy by entrenching themselves behind a false allegiance to the directives advocated in the parliamentary field by Lenin. A parallel reading of the two theses — parliamentarist-revolutionary and Marxist abstentionist — is enough to see that identical is the judgment on the counterrevolutionary function of the parliamentary institution, identical the rejection of it as a way to socialism and as a form of class dictatorship, identical the goal: to overthrow it. The disagreement revolves around whether or not to use the electoral and parliamentary tribune-no more than a tribune! — as a subsidiary tool of agitation and propaganda for its destruction. The negative judgment of the Marxist abstentionist Left, supported by arguments that have nothing in common with those of anarchism, syndicalism or workerism, rests on the non-academic or metaphysical balance sheet of long decades of proletarian struggles in the advanced West, where the parliamentary and democratic disease has deeper roots and the proletarian revolution gestating in the bowels of capitalist economy and society no longer has to graft itself in, as in Russia, on the trunk of a lingering bourgeois revolution; where, therefore, an even more direct tactic is imposed than the, albeit very rigid, tactic used by the Bolsheviks in their preparation for the seizure of power. The teaching of the Russian Communists had been that, stupendously, of the integral application of the Marxist program in a situation which, isolated from its world context, would have justified — for the pedantry of the Kautskys or Plekhanovs 1917 — less “toughness,” a less radical use of the anti-democratic, anti-parliamentary broom. In the West — the Left reasoned — more drastic remedies were imposed on festering disease, and one of these — the refusal to “use” the electoral and parliamentary mechanism for any purpose, however avowedly subversive — would have the additional merit of fostering a rapid and perhaps immediate selection of communists from the many variants of cryptoreformism.

It is no irreverence on the part of those who, like us, tooth and nail defend Lenin — that is, Marxism — against the innumerable falsifications of the bigots shamelessly invoking his name, to say that to this crucial argument the Marxist abstentionists did not then receive an answer, either from him or, much less, from Bucharin, as can be clearly seen from the speeches we reproduce below. These are vitiated by the concern — sacrosanct in itself — that from right premises (the phrase is Lenin’s) wrong conclusions can be drawn in the sense of anarchist, syndicalist and workerist infantilism, and, while acknowledging that such an accusation cannot be levelled at the starting point of the theses of Marxist abstentionists, they avoid going into the basic issue of tactical deductions in the Western world, in order to strike yet another, very fair blow against the arguments not ours, but those of others.

The polemic against the childish abstractionism of those who preach the rejection on principle of “any compromise” is sacrosanct: but the call did not strike us. Commemorating Lenin in February 1924, the Left itself will say (Lenin on the Path of Revolution, No. 3, 1924, of “Prometeo”): “What is Lenin’s essential criticism of the ‘Left’ errors? He condemns every tactical evaluation which, instead of referring to the positive realism of our historical dialectic and the effective value of tactical attitudes and expedients, becomes a prisoner of naive, abstract, moralistic, mystical, aesthetic formulas, from which suddenly spring results that are completely foreign to our method. The whole rebuke to the pseudo-revolutionary phraseology which often arbitrarily takes the place of the real Marxist arguments is not only just, but is perfectly in tune with the whole framework of the grandiose work of restoring revolutionary values ‘in earnest’, due to Lenin, and which we here vaguely try to trace in its synthetic outline. All tactical arguments based on the phobia of certain words, of certain gestures, of certain contacts, on a pretended purity and uncontaminability of communists in action, are laughable stuff, and constitute the foolish infantilism against which Lenin fights, the child of bourgeois theoretical prejudices with an anti-materialist flavour. To substitute a moral doctrine for Marxist tactics is balderdash.” 

Anxious that we — recognized as not identifiable with the anarchist-backed anti-parliamentarists — would fall into the idealistic unrealism of these, the speakers used polemical arguments that we knew were only such but that risked recreating darkness where light had just been shed. 

Sacrosanct was the battle against “trade union abstentionism,” but to invoke the vital necessity for communists to be present and active in workers’ unions, even if headed by reformists and led by them to tend to insert themselves into the bourgeois state mechanism, as an argument in favor of revolutionary participation in parliament, meant — or rather could make one believe, against the very intentions of those who made use of this polemical weapon — that it was permissible to place on the same plane an organization of pure proletarians and an institution of bourgeois government; the latter, among other things, to be destroyed in order to raise over it the proletarian dictatorship, the former destined to remain, albeit with a different function, after the conquest of power. And it meant equating the action of agitation and propaganda carried out within the trade union, that is, in the ranks of one’s own class and on the terrain from which the first fundamental thrusts of the conflict between capital and labor arise — the terrain of economic interests and material determinations — with the action to be carried out within a bourgeois political body, and in an interclass environment and structure, organically destined to nurture in the proletarians the illusion that there can be a common ground between classes, and that “people’s sovereignity” is not a myth. 

Sacrosanct was the polemic against those who recognized only the formula: “either revolution or nothing”; but it didn’t touch the current which was to direct the party in 1921-22, and which, in the Theses of Rome 1922 and Lyon 1926, was to try to give organic accommodation to all problems of international Communist tactics, even and especially those relating to non-revolutionary situations. More than fair was the appeal to the wordy extremism of those who were going to “build” the Soviets on paper (and against which we had long been fighting), but dangerous — not for the deductions we knew very well Lenin would not draw from them, but for those that the false small Lenins would be ready to draw from them – was to say that the Soviets are not always at hand, the parliament for now is; as if the former were not organs of proletarian battle and power and the latter an organ of bourgeois domination, and as if, in that vein, one could not by the opportunists invoke (as the representative of the abstentionist Communist fraction observed in amazement and concern) the going one fine day to government under bourgeois rule.

As for the doubt that our abstentionism expressed a childish and, from the revolutionary point of view, criminal fear of responsibility, let it be worthwhile to dispel it — if it is necessary — the pages which we quote below (Speech of the Representative of Abstentionist Communists), and from which, if ever Bukharin had in later years taken critical stock of the parliamentary activity of the Communist parties, he should have concluded that the only ones from whom there was evidence of serious and consistent application of revolutionary parliamentarianism were . … the abstentionists because the only ones who did not carry with them into the election campaigns or to the House (when they went there out of discipline, without disowning anything of their own point of view) the ballast of democratic nostalgia, because the only ones ready, there as in the direct clash between the classes, to fight openly. FIN QUI

History has tragically proved that our bitter forebodings about the possibility that from questionable tactical conclusions (then, for us and for Lenin, not such as to justify a split), and from a polemical audacity in Lenin never divorced from the most “sectarian” and “dogmatic” loyalty to principles, were more than legitimate; so that wrong premises and conclusions were deduced and finally all of Marxism, theory and praxis, was lost. We shouted in six years of struggle within the International that Lenin’s “realism” should not serve as a pretext for the progressive abandonment of principles. We said again in the 1924 speech cited above, “We refuse to have Lenin’s Marxist realism translated into the formula that every tactical expedient is good for our purposes. Tactics in turn affect those who employ them, and it cannot be said that a true communist, with the mandate of the true International and a true communist party, can go anywhere with confidence that he will not err … Doesn’t ‘stretching’ the extent of tactical projects beyond all limits come up against our own theoretical and programmatic conclusions, the culmination of a true realistic examination controlled by continuous and extensive experience? We consider illusory and contrary to our principles a tactic which dreams that it can substitute the overthrow and demolition of the bourgeois state machine, a cornerstone so vigorously demonstrated by Lenin, with the penetration of who knows what Trojan horse into the machine itself, the illusion — truly pseudo-revolutionary and petty-bourgeois — of blowing it up with the traditional stone. The situation, ended in ridicule, of the Saxon communist ministers [1923] shows this: that one cannot take the capitalist state fortress with stratagems that spare the revolutionary masses a frontal assault. It is a grave mistake to make the proletariat believe that one possesses such expedients to ease the hard way, to ‘economise’ on its effort and sacrifice … In Lenin, we affirm, the tactical evaluation, even daring if you want in the sense that he less than anyone else allowed himself to be guided by extemporaneous sentimental suggestions and formalistic stubbornness, never abandoned the revolutionary platform: that is to say, its co-ordination to the supreme and integral aim of the universal revolution”. 

The Communist International certainly did not degenerate because Lenin believed in 1920 in the favorable potentialities of revolutionary parliamentarianism in the “democratic” countries of Western Europe; but in the course of the long degeneration in which men, parties and programs had to undergo the relentless test of counterrevolution, history has irretrievably judged this distant tactical dispute, for the confusion of the renegades of communism.

«Avanti» issue 16 summarily reports a resolution adopted by the Moscow Executive Committee of the Communist International whose importance is easy to see, even through the incongruities of the article.

The Moscow Committee, after having discussed a few controversial points of the tactics of communists, has decided, taking a position on this issue, to cancel the term of office formed a few months ago in Amsterdam for Western Europe and America. The reason for that was that this office defends all those positions opposed to that of the Committee.

The fundamental criterion for centralization of revolutionary action certainly allows the central organ of the International, in the interval separating the regular international Congresses, to decide the direction that must be followed in action. However, the Executive Committee itself, while charging Zinoviev, Radek, and Bukharin to prepare theses which contain its point of view on controversial issues, postpones the final decision to the next International Communist Congress, which promises a really extraordinary importance.

It is however interesting to establish clearly — at least when it is possible on the basis of information and communications which we have — the terms of the controversy, because it is foreseeable that Moscow’s resolution will be exploited for justifying equivocal and possibilist electoralism that the Italian Socialist Party practices in the shadow of the Soviet flag.

The issues that have led to the intervention of the Moscow comrades reflect in substance the position of the opposing tendencies of the communist movement in Germany.

It is to them that we must therefore refer to understand Moscow’s resolution, according to which communists must not renounce using parliamentary weapons nor conquering the economic organizations that, today, are in the hands of the social democrats.

It is precisely the position of the German tendencies that has put on the same level these two issues of a different nature and weight.

This is what we recalled in an another article published in issue 11 of «Il Soviet» entitled «The German Communist Party».

On the same subject, there exists an article by a comrade from the German opposition published in an Amsterdam column, and reproduced in issue 43 (year 1) of «L’Ordine Nuovo» and an article by Boris Souvarine in issue 1, year 2, of the same newspaper. In addition, «Avanti», in the issue cited above, announced that the German opposition formed in the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany, independent of the Communist Party which, in its conference in Heidelberg in 1919, expelled the minority from its fold.

So remember the point of view of these two tendencies, or rather these two parties, not without having added that the tendencies of the German movement are, in reality, much larger, and that it would be very difficult, for someone who is not in the same movement, to define with precision.

The opposition hurls accusations of hesitation and weakness against the Central Party that are not really unjustified. In the latest issues, we have dealt with the attitude of communists during the recent attempted military coup, and we have also reported severe criticisms of Bela Kun’s attitude toward the leadership with regard to the Independents. The accusation of connivance with the Independents, stated by the opposition, consequently appears to be plausible. As for the accusation of lack of revolutionary fervor, we have many reservations, for it is often proffered by impatient people that have a very simplistic idea of revolution that brings them to continually protest against the leaders who would delay. In this case, however, it seems the leadership of the KPD was not up to the job of the events.

When we turn to the examination of the programme and the directives, we have to consider contrariwise how well-founded the reproach of syndicalist heterodoxy is made to the opposition.

It is in reality moving further from sound Marxist conceptions and follows a utopian and petty-bourgeois method.

The political party, says the opposition, does not have preponderant importance to the revolutionary struggle. It has to be developed on the economic field without centralized leadership.

There must arise, against the old unions fallen into the hands of the opportunists, new organizations, based on factory councils. It is enough that the workers act in this new type of organization for their action to be communist and revolutionary.

This tendency’s electoral abstentionism comes from the fact that it refuses any importance to political action and the party in general, that is to say the negation of the political party as an instrument central to the revolutionary struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat; this abstentionism is bound up with a syndicalist critique — for which action would have to be concentrated on the economic field — and a libertarian critique — which brings up the usual horror of «leaders».

We will not repeat our criticisms of these conceptions that are a little like those of Turin’s «Ordine Nuovo».

Proof that such conceptions are the result of a petty-bourgeois degeneration of Marxism is given by the fact that they have given rise to the famous «national bolshevism» of Laufenberg and Wolffheim, according to which it envisages an alliance between the revolutionary proletariat and the militarist bourgeoisie for… a holy war against the Entente. This strange conception is so pathological that it does not merit for an instant a longer critique.

It is true that this absurd idea of «national bolshevism» is encountering resistance within the opposition.

We have explained in the article mentioned that we adhere to the theses from the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany which timely condemns all these deviations and reaffirms the political character of the communist Revolution, the importance of the task of the class party, and the necessity of fighting off syndicalism and all federalism. However, we remain in disagreement on the parliamentary question.

Our abstentionism — we repeat — derives precisely from the great importance that we place on the political task that falls to the Communist Party in the present historical period: insurrectionary conquest of political power, establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the soviet system.

As the bigger obstacle to this struggle are the traditions and the parties of the bourgeois democracy and the ramifications that it connects to the working masses through «2nd International»-type socialism, we affirm that it is indispensable to break off all contact between the revolutionary movement and the bourgeois representative organs and that it is necessary to separate ourselves from the putrefying corpse of parliamentary democracy.

So what is the meaning of the resolutions of the Executive Committee of the 3rd International?

They denounce, with reason, the directives to boycott present unions in order to give birth to new economic organizations. By its nature, the economic union is always a proletarian organization, and it can and must be penetrated by communist propaganda in the direction very well indicated by Zinoviev’s circular note on communist action in the unions.

Of course, in some cases, the reformist leaders’ corruption can reach such a degree and take such a form that it becomes necessary to abandon such a totally rotten corpse to itself.

Moscow has condemned this pretension to consider as a revolutionary method the constitution ex novo of other economic organs like the industrial unions, the factory councils (Turin), the Shop Stewards (England), in affirming to have resolved the problem of leading the proletariat to communism, an error reminiscent of the syndicalists (surviving in the organs that want to adhere to Moscow, like the I.W.W. of America, the Spanish C.N.T., and the Italian Syndicalist Union). On the other hand, it claimed the revolutionary function of political action of the «Marxist, strong, centralized» party as said by Lenin, who said the proletarian revolution is, in the acute phase, less a process of economic transformation than a struggle for power between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which culminates in the constitution of a new form of state conditioned on the existence of proletarian councils as political organs of the class and on the predominance of the communist party in these councils.

Secondly, the Moscow Committee has condemned electoral abstentionism. In this regard, it is necessary to make a clear distinction. Abstentionism derived from the errors of conception indicated above — and that is above all an apoliticism called to fall back into the arms of its twin: laborist and reformist apoliticism — leans on false premises.

But abstentionism supported on the grounds of Marxist doctrine, that we defend as well as other currents in the International, has nothing to do with the previous and demands its own place, and even orthodoxy, in the Communist International. It will be supported in the International Congress, possibly against the theses of the Moscow Committee, with the arguments that have been fully developed in our newspaper and in our other foreign communist newspapers.

Our fraction’s C.C. has received in Florence the charge to establish closer links between the currents, the newspapers, and the militants of this tendency, and it is putting itself to work in this direction.

As for the disavowal of the Amsterdam Office, entrusted to excellent comrades whose activity we have often commented on, we can advance no judgement. It does not seem accurate to say the opinions of this office and of the conference are in all points opposed to those of Moscow. The respective theses (see «Comunismo» issue 13 and «L’Ordine Nuovo» issue 43) demonstrate it.

The theses on syndicalism contradict themselves somewhat (maybe it is the result of a hasty collaboration), but from point 12 on, they are correctly attached to condemn neo-syndicalism.

On one point, the Amsterdam resolution is unacceptable: it acted to admit the factory councils to the International. It is evident that the International is a political organ and can only understand political parties. The economic organs will be able to form the Union International, which is already on the way to being built, and which will adhere and will submit to the politics of the International.

However, we would not want that Amsterdam is condemned for its just attitude, energetic and intransigent, towards opportunists, independents, and reconstructors. We do not believe that Moscow abandons its positions of fierce criticism against the renegades of Kautsky’s kind. But we will deal with these delicate points when we get better information.

A last consideration. Moscow’s decision and theses that follow may well be opposed to our tendency’s positions, hostile in general to any use of bourgeois democracy. But they may, in no way, be invoked to justify Italian electoralist maximalism, shaky in doctrine, and equivocal in practice since the collaboration with Nitti.

As we have stated many times, Italian electoralism is not practiced by communists, but by a conglomeration of communists (at least nominally) and social democrats. That is why it is worse than openly reformist and legalitarian parliamentarism, practiced by those that, in other countries, are out of the Moscow International and are against it, are condemning revolutionary action and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Penetration in parliament and in the towns are carried out here by means of extremist demagogues, but with a character and a content that resembles, not their revolutionary negation, but reformist routine.

As for the P.S.I., they are not in line with Moscow. We hunt the slanderers of Soviet Russia and those who speculate on «electoral bolshevism», and we will finally have the right to debate the big questions of principle and of communist tactics!

It is on this terrain that, moving to abandon the old party, our current, small but resolute, wants a place to finally be able to have its say on vital issues of the communist International.

Lenin and Bukharin’s Theses on Communist Parties and Parliamentarism, adopted at the Second Congress

Introduction by Trotsky: The New Epoch and the New Parliamentarianism

From the start, from the epoch of the First International, the attitude of the socialist parties to parliamentarianism was that bourgeois parliaments should be used for agitational purposes. Participation in parliament was considered as a means of developing class consciousness, i.e., of awakening the hatred of the proletariat for the ruling classes. This attitude has changed, under the influence not of theory, but of the course of political events. As a result of the development of the productive forces and the extension of the arena of capitalist exploitation, capitalism and the parliamentary states acquired a lasting stability.

As a consequence, the parliamentary tactics of the socialist parties adapted themselves to the ‘organic’ legislative work of the bourgeois parliament, and the struggle for reforms within the framework of capitalism became increasingly significant for these parties, as well as the dominance of the so-called minimum programme of socialdemocracy, and the transformation of maximum programme into a platform for debating the altogether remote ‘final goal’. In these circumstances parliamentary careerism and corruption flourished and the vital interests of the working class were secretly, and sometimes openly, betrayed.

The attitude of the Third International toward parliamentarism is determined not by a new doctrine, but by the change in the role of parliament itself. 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. In the modern conditions of unbridled imperialism parliament has become a weapon of falsehood, deception and violence, a place of enervating chatter. In the face of the devastation, embezzlement, robbery and destruction committed by imperialism, parliamentary reforms which are wholly lacking in consistency, durability and order lose all practical significance for the working masses. 

Parliamentarianism, like bourgeois society as a whole, is losing its stability. The transition from an epoch of stability to an epoch of crisis has necessitated the adoption of new tactics by the proletariat in the sphere of parliamentarianism. Even in the past period the Russian workers’ party (Bolsheviks), for example, developed an essentially revolutionary parliamentarianism, the reason being that the political and social equilibrium of Russia was destroyed by the 1905 revolution and the country entered a period of storm and stress. 

Those Socialists who, while sympathizing with Communism, point out that their countries are not yet ripe for revolution and refuse to break with the parliamentary opportunists have as their starting-point the conscious or semi-conscious assessment of the approaching epoch as one of the relative stability of imperialist society and believe, therefore, that in the struggle for reforms a coalition with Turati and Longuet can have practical results.

Communism, however, must be based on a theoretical analysis of the character of the present epoch (the culminating point of capitalism, its imperialist self-negation and self-destruction, the uninterrupted spread of civil war etc.). The forms of political relations and groupings can vary from country to country, but their essential nature remains everywhere the same. For us the goal is the direct political and technical preparation of a proletarian uprising to destroy bourgeois power and establish the new power of the proletariat. 

At the present time parliament cannot be used by the Communists as the arena in which to struggle for reforms and improvements in working-class living standards as was the case at certain times during the past epoch. The focal point of political life has shifted fully and finally beyond the boundaries of parliament. Even so, the bourgeoisie is still forced, not only for its relations with the working class, but also by the complex relations within the bourgeois class, to push measures sometimes and somehow through parliament. In parliament the various cliques haggle for power, exhibiting their strengths, betraying their weaknesses and compromising themselves etc., etc. 

The immediate historical task of the working class is therefore to wrest these apparatuses from the hands of the ruling classes, breaking and destroying them and replacing them with new organs of proletarian power. At the same time it is very much in the interests of the revolutionary general staff of the working class to have its reconnaissance units in the parliamentary institutions of the bourgeoisie in order to hasten their destruction. The fundamental difference between the tactics of a revolutionary Communist who enters parliament and a social-democratic parlamentarian here emerges clearly. The social-democratic deputies act on the assumption of the relative stability and the indefinite duration of the existing regime. They set themselves the task of achieving reforms at all costs, and are concerned that the masses should value properly each gain as the fruit of Socialist parliamentarianism (Turati, Longuet and Co.). 

A new tactic is emerging to replace the old and compromising parliamentarianism. It is one of the weapons with which parliamentarianism in general will be destroyed. However, the disgusting traditions of the old parliamentary tactics have driven some revolutionary elements to oppose parliamentarianism on principle (IWW revolutionary syndicalism, KAPD). Taking all these circumstances into consideration the Second Congress of the Third Communist International advances the following theses:

The Theses: Communism, the Struggle for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Utilization of Bourgeois Parliaments 

I

1. Parliamentarianism as a state system became a ‘democratic’ form of the rule of the bourgeoisie, which at a certain stage of its development needed a form of popular representation. Although the latter was in reality a weapon of suppression and oppression in the hands of the ruling class, it outwardly appeared to be the organization of the “popular will”, standing above classes. 

2. Parliamentarianism is a definite form of the state. Therefore, it cannot possibly be a form of Communist society, which knows neither classes, nor the class struggle, nor any kind of state power. 

3. Parliament cannot act as a form of proletarian state administration in the transitional period from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to the dictatorship of the proletariat. At times of acute class struggle, eventually developing into civil war, the proletariat must inevitably build its own state organization as a militant organization which excludes representatives of the former ruling classes. At this stage any pretence about the existence of a ‘popular will’ reflecting the wishes of the entire population is harmful to the proletariat. The parliamentary separation of power is not necessary, is in fact contrary to the interests of the proletariat. The state form of the proletarian dictatorship is the Soviet republic.

4. Bourgeois parliaments are one of the most important apparatuses of the bourgeois state machine and, like the bourgeois state in general, cannot be won over to the side of the proletariat. The task of the proletariat is to shatter the bourgeois state machine, destroying it and its parliamentary institutions, whether republican or constitutional-monarchical. 

5. The same attitude should be taken to the local government institutions of the bourgeoisie which it is theoretically incorrect to differentiate from state organs. Local government institutions are also apparatuses of the bourgeois state mechanism and must be destroyed by the revolutionary proletariat and superseded by local Soviets of workers’ deputies.

6. Consequently, Communism rejects parliamentarianism as the state form of the future society, or as the form of the class dictatorship of the proletariat. It denies the possibility of parliament being won to the proletarian cause on a long-term basis. It sets itself the task of destroying parliamentarianism. It follows from this that bourgeois state institutions can be used only with the object of destroying them. This is the one and only way the question of their utilization can be posed.

II

7. Every class struggle is a political struggle for, in the final analysis, it is for power. Any strike that extends over the whole country begins to threaten the bourgeois state and thus acquires a political character. To attempt to overthrow the bourgeoisie and smash its state is to engage in political struggle. The creation of a proletarian class apparatus for administration, and suppression of bourgeois resistance — whatever form this apparatus takes — involves the conquest of political power. 

8. This means that the question of the political struggle can in no way be reduced to the question of the attitude to be taken towards parliamentarianism. Inasmuch as the proletarian class struggles develop from small and partial encounters into a bid to overthrow the whole capitalist system, this is a general question. 

9. The most important form of proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state power is, first and foremost, mass action, which is organized and directed by the revolutionary mass organizations of the proletariat (unions, parties, Soviets) under the general leadership of a united, disciplined, centralized Communist Party. Civil war is an out and out war and to wage it the proletariat needs its own experienced political officers’ corps and its own strong political general staff, capable of leading all the operations in these areas of struggle. 

10. The mass struggle is a whole network of activities continuously developing, taking increasingly sharper forms which logically culminate in an insurrection against the capitalist state. As the mass struggle develops into civil war the leading party of the proletariat must, as a general rule, secure each and every legal position, using them as auxiliary centres of its revolutionary work and subordinating them to its plan for the overall campaign of mass struggle. 

11. The platform of bourgeois parliament is one such auxiliary centre. The fact that parliament is a bourgeois state institution is no argument at all against participation in the parliamentary struggle. The Communist Party enters this institution not to function within it as an integral part of the parliamentary system, but to take action inside parliament that helps the masses to smash the bourgeois state machine and parliament itself (examples are the activity of Liebknecht in Germany and of the Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma, the ‘Democratic Conference’, Kerensky’s pre-parliament, the ‘Constituent Assembly’ and the town dumas and, finally, the action of the Bulgarian Communists). 

12. Parliamentary activity, which consists mainly of disseminating revolutionary ideas, unmasking class enemies from the parliamentary platform, and furthering the ideological cohesion of the masses, who, especially in the backward areas, still respect parliament and harbour democratic illusions, and whose eyes still look at the parliamentary tribune —this activity must be absolutely subordinate to the aims and tasks of the mass struggle outside parliament.

Participation in election campaigns and the utilization of parliament as a platform for revolutionary ideas is of particular significance for the political conquest of those layers of the working class such as the rural working masses who until now have stood aside from political life and the revolutionary movement.

13 Should the Communists receive a majority in the local government institutions, it is their duty to take the following measures: a) form a revolutionary opposition to fight the bourgeois central authority; b) aid the poorer sections of the population in every possible way (economic measures, the organization or attempted organization of armed workers’ militias etc.); c) expose, at every opportunity, the obstacles which the bourgeois state power places in the way of fundamental social change; d) launch a determined campaign to spread revolutionary propaganda, even if it leads to conflict with the state power; e) under certain circumstances, replace the local government bodies with Soviets of workers’ deputies. All Communist activity in the local government institutions must be seen as a part of the general struggle to break up the capitalist system. 

14. The election campaign itself must be conducted not as a drive for the maximum number of parliamentary seats, but as a mobilization of the masses around slogans of proletarian revolution. The election struggle must involve rank-and-file Party members and not the Party leadership alone; it is essential that all mass actions (strikes, demonstrations, movements among the armed forces etc.) occurring at the time are taken up in the campaign and that close contact is maintained with them. The mass proletarian organizations should also be drawn into active work around the election.

15. If conducted in line with these theses and also with the conditions laid down in the special instruction, parliamentary work represents a direct contrast to the dirty political manoeuvring practised by the various social-democratic parties, who enter parliament to support this ‘democratic’ institution or, at best, ‘to win it over’. The Communist Party must stand exclusively for the revolutionary utilization of parliament, in the spirit of Karl Liebknecht, Höglund and the Bolsheviks.

III

16. Anti-parliamentarianism as a principle, as an absolute and categorical rejection of participation in elections or in revolutionary parliamentary work, is therefore a naive and childish position which does not stand up to criticism. Sometimes this attitude expresses a healthy disgust with the manoeuvring of the parliamentarians, but is nevertheless a failure to recognize the possibilities of revolutionary parliamentarianism. This position is frequently connected with a completely incorrect view of the role of the Party—the Communist Party is seen, not as a militant centralizing vanguard of the workers, but as a decentralized system of loosely connected groups.

17. At the same time, a recognition of parliamentary work does not imply absolute acceptance of the need to participate, whatever the circumstances, in all elections and parliamentary sessions. Participation in a particular election or session depends on a whole series of specific conditions. A certain combination of conditions may make withdrawal from parliament essential. The Bolsheviks left the pre-parliament in order to weaken it, undermine it and sharply counterpose to it the St. Petersburg Soviet which was about to take on the leadership of the October revolution. They left the Constituent Assembly on the day of its dissolution, transferring the focal point of political events to the Ill Congress of Soviets. Under other circumstances it may be essential to boycott elections and use direct action to remove the whole bourgeois state apparatus and the bourgeois parliamentary ruling clique. Alternatively, participation in elections, followed by a boycott of parliament, may be necessary etc.

18. So, while accepting as a general rule the need to participate in elections to both national parliaments and the organs of local government, and in the work of these institutions, the Communist Party has to decide each case separately, evaluating the specific conditions of the given moment. A boycott of elections or of parliament, or a withdrawal from parliament, are permissible primarily when conditions are ripe for an immediate move to armed struggle for power. 

19. The comparative unimportance of this question should always be kept in view. Since the focal point of the struggle for state power lies outside parliament the questions of proletarian dictatorship and the mass struggle for its realization are, obviously, immeasurably more important than the question of how to use the parliamentary system.

20. The Communist International therefore emphasizes most strongly that it considers any split or attempt to split the Communist Party solely on this question to be a serious mistake. The Congress also calls on all those who accept the principle of armed struggle for the proletarian dictatorship under the leadership of a centralized Party of the revolutionary proletariat, and who exercise an influence on all the mass organizations of the working class, to strive for the unity of all Communist elements despite possible differences on the question of how to use bourgeois parliaments.

THESES ON PARLIAMENTARISM PRESENTED BY THE COMMUNIST ABSTENTIONIST FRACTION OF THE ITALIAN SOCIALIST PARTY

From the Minutes of the Second World Congress of the Communist International, Hamburg, 1921, pp. 430–34. The French minutes were also taken into account.

Third (Communist) International

2nd Congress – June–August 1920

1. Parliamentarism is the form of political representation characteristic of the capitalist regime. In the field of principle the critique of the Marxist Communists in regards to parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy in general shows that the franchise granted to all citizens of all social classes in the elections of the representative organs of the State cannot prevent the whole governmental machinery of the State constituting the committee of defense of the interests of the ruling capitalist class, nor can it prevent the State from organizing itself as the historical instrument of the bourgeoisie in the struggle against the proletarian revolution. 

2. The Communists categorically reject the possibility of the working class conquering power by a majority in Parliament instead of attaining it by an armed revolutionary struggle. The conquest of political power by the proletariat, which is the starting point of the work of Communist economic construction, implies the violent and immediate suppression of the democratic organs, which will be replaced by the organs of the proletarian power, the workers’ councils. With the exploiting class being thus deprived of all political rights, the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is to say, a system of class government and representation, will be realized. The suppression of parliamentarism is therefore a historic goal of the communist movement; still more, it is precisely representative democracy which is the first structure of bourgeois society which must be overthrown, before capitalist property, before even the bureaucratic and governmental State machinery. 

3. The same goes for the municipal or communal institutions of the bourgeoisie, which are falsely regarded as liable to be opposed to the governmental organs. In fact their machinery is identical with the state mechanism of the bourgeoisie. They must also be destroyed by the revolutionary proletariat and replaced by local Soviets of the workers’ deputies. 

4. While the executive, military and police machinery of the bourgeois State organizes direct action against the proletarian revolution, representative democracy constitutes a means of indirect defense which works by spreading among the masses the illusion that their emancipation can be attained through a peaceful process, and the illusion that the form of the proletarian State can also have a parliamentary basis with the right of representation for the bourgeois minority. The result of this democratic influence on the proletarian masses has been the corruption of the socialist movement of the Second International in the domain of theory as well as in that of action. 

5. The task of Communists at the present moment in their work of ideological and material preparation for the revolution is above all to remove from the minds of the proletariat those illusions and prejudices, which have been spread with the complicity of the old social-democratic leaders in order to turn it away from its historical path. In the countries where a democratic regime has held sway for a long time and has penetrated deeply into the habits and mentality of the masses, no less than into the mentality of the traditional socialist parties, this work is of a very great importance and comes among the first problems of revolutionary preparation. 

6. Possibilities of propaganda, agitation and criticism could be offered by participation in elections and in parliamentary activity during that period when, in the international proletarian movement, the conquest of power did not seem to be a possibility in the very near future, and when it was not yet a question of direct preparation for the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the other hand in a country where the bourgeois revolution is in course of progress and is creating new institutions, Communist intervention in the representative organs can offer the possibility of wielding an influence on the development of events in order to make the revolution end in victory for the proletariat. 

7. The present historical period was opened by the end of the World War with its consequences for the social bourgeois organization, by the Russian Revolution which was the first realization of the conquest of power by the proletariat, and by the constitution of a new International in opposition to the socialdemocracy of the traitors. In this historical period, and in those countries where the democratic regime achieved its formation a long time ago, there is no possibility of using the parliamentary tribune for the communist revolutionary work, and the clarity of propaganda, no less than the efficiency of the preparation for the final struggle for the dictatorship, demand that Communists conduct an agitation for an election boycott by the workers. 

8. In these historical conditions, where the main problem of the movement is the revolutionary conquest of power, the whole political activity of the class party must be devoted to this direct end. It is necessary to shatter the bourgeois lie according to which every clash between opposing political parties, every struggle for power, must necessarily take place within the framework of the democratic mechanism, that is through elections and parliamentary debates. We cannot succeed in destroying that lie without breaking with the traditional method of calling the workers to vote in elections side by side with members of the bourgeoisie, and without putting an end to the spectacle where the delegates of the proletariat act on the same parliamentary ground as the delegates of its exploiters. 

9. The dangerous idea that all political action consists of electoral and parliamentary action has already been spread too widely by the ultraparliamentary practice of the traditional socialist parties. On the other hand, the distaste of the proletariat for the treacherous practice has lent favourable ground to the mistakes of syndicalism and anarchism which deny all value of party’s political action and role. For that reason the Communist parties will never obtain great success in propagandizing the revolutionary Marxist method if the severing of all contacts with the machinery of bourgeois democracy is not put at the basis of their work for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the workers’ councils. 

10. In spite of all the public speeches and all the theoretical statements, the very great importance which is attached in practice to the electoral campaign and its results, and the fact that for a long period the party has to devote to that cause all its means and all its resources in men, in the press, and even in money, helps to strengthen the feeling that this is the true central activity to achieve the aims of communism; on the other hand, it leads to complete cessation of the work of revolutionary organization and preparation. It gives to the party organization a technical character quite in opposition to the requirements of revolutionary work, legal as well as illegal. 

11. For the parties which have gone over, by a majority resolution, to the Third International, the allowance of the continuation of electoral action prevents the necessary sorting out and elimination of social-democratic elements, without which the Third International would fail in its historic role, and would no longer be a disciplined and homogeneous army of the worldwide revolution. 

12. The very nature of the debates which have parliament and other democratic organs for their theatre excludes every possibility of passing from a criticism of the policy of the opposing parties, to a propaganda against the very principle of parliamentarism, and to an action which would overstep parliamentary rules – just as it would not be possible to get the right to speak if we refused to submit to all the formalities established by electoral procedure. Success in the parliamentary fencing will always depend only on the skill in handling the common weapon of the principles on which the institution itself is based, and in dealing with the tricks of parliament procedure – just as the success in the electoral struggle will always be judged only by the number of votes or seats obtained. Every effort of the Communist parties to give a completely different character to the practice of parliamentarism cannot but lead to failure the energies spent in that Sisyphean labour, whereas the cause of the Communist revolution calls these energies without delay on the terrain of the direct attack against the regime of capitalist exploitation.

On the question of parliamentarism: speech delivered by comrade Bordiga at the 2nd Congress of the Communist International

Rassegna Comunista, August 15, 1921

Comrades!

The left fraction of the Italian Socialist Party is anti-Parliamentary for reasons which do not concern Italy alone, but are of a general character.

Is this here a discussion of principle? Certainly not. In principle we are all anti-parliamentarians, since we repudiate parliamentarism as a means of emancipating the proletariat and as the political form of the proletarian state. 

The anarchists are anti-parliamentarians in principle, since they declare themselves against any delegation of power from one individual to another; so are the syndicalists, opponents of party political action and having an entirely different conception of the process of proletarian emancipation. As for us, our anti-parliamentarism goes back to the Marxist critique of bourgeois democracy. I will not repeat here the arguments of critical communism, exposing the bourgeois lie of political equality placed above economic inequality and class struggle. This conception leads to the idea of a historical process, in which the class struggle ends with the liberation of the proletariat after a sustained violent struggle for proletarian dictatorship. This theoretical conception set forth in the “Communist Manifesto” found its first historical realization in the Russian Revolution. 

A long period elapsed between these two facts, and the development of the capitalist world during this period was very complex. The Marxist movement degenerated into a social democratic movement and created a common ground for the small corporate interests of certain workers’ groups and bourgeois democracy. This degeneration manifested itself simultaneously in the trade unions and socialist parties. The Marxist task of the class party (which should have spoken in the name of the working class as a whole and recalled its historical revolutionary duty) was almost completely forgotten; an entirely different ideology was created, one that discarded violence and abandoned the dictatorship of the proletariat to replace it with the illusion of peaceful and democratic social transformation. The Russian Revolution clearly confirmed Marxist theory, demonstrating the need to employ the method of violent struggle and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the historical conditions under which the Russian revolution developed do not resemble the conditions under which the proletarian revolution will develop in the democratic countries of Western Europe and America. Rather, the Russian situation resembles that of Germany in 1848, as two revolutions took place there, one after the other, the democratic revolution and the proletarian revolution. The tactical experience of the Russian revolution cannot be transported in its entirety to other countries, where bourgeois democracy has been functioning for a long time and where the revolutionary crisis will only be the direct transition from this political regime to the dictatorship of the proletariat. 

The Marxist significance of the Russian Revolution is that its final stage (dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and seizure of power by the Soviets) could be understood and defended only on the basis of Marxism, and gave rise to the development of a new international movement: that of the Communist International, which broke it definitively with the social democracy, which had shamefully failed during the war. For Western Europe, the revolutionary problem first imposes the need to break out of the limitations of bourgeois democracy, to show that the bourgeois assertion: that all political struggle must be carried out in the parliamentary mechanism, is a lie, and that the struggle must be taken to a new terrain: that of direct, revolutionary action, for the conquest of power. A new technical organization of the party is needed, that is, a historically new organization. This new historical organization is realized by the Communist Party, which, as the theses of the Executive Committee on the question of the party’s tasks make it clear, is aroused by the epoch of direct struggles in view to the dictatorship of the proletariat (Thesis 4).

Now, the first bourgeois machine that must be destroyed, before moving on to the economic construction of communism, before even building the new Proletarian State mechanism that must replace the government apparatus, is Parliament. Bourgeois democracy acts among the masses as a means of indirect defense, while the executive apparatus of the state is ready to make use of the violent and direct means, since the last attempts to draw the proletariat onto the democratic ground have failed. 

It is therefore of paramount importance to unmask this game of the bourgeoisie, to show the masses all the duplicity of bourgeois parliamentarianism. 

The practice of traditional socialist parties had already before the World War brought about an anti-parliamentary reaction within the ranks of the proletariat: the anarchist syndicalist reaction, which denied all value to political action in order to concentrate the activity of the proletariat on the terrain of economic organizations, spreading the false idea that there can be no political action outside electoral and parliamentary activity. Against this illusion, no less than against the social-democratic illusion, it is necessary to react; this conception is far removed from the true revolutionary method and leads the proletariat down a false path in the course of its struggle for emancipation. 

Utmost clarity is indispensable in propaganda: simple and effective watchwords must be given to the masses. Starting from Marxist principles, we therefore propose that agitation for the proletarian dictatorship, in countries where the democratic regime has long been developed, should be based on the boycott of elections and bourgeois democratic organs. The great importance attached in practice to electoral action carries a double danger: on the one hand it gives the impression that this is the essential action; on the other hand it absorbs all the party’s resources and leads to the almost complete abandonment of preparatory action in the other fields of the movement. 

The Social Democrats are not alone in attaching great importance to elections: the very theses proposed by the [Executive] Committee tell us that it is useful to make use in election campaigns of all means of agitation (Thesis 15). The organization of the Party exercising electoral activity has a very special technical character, which contrasts sharply with the character of organization that responds to the necessity of revolutionary action, legal and illegal. The Party becomes (or remains) a cog of electoral committees that is responsible only for the preparation and mobilization of voters. When it comes to an old Social Democratic Party switching to the communist movement, it is a great danger to pursue parliamentary action as practiced before. There are numerous examples of this situation. 

As for the theses presented and supported by the speakers, I will observe that they are preceded by a historical introduction, with the first part of which I agree almost entirely. There it is said that the first International used parliamentarism for the purpose of agitation, propaganda and criticism. Later, in the Second International the corrupting action of parliamentarianism occurred, leading to reformism and class collaboration. The introduction draws the conclusion that the Third International must return to the parliamentary tactics of the first, in order to destroy parliamentarism itself from within. But the Third International, on the contrary, if it accepts the same doctrine as the first, given the great diversity of historical conditions, must make use of quite different tactics and not participate in bourgeois democracy. 

Thus in the theses that follow, there is a first part that is not at all contradictory to the ideas I advocate. It is only when we talk about the use of the election campaign and parliamentary forum for the action of the masses that the difference begins. We do not repudiate parliamentarianism because it is a legal means. One cannot propose its use in the same way as the press, freedom of assembly, etc. Here it is a question of means of action, there of a bourgeois institution to be replaced by the proletarian institutions of workers’ councils. We do not at all plan not to make use after the revolution of the press, propaganda, etc., but rather count on breaking up the parliamentary apparatus and replacing it with the dictatorship of the proletariat. 

Much less is the usual argument of the “leaders” of the movement brought by us. One cannot do without leaders. We know very well, and have always told anarchists since before the war, that it is not enough to renounce parliamentarianism to do without “leaders.” There will always be a need for propagandists, journalists, etc. Certainly the revolution needs a centralized party to direct proletarian action. Evidently leaders are needed for this party, but the function of these leaders has an entirely different value from traditional social democratic practice. The party directs proletarian action in the sense that it takes upon itself all the work that is most dangerous and demands the greatest sacrifices. The leaders of the party are not only the leaders of the victorious revolution. It is they who in the event of defeat will be the first to fall under the blows of the enemy. Their situation is quite different from that of the parliamentary leaders, who take the most advantageous posts in bourgeois society. 

We are told: from the parliamentary gallery one can make propaganda. To this I will answer with an argument … completely childish: what is said from the parliamentary gallery is repeated by the press. If it is the bourgeois press, everything is falsified; if it is our press, then there is no point in going through the gallery and then having to print what was said. 

The examples given by the speaker do not touch our thesis. Liebknecht acted in the Reichstag at a time when we recognized the possibility of parliamentary action, all the more so since it was not a matter of sanctioning parliamentarism, but of devoting himself to the critique of bourgeois power. If, on the other hand, one were to put Liebknecht, Hoeglund and the other few cases of revolutionary action in parliament on one plate of the scales and the whole long series of betrayals by the Social Democrats on the other, the balance would be very unfavorable for “revolutionary parliamentarism.”

The question of the Bolsheviks in the Duma, in Kerensky’s Parliament, in the Constituent Assembly does not arise at all under the conditions in which we propose the abandonment of parliamentary tactics, and I do not return to the difference between the development of the Russian revolution and the development that revolutions in other bourgeois countries will present. 

Still less do I accept the idea of the electoral conquest of bourgeois communal institutions. There is in this a very important problem that should not be passed over in silence. 

I think of making use of the election campaigns for the agitation and propaganda of the communist revolution, but this agitation will be all the more effective if we advocate before the masses the boycott of bourgeois elections. On the other hand, it is not possible to define exactly what destruction work the communist deputies will be able to carry out in Parliament. In this regard, the rapporteur presents us with a draft regulation concerning communist action in the bourgeois Parliament. This is, if I may say so, pure utopianism. It will never come to organize parliamentary action that opposes the very principles of parliamentarianism, that goes “outside the very limits of parliamentary regulation.” 

And now a few words on the arguments brought by Comrade Lenin in the pamphlet on “left wing communism.” I believe that one cannot judge our anti-parliamentary tactics in the same way as that which advocates leaving the Trade Unions. The Trade Union, even when it is corrupt, is still a workers’ center. Exiting the Social Democratic Trade Union corresponds to the conception of certain trade unionists who would like to constitute themselves as organs of revolutionary struggle of a non-political, but trade union type. From the Marxist point of view, this is an error that has nothing in common with the arguments on which our anti-parliamentarism rests. The rapporteur’s theses declare, moreover, that the parliamentary question is secondary to the Communist movement; the trade union question is not so secondary. 

I believe that from opposition to parliamentary action one should not infer a decisive judgment on comrades or communist parties. Comrade Lenin, in his interesting work, sets out for us Communist tactics by defending a very agile action, corresponding very well to the careful analysis of the bourgeois world, and he proposes to apply to this analysis in capitalist countries, the data of the experience of the Russian Revolution. He also advocates the need to take into account in the highest degree the differences between different countries. I will not discuss this method here. I will only observe that a Marxist movement in Western democratic countries demands a much more direct tactic than was necessary for the Russian Revolution. 

Comrade Lenin accuses us of discarding the problem of communist action in parliament because the solution seems too difficult, and of preconceiving anti-parliamentary tactics because they involve less effort. We perfectly agree on this point: that the tasks of the proletarian revolution are very complex and very arduous. We are perfectly convinced that after solving, as we propose to do, the problem of parliamentary action, the other much more important problems will remain on our arms and their solution will certainly not be so simple. But it is precisely for this reason that we plan to take most of the efforts of the communist movement to a much more important field of action than that of Parliament. And this is not because the difficulties frighten us. We merely observe that opportunist parliamentarians, who adopt a tactic more convenient to apply, are by no means less completely absorbed in their action by parliamentary activity. We conclude from this that in order to solve the problem of communist parliamentarism according to the rapporteur’s theses (admitting this solution), tenfold efforts are needed and fewer resources and energies will remain with the movement for truly revolutionary action. 

In the evolution of the bourgeois world, the stages that must necessarily be observed even after the revolution, in the economic transformation from capitalism to communism, do not carry over to the political terrain. The transfer of power from the exploiters to the exploited brings with it the instantaneous change of the representative apparatus. Bourgeois parliamentarism must be replaced by the system of workers’ councils. 

This old mask that tends to conceal the class struggle must therefore be torn off so that we can move on to direct revolutionary action.

This is how we summarize our view of parliamentarism, a view that connects completely with the Marxist revolutionary method. May I conclude with a consideration common to us with Comrade Bukharin. This question cannot and must not give rise to a split in the communist movement. If the Communist International decides to take upon itself the creation of communist parliamentarism, we will submit to its resolution. We do not believe that it will succeed, but we declare that we will do nothing to make this work fail.

And I hope that the next Congress of the Communist International will not have to discuss the results of parliamentary action, but rather record the victories of the Communist Revolution in a large number of countries. If this is not possible, I wish Comrade Bukharin to be able to present us with a less dismal balance sheet of Communist parliamentarianism than the one with which he had to begin his report today.

Lenin’s Speech

Comrade Bordiga seems to have wanted to defend the Italian Marxists’ point of view here, yet he has failed to reply to any of the arguments advanced by other Marxists in favour of parliamentary action. 

Comrade Bordiga has admitted that historical experience is not created artificially. He has just told us that the struggle must be carried into another sphere. Is he not aware that every revolutionary crisis has been attended by a parliamentary crisis? True, he has said that the struggle must be carried into another sphere, into the Soviets. Bordiga, however, has himself admitted that Soviets cannot be created artificially. The example of Russia shows that Soviets can be organised either during a revolution or on the eve of a revolution. Even in the Kerensky period, the Soviets (which were Menshevik Soviets) were organised in such a way that they could not possibly constitute a proletarian government. Parliament is a product of historical development, and we cannot eliminate it until we are strong enough to disperse the bourgeois parliament. It is only as a member of the bourgeois parliament that one can, in the given historical conditions, wage a struggle against bourgeois society and parliamentarianism. The same weapon as the bourgeoisie employs in the struggle must also be used by the proletariat, of course, with entirely different aims. You cannot assert that that is not the case, and if you want to challenge it, you will have thereby to erase the experience of all revolutionary developments in the world. 

You have said that the trade unions are also opportunist, that they, too, constitute a danger. On the other hand, however, you have said that an exception must be made in the case of trade unions, because they are workers’ organisations. But that is true only up to a certain point. There are very backward elements in the trade unions too: a section of the proletarianised petty bourgeoisie, the backward workers, and the small peasants. All these elements really think that their interests are represented in parliament. This idea must be combated by work within parliament and by citing the facts, so as to show the masses the truth. Theory will have no effect on the backward masses; they need practical experience. 

This was to be seen in the case of Russia too. We were obliged to convene the Constituent Assembly even after the victory of the proletariat, so as to prove to the backward proletarians that they had nothing to gain from that Assembly. To bring home the difference between the two, we had to concretely contrapose the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly and to show the Soviets as the only solution. 

Comrade Souchy, a revolutionary syndicalist, advocated the same theory, but he had no logic on his side. He said that he was not a Marxist, so everything can be readily understood. But you, Comrade Bordiga, assert that you are a Marxist, so we must expect more logic from you. You must know how parliament can be smashed. If you can do it by an armed uprising in all countries, well and good. You are aware that we in Russia proved our determination to destroy the bourgeois parliament, not only in theory, but in practice as well. You, however, have lost sight of the fact that this is impossible without fairly long preparations, and that in most countries it is as yet impossible to destroy parliament at one stroke. We are obliged to carry on a struggle within parliament for the destruction of parliament. For the conditions determining the political line of all classes in modern society you substitute your revolutionary determination; that is why you forget that to destroy the bourgeois parliament in Russia we were first obliged to convene the Constituent Assembly, even after our victory. You say: “It is a fact that the Russian revolution is a case that is not in accord with conditions in Western Europe”, but you have not produced a single weighty argument to prove that to us. We went through a period of bourgeois democracy. We went through it rapidly at a time when we had to agitate for elections to the Constituent Assembly. Later, when the working class was able to seize power, the peasants still believed in the necessity of a bourgeois parliament. 

Taking account of these backward elements, we had to proclaim the elections and show the masses, by example and by facts, that the Constituent Assembly, which was elected at a time of dire and universal need, did not express the aspirations and demands of the exploited classes. In this way the conflict between Soviet and bourgeois government became quite clear, not only to us, the vanguard of the working class, but also to the vast majority of the peasantry, to the petty office employees, the petty bourgeoisie, etc. In all capitalist countries there are backward elements in the working class who are convinced that parliament is the true representative of the people and do not see the unscrupulous methods employed there. You say that parliament is an instrument with the aid of which the bourgeoisie deceive the masses. But this argument should be turned against you, and it does turn against your theses. How will you reveal the true character of parliament to the really backward masses, who are deceived by the bourgeoisie? How will you expose the various parliamentary manoeuvres, or the positions of the various parties, if you are not in parliament, if you remain outside parliament? If you are Marxists, you must admit that, in capitalist society, there is a close link between the relations of classes and the relations of parties. How, I repeat, will you show all this if you are not members of parliament, and if you renounce parliamentary action? The history of the Russian revolution has clearly shown that the masses of the working class, the peasantry, and petty office employees could not have been convinced by any arguments, unless their own experience had convinced them. 

It has been claimed here that it is a waste of time to participate in the parliamentary struggle. Can one conceive of any other institution in which all classes are as interested as they are in parliament? This cannot be created artificially. If all classes are drawn into the parliamentary struggle, it is because the class interests and conflicts are reflected in parliament. If it were possible everywhere and immediately to bring about, let us say, a decisive general strike so as to overthrow capitalism at a single stroke, the revolution would have already taken place in a number of countries. But we must reckon with the facts, and parliament is a scene of the class struggle. Comrade Bordiga and those who share his views must tell the masses the truth. Germany provides the best example that a Communist group in parliament is possible. That is why you should have frankly said to the masses: “We are too weak to create a party with a strong organisation.” That would be the truth that ought to be told. But if you confessed your weakness to the masses, they would become your opponents, not your supporters; they would become supporters of parliamentarianism. 

If you say: “Fellow workers, we are so weak that we cannot form a party disciplined enough to compel its members of parliament to submit to it”, the workers would abandon you, for they would ask themselves: “How can we set up a dictatorship of the proletariat with such weaklings?” 

You are very naïve if you think that the intelligentsia, the middle class, and the petty bourgeoisie will turn Communist the day the proletariat is victorious. 

If you do not harbour this illusion, you should begin right away to prepare the proletariat to pursue its own line. You will find no exceptions to this rule in any branch of state affairs. On the day following the revolution, you will everywhere find advocates of opportunism who call themselves-Communists, i.e., petty bourgeois who refuse to recognise the discipline of the Communist Party or of the proletarian state. Unless you prepare the workers for the creation of a really disciplined party, which will compel its members to submit to its discipline, you will never prepare for the dictatorship of the proletariat. I think that this accounts for your unwillingness to admit that the repudiation of parliamentary action by a great many of the new Communist parties stems from their weakness. I am convinced that the vast majority of the really revolutionary workers will follow us and speak up against your anti-parliamentary theses.

Reply from the left wing of the PSI on the issue of parliamentarism

Comrade Lenin’s objections to the theses I have presented and to my arguments raise questions of great interest, which I do not even intend to touch upon here and which relate back to the general problem of Marxist tactics.

Undoubtedly, parliamentary events and ministerial crises are closely related to the development of the revolution and the crisis of the bourgeois order. But, in order to arrive at the question by what means proletarian political action can exert an influence on events, one must refer to considerations of method of the order of those which, even before the war, led the Marxist left of the international socialist movement to exclude ministerial participation and parliamentary support for bourgeois ministries, although these are undoubtedly means of intervening in the development of events. 

It is the very necessity of the unification of the revolutionary forces of the proletariat and their organization in the sense of the ultimate goal of communism, which dictates a tactic based on certain general rules of action, even if they are apparently too simple and too inelastic.

I believe that our current historical mission dictates a new tactic, that of rejecting participation in parliaments-which is, no doubt, a means of direct intervention in political situations, but, in the development of the class struggle, has become devoid of revolutionary effectiveness.

The argument that it is necessary to solve the practical problem of communist and party-disciplined parliamentary action because, in the post-revolutionary period, it will be necessary to know and be able to organize institutions of all sorts with human material drawn from bourgeois and semi-bourgeois circles, could be invoked in the same breath to argue for the usefulness of having socialist ministers under bourgeois rule.

But this is not the time to delve into this issue, and I simply state that I maintain my views on the question we are dealing with. I am more convinced than ever that the Communist International will not succeed in concretizing an action that is at the same time parliamentary and truly revolutionary.

Finally, since it has been recognized that the theses I have presented rest on purely Marxist principles and have nothing in common with the anarchist and syndicalist arguments against parliamentarism, I hope that they will be voted for only by those anti-parliamentary comrades who accept them en bloc and in their spirit, sharing the Marxist considerations that form their basis.

(The preceding speeches are taken from the Protokoll des II. Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale, pp. 404–416, 451–455, and 455–456, compared with the stenographic record and, in part, with the report in Il Soviet of October 3, 1920.)

PART IV

REVOLUTIONARY PARLIAMENTARISM

After the decision of the Second Congress of the Communist International, in favor of the theses envisaging the use of electoral campaigns and parliament for the purposes of propaganda and revolutionary action, the Left, which directed the Communist Party of Italy from its founding to 1923, scrupulously adhered in its practical action to the letter and spirit of the Lenin-Bucharin-Trotski theses: indeed, it can be said without fear of contradiction that it was the only one to give, in the retreating phase of the postwar wave, the examples of revolutionary parliamentarism that Lenin hoped for and that Liebknecht had embodied in the ascendant phase of the German revolution. Characteristic in this regard is Party’s action in the 1921 election campaign, in which, as its «Manifesto» shows, the Left knew how to make a great propaganda movement and political mobilization of the working class in the face of the pressing fascist offensive.

Under the same circumstances, the article «Elections» defended the need to participate in the election campaign, despite the deep abstentionist convictions of many proletarians, with arguments of particular importance. First of all, the article recalls how the 1921 situation, in which fewer ballots were counted than bludgeon blows, was one that best corresponded to the Leninist tactical scheme of revolutionary parliamentarism and instead was less suited to the abstentionist tactics of the Left, which was hostile to participation especially in countries and stages of bourgeois democracy and «constitutional freedoms.» An examination of the 1921 situation, however, is not a decisive argument in favor of the International’s tactics.

Always convinced that the parliamentary theses of the Second Congress should be revised, the Left had nevertheless vigorously advocated international discipline and centralism: as a Marxist Left, it was first centralist and only then abstentionist. Precisely because our tactical conception was fully integrated into the theory and principles of communism, the Left never resorted, in order to make its case, to corridor bargaining, to «special situations,» and, even worse, to those «national ways» that served as a pretext for the renegades to smuggle in the most conformist parliamentarianism. In the history of the World Communist Party, abstentionism was not supposed to enter through the back door, least of all by indirect ways antithetical to our doctrine.

The article «Abstentionist Nostalgias» (1924) and the excerpt reproduced here from the «Lyon Theses» (1926) contain our denunciation of the democratic anti-fascism that from 1924 tended to undermine — and will finally completely disfigure — the line of the Party, no longer directed (by decree of the International ) by the Left. To properly assess its significance, it will be worthwhile to briefly recall the historical context and, in particular, the situation in 1924, of which the article «Abstentionist Nostalgias» is in a sense the prediction and the «Lyon Theses» represents the political balance sheet.

In the early months of 1924, the P.C.d’I., now headed by the party “Center” and loyal to the «elastic» directives of the Comintern, presented itself at the elections as the «Bloc of Proletarian Unity,» under the illusion of crystallizing around it a vast movement not so much and not only proletarian, as «popular,» but failing to unite under that confused banner but the scattered group of «thirdinternationalists». Now, as is clear from the Feb. 28 article, the elections, destined to legitimize the Fascist regime, provoked an initial uprising in favor of abstention — an uprising stemming not from our reasons of strict Marxist orthodoxy, but from bourgeois constitutional prejudices, from «outrage» for the «illegality,» «frauds», «poll-riggings» and violence that characterized the election campaign, an anticipation of the hubbub that would take place thirty years later over the «fraud law.»

It fell to the Left to defend participation in elections not only in the name of discipline toward the International, but in reaction to the first symptoms of democratic, constitutional and legalitarian nostalgia spreading among our ranks. Once the criterion of revolutionary parliamentarianism had been internationally sanctioned, it had to be practiced thoroughly and on its true bases, not entrenched behind «unconstitutionality» or the dangers of a particular campaign to desert it, moreover justifying it with abstentionism dictated by «moral» reactions or scruples of… democratic correctness.

The alarm was more than justified. When the Matteotti crisis broke out in June, the centrist leadership of the P.C.d’I. followed the democratic-bourgeois oppositions (Socialists included) in making the vile affair a «moral issue,» walked out of parliament, mistook Aventinism for the «cornerstone of the popular anti-fascist movement,» and, even after the failed attempt at a general strike and united front with the Socialists, insisted on offering joint action to the Aventinian parties and groups, pushing it as far as the proposal — of a blunt democratic brand — to constitute itself into an «anti-parliament.» So much for «destroying the parliament from the outside»! Another, a more «honest,» a «more legal,» «better» Montecitorio would be held… In short, it went from the extreme of pro-democratic-inspired parliamentary abstentionism to the opposite extreme of ultra-democratic-inspired parliamentary overzealousness.

Once again, it was the Left that reacted vigorously: if ever there was a situation in which revolutionary parliamentarianism, that is, the tactic of using parliamentary grandstanding to denounce both parliamentarianism and fascist-democracy collaboration in defending the foundations of bourgeois society, made sense, that was it. Had we gone to parliament? Then we had to stay there at the risk of being truncheoned, exposing at once the «government of murderers» and its cowardly last-minute «opponents.» Had we wanted to adopt the tactic of revolutionary parliamentarism? Let us at least practice it, courageously, instead of falling back into a new and cowardly version of reformist parliamentarism. It was necessary to follow our independent path to the end, mobilizing around revolutionary watchwords the masses, more willing than ever to fight in the cities and the countryside, and to this end not letting slip the unique though subsidiary opportunity to use the megaphones of the parliamentary forum, deserted by all, to reiterate the notion that the real solution to the crisis had to be sought not in there, but in the squares.

Only the categorical refusal of the «oppositions» to join the albeit democratic initiatives of the P.C.d’I. persuaded the Gramscian leadership to accept the Left’s thesis by re-entering Montecitorio, and it is no coincidence that to deliver the bold «re-entry» speech in the Chamber, on November 12, 1924, amid shouts of menace and raised fists, was called precisely a member of the Left, a member of the old Executive deposed in 1923: Luigi Repossi, just as it is no coincidence that the first speech in the new legislature was given on behalf of the Party, on January 14, 1925, by another «abstentionist» (not yet capitulated before Moscow), Ruggero Grieco, not so much to carry out the critique of the new electoral law as to reaffirm the Communist principles of class struggle, violent conquest of power and proletarian dictatorship. The balance sheet of the Aventine period, made by the Left, is finally summarized in the «Lyon Theses» paragraph with which this chapter concludes.

The last battle of the Marxist Left on the parliamentary question was not only an extreme example of revolutionary parliamentarism as Lenin had understood and envisaged it. By defending revolutionary parliamentarism against the relapse into parliamentarianism tout court, the Left then knew how to defend at the same time its typical abstentionism against the «contingent abstentionism» of the anti-fascist democrats, ready to commute between parliament and «anti-parliament» for the sole purpose of the preservation of the bourgeois order.

After the ordeal of the popular fronts and the partisan resistance blocs into which anti-fascism then succeeded in dragging the proletariat, destroying the very cornerstones of the communist program, it is an integral and definitive abstentionism that the Left is passing on to future revolutionary generations.

ELECTIONS

Il Comunista, April 14, 1921

We also hoped, and it is understandable why, that they would not happen. But all hope must now be laid to rest. Elections are being held. What will the Communist Party do?

Apart from all the modalities that the competent bodies may establish, according to some comrades the question should be asked: Should the C.P. participate in the elections or not? In my opinion, this question has no reason to exist. For clear reasons of international tactical discipline, the C.P. must and will intervene in the elections.

I don’t mean to say that the problem of election tactics is within the Communist International definitively resolved with the decisions of the Second Congress. On the contrary, I believe that the number of us abstentionists has increased in many Western Communist Parties, and it is not excluded that the question will return to the next Third Congress. If this were to happen, I would be for the same theses I put forward and which were rejected at last year’s Congress: for the better conduct of communist propaganda and revolutionary preparation in western ‘democratic’ countries, in the current period of universal revolutionary crisis, communists should NOT participate in elections. But as long as the opposing theses of BuKharin and Lenin apply, for participation in elections and parliaments with anti-democratic and anti-social-democratic directives and aims, one must participate without discussion, and strive to adhere to these tactical rules. The outcome of this action will provide new elements to judge whether we abstentionists were wrong or right.

There are some abstentionist comrades — and even some electionists — who say: But can’t one find in Moscow’s theses a foothold to abstain from elections without incurring indiscipline? To this I reply firstly that abstentionism, which we try to get through the door, must not enter through the window, by means of pretexts and subterfuges. And then all the circumstances in which we find ourselves in this election campaign contribute to making the application of Mosca’s theses clearer, in spirit and in letter, in the sense of participation.

Let the comrades reread all the arguments of Lenin and Bukharin and they will see that they correspond better to circumstances of reaction and conculcation of the party’s freedom of movement. Let them reread the arguments put forward by me, and they will see that they refer above all to situations of ‘democracy’ and freedom, without, let it be understood, my thinking that they are outdated in the present circumstances. When Lenin said: We took part in the most reactionary Duma, I replied that the real danger lies in the most liberal parliaments. Lenin is convinced that a truly communist party can and must participate, but he admits with me the counter-revolutionary value of participation under the conditions of 1919, with a non-communist party.

The two theses dealing with the possibility of communist parties boycotting parliament and elections, refer to circumstances in which ‘an immediate struggle to seize power could take place’. I would like this to be the case, but this is not the case today: it cannot be ruled out that tomorrow the situation will be reversed; it would then take little to blow up, with the rotten parliamentary apparatus, the election committees that our party will have set up.

In Moscow, if I had accepted the suggestions of some comrades, I could perhaps have obtained an ‘enlargement’ of those exceptions, and today we could, perhaps, apply them — although we are, I repeat, in the specific conditions thought up by Lenin for useful participation. But instead I preferred to present clearly opposite conclusions. This has led to the benefit of having clear and certain directives and not being ‘Serratized’ with the tiresome argument of ‘special conditions’. Centralisation is the cornerstone of our theoretical and practical method: as a Marxist, first I am a centralist, and then an abstentionist.

For other theses it did not happen like that. Some points were patched up to satisfy small oppositions (but bigger than our small patrol of coûte que coûte abstentionists). I don’t consider the conclusion, in the application of these theses, which have somewhat lost a precise theoretical directive, favourable for the effectiveness and security of revolutionary action.

We abstentionists were the only ones who opposed the theses proposed by men whose authority was and is rightly formidable with precise conclusions to the contrary. (In the meantime, many critics of the twentieth day were silent, who were unable to oppose conclusions to which they later rebelled). We abstentionists must also be the ones to set an example of discipline, without sophistry and prevarication.

The Communist Party, therefore, has no reason to discuss whether or not it will go to the elections. It must go. In what manner, it will be duly decided. With what objective, Moscow’s theses tell us, and it can be summed up in a few words: Break the parliamentary prejudice, and thus accept if instead of votes one wants to count the blows and worse. Break the social democratic prejudice and thus turn the batteries, with inflexible intransigence, against the social democratic party.

The abstentionists are at their post.

NORMS FOR POLITICAL ELECTIONS

Il Comunista, April 14, 1921

There is no electionist or anti-electionist question for us today. It may come up for discussion again at the 3rd Congress of the Communist International. But today the Italian section of the 3rd International obeys, disciplined and united, the rules laid down in Moscow last year. The Executive Committee of the Party, meeting to deliberate on the forthcoming electoral struggle, did not delay even a minute in examining whether the Party could, given its special organisational conditions just at the beginning, refrain from participating in the May rallies.

And it immediately went on to set the rules for participation, voting on the following agenda:

‘The Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Italy, discussing the general political elections, in the urgency of issuing provisions even before the convening of the C.C., which will address a manifesto-programme to the proletariat, declares that, by virtue of the discipline to the deliberations of the International, the Communist Party will participate in the elections with the precise aims and criteria contained in the theses approved by the Second World Congress in Moscow and resolves:

‘that the Communist Party will take part in the struggle, in principle, in all constituencies, with absolute intransigence, with blocked lists, adopting as a symbol for the ballot papers the emblem of the Republic of Soviets, i.e. the hammer and sickle in the crown of ears of wheat;

‘that in each constituency a convention of representatives of the interested provincial federations — no more than two delegates for each one — is immediately convened to proceed with the organisation of the struggle, designating a shortlist of candidates, which must include a number of names more than half the number of deputies to be elected in the constituency, and informing the Executive Committee by the 14th so that the latter can compile the final list;

‘all full members of the Party who have been members since its constitution may be candidates;

‘in all the constituencies the collection of the three hundred signatures with notary authentication necessary for the subsequent presentation of the lists will begin immediately’.

It is pointless to repeat what we have already written in anticipation of the forthcoming convocation of the electoral meetings. These come at a very critical time for our party. Difficulties of all kinds will have to be overcome, given also that the federal constituent congress has not been held in all the provinces and that the federations’ coffers are empty. Nor will the E.C. be able to contribute even a small part of the election expenses. Since we are unscrupulous in this matter, we won’t get worked up over  electoral preparations. We will keep our health intact for the biggest and most decisive battles. But this does not mean that we should disregard the fight, which would mean not participating in it, having a colossal defeat without even the honour of having fought, sabotaging party discipline under the guise of respecting it.

Of course our elections will be done with economy. We have always repeated that they do not even remotely give the true majority of the country’s thinking, since the democratic regime, which holds the power of the state and the bank and the press in its hands, precludes the workers from the path of free expression of their political thought. Tens of thousands of revolutionary workers are in jail and ‘will not come out until after the elections have taken place’, hundreds of thousands of names of workers presumed to be subversive voters have been removed from the electoral lists by the bourgeois communes; and where the communes were socialist, due to their cowardice and the action of the royal and white guards, the royal or prefectural commissioners took over to prepare the electoral lists. Thousands of workers, on voting day, could not cast their ballot in the ballot box, because they were in service on the railways, on the tramways, in the ports, on the oceans, in the army, in the navy.

Those taking part in the elections are the same people we see every day on punitive expeditions, the white guard, i.e. the plaincloth royal guard, and the idlers of all industries, of the vilest commerce, of the bloodthirsty agrarians, of the most petulant and unclean press.

But the workers and communists must not miss any opposing rally. They must speak their word, which is that of the entire Party, to the scoundrels of the bourgeoisie, and to the cowardly Italian socialists who have admitted the principle of ‘passive resistance’. We will make propaganda, as far as we are allowed by democratic fiction.

Our thoughts and activities go beyond the petty electoral competition.

We pause to speak our mind at this juncture because we do not want to miss an opportunity to propagandise communist principles.

Nor should we be too surprised if, by granting ‘universal suffrage’, democracy prevents workers from exercising their right to vote. The democratic state exercises its dictatorship. This is Marxistically logical.

And it justifies the proletarian dictatorship, which — moreover — by excluding the bourgeoisie and all those who do not perform productive work for the community (whether material or spiritual) from the soviet elections, does not, through a tendentiously classist formula, lie about its profound class conception.

The Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Italy

MANIFESTO FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION

Il Comunista, April 21, 1921

To the Italian proletarians

Proletarians!

The Communist Party of Italy takes to the electoral terrain to reaffirm, in the midst of the great masses of the working people, the watchword, more historically relevant and vigorous than ever, of the Communist International and the world revolution.

A great work must be carried out by the proletarian vanguard, by the most faithful and devoted militants of the working class, a work of reorganisation of the revolutionary ranks, of reconstruction of faith and will, of rearrangement of the forces necessary for defence and attack.

The Communist Party, inspired by the teachings of the history of modern proletarian revolutions and the body of doctrine elaborated by the Second World Congress of the Communist International, is persuaded of the necessity and usefulness of using the electoral period to realise these ends, and calls upon the best elements of the proletariat and the peasant class to mobilise around its banners all those who have preserved in the chaos and anguish of the present moment, a steadfast character and the tenacious intention to fight ceaselessly for the ideals of the oppressed and exploited classes, to hearten the disheartened and the dispersed, so that from this immense decomposition of the Italian revolutionary armies the new armies of redemption may be created, and the Caporetto of demagogic and armchair maximalism may be succeeded by the proletarian Vittorio Veneto. This great work must be done and will be done courageously, with a spirit of sacrifice and discipline, without infatuation for immediate successes, without discouragement for the difficulties to be faced, with the serenity and perseverance that must be proper to the revolutionary communist, who assesses the historical moment to be overcome, recognises the need for the specific work to be provided, and forges and welds a new link in the historical chain that leads to the emancipation of his class and the liberation of humanity.

Comrade workers!

These elections must show exactly and precisely what degree of political awareness and spiritual clarity the broad masses of the Italian working class have reached. The elections of 1919 were the trial of the ruling class of Italian society, of the bourgeois politicians who in 1915 had the fate of the people in their hands and made havoc of it, who had demanded all the sacrifices from the people, promising prosperity and freedom, and kept their promise by piling up disasters and shame, misery and tyranny. The elections of 1921 must be the trial of the Socialist Party, of the political personnel that the popular classes, after the disillusionments suffered in the war, had chosen in the Socialist Party to be represented in Parliament, to administer the trade union, cooperative and municipal institutions.

To the promises made by the bourgeoisie during the war, correspond the promises made by the Socialist Party after the armistice: to one failure corresponds another failure. The broad masses of the working class had entrusted their fate to the new leadership, they had formed an immense army in the field for the supreme struggle, they were prepared to face all dangers and all sufferings in order to emerge from the hell of capitalist exploitation and to begin, protected by a strong proletarian state, the work of elaborating and building a new civilisation on communist foundations. The uncertainties, hesitations, and fears of the Socialist Party led to the collapse of the proletarian army. The Socialist Party has revealed itself, especially since the communist minority emerged from its ranks, to be nothing more than a petty-bourgeois party, lacking an internationalist spirit, without faith in the revolutionary energies of the proletariat, imbued with a great admiration for bourgeois democracy and for the technical and political capacity of capitalism and its hostlers, incapable of organising the masses not only for supreme revolutionary victories, but also for the defence and preservation of the conquests already achieved and of class institutions. Every worker who is aware of the historical process of proletarian revolutions must by now be persuaded that his class will not be able to proceed any further in Italy if not over the corpse of the socialist party; he must by now be persuaded that it is not possible to conquer the bourgeoisie if he does not first clear the field of struggle of this rotting corpse, which weakens and often annihilates proletarian energies, delaying the awakening and organisation of the broad masses of the working class.

The Communist Party, without hesitation, without sentimental bitterness, certain of thus fulfilling a not inconsiderable part of its historic mission, sets its propaganda for the election period, opening fire on two fronts: against capitalist imperialism, now only capable of satisfying the vital needs of the proletarian masses with lead and the iron clubs of the white guards — and against the Socialist Party, which has disavowed the Communist International in order to exempt itself from the harsh duty of preparing the revolution, which, because it did not want to systematically prepare the working class for revolution, is incapable today of thwarting any reactionary attack, and must watch paralysed by stupor and panic as proletarian buildings are burned and destroyed and revolutionary militants are systematically massacred.

Communist proletarians!

The enlightening propaganda of the valiant theorists of international communism had prepared your spirits for the events unfolding in our country too. Therefore you are not intimidated, nor have you ever thought of amending and correcting your direction and programmes. The current events themselves are the best proof of how implacably the economic and social conditions for the advent of the workers’ state continue to exist and even deepen. If the parliamentary state can no longer guarantee fundamental freedoms to any citizen; if arbitrariness and abuse are rampant; if any private individual can with impunity replace legal authority in arresting, judging, condemning; if populations are tortured and terrorized; if the death penalty is de facto re-established against workers’ militants; all this means that the control of the productive forces now completely eludes the old ruling groups, that the established social hierarchies are irreparably broken, and that the day is not far off when an irresistible, immense uprising from the deepest popular strata against a regime that exists only as an infected excrescence of society will take place. It is now evident that capitalism cannot reorganise itself and rebuild its essential foundations other than by bringing about the death and decline of the broad popular masses.

It is also clear that further development of proletarian organisation in the old trade union, co-operative, municipal schemes has now become impossible. The peasant leagues, spread over a vast territory, cannot resist the systematic assault of the armed gangs. The great industrial workers’ unions are falling apart, as lock-outs and unemployment disarticulate the old workers, and redundancies drive the best proletarian elements out of the factories and towns, depriving the organisations of their agents and their living connective links. In the town halls, one of the fundamental theses of the Communist International is revealed with resounding clarity: when class struggle reaches its most acute phase, every oratorical duel between oppressed and oppressors in the elective assemblies becomes useless and ridiculous, and the domination of a single class, either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, becomes imperative.

In Italy, the bourgeoisie chases workers’ representatives out of the municipalities with guns in their hands, forces socialist administrations to resign, and asserts its will to monopolise local powers with violence. The bourgeoisie itself therefore teaches the masses the path to follow in order to maintain the level of organisation achieved and to create the conditions for further development until total emancipation: the conquest of all state powers, class dictatorship, the use of proletarian armed force to crush bourgeois terrorism and to impose on the bourgeoisie, in the grip of dissolution and disorder, respect for laws,  and the law of productive labour.

Comrade workers!

The economic and social premises for the proletarian revolution and the founding of the workers’ state exist. What is still lacking are the spiritual premises: a precise political orientation of the broad masses, a concrete direction for action, the recognition by the broad masses of a central political organism that is capable of issuing passwords that resonate in the universal proletarian consciousness as the inescapable commands of history. You must, comrades, work actively, in this period of agitation of ideas and programmes, to make the Communist Party known, to make it alive and operative in the proletarian consciousness, to dispel the legends and calumnies that the mercenary press cunningly spreads about it, you must work so that the Communist Party becomes the greatest power in Italy, just as the Communist International has already become the greatest power in the world. Comrades, you must, with pride, support your party and its programmes; you must instil in the masses your persuasion and absolute confidence that only by implementing these programmes can the salvation of the working people from barbarization and physical and moral degeneration be achieved.

Yes, only in the revolutionary proletariat is the principle of order to be found today, which can reorganise the productive forces dispersed and squandered by capitalist imperialism; only in the Sovietist system, proper to proletarian civilisation, can the atrocious war that is tearing society apart find a repression; only in the Communist International, which has become the world government of the productive forces and the working masses of the entire world, can humanity resume its unitary development towards ever higher forms of coexistence and culture. Comrades, with the unshakable faith in the destinies of your class and in the energy of the proletarian vanguard to implement them, which you will spread in this period among the demoralised and disoriented masses, you must reconstitute the Italian armies of the world revolution and the Communist International; It is revolutionary work that the Communist Party is calling you to, it is work that must be done and that you will do, mobilising all your energies, concentrating all the passion and will of which loyal and devoted soldiers of a great ideal are capable.

Italian workers!

The Communist International, which demands your enthusiasm, is the movement of your redemption and emancipation. The Communist Party must become, through your work, the only political party of the Italian working class.

Long live the Italian proletariat, definitively liberated from the opportunists and renegades! 

Long live the Communist International! 

Long live the world revolution!

The Central Committee

TO THE ITALIAN PROLETARIAT, ON THE OCCASION OF THE ELECTORAL STRUGGLE

Il Comunista, May 12, 1921

DEAR COMRADES !

A decree of your government dissolved parliament and called for new new electoral meetings. Giolitti’s government, which the whole world calls the last government of the king of Italy, is attempting to stage a new parliamentary comedy, in order to better oppose the revolutionary proletariat with a united front of the organised bourgeoisie, strengthened by the support of the hired gangs of fascist terrorism.

COMRADE WORKERS !

The conditions under which you will go to the polls this time are no longer those of last time. Now the bourgeoisie has regained its audacity.

Since the armistice, Italy has been in an acute revolutionary crisis. All the successive bourgeois ministries in power have demonstrated their impotence to save the country from economic chaos. Italy, of all the victorious countries, is the one that has most painfully felt the results of the victory. All the manoeuvres and fine promises made to you by Nitti and Giolitti served only to gain time, making concessions on paper, but taking away with the right hand what with the left they handed over. In reality, the measures taken seriously by the Italian rulers were those tending to strengthen the armed defence of bourgeois privilege: the ever-increasing increase in the development of the Guardia Regia and the Carabinieri was countered by the increase in the price of bread and the fabulous increase in taxes. The monetary crisis became more and more serious and unemployment took on ever more catastrophic proportions. The Italian bourgeoisie feels its last hour approaching: and with desperate, savage fury it devotes itself to provocations and terrorism, through its mercenary bands.

Unemployed officers, sons of owners, bourgeois students attack workers, burn cooperatives and labour chambers, destroy proletarian newspapers. Civil war is now a reality in Italy; the bourgeoisie’s offensive precedes that of the proletariat.

And it is thanks to the old socialist party, made up of heterogeneous elements, that favourable opportunities — which presented themselves several times — to engage the proletariat in a decisive revolutionary struggle were not exploited. The reformists of Italy, because this is their function, have played and continue to play into the hands of the bourgeoisie, helping it to shore up the shabby economic edifice of capitalism.

COMRADE WORKERS!

From the armistice onwards, they have stunned you with talk of the need to ‘produce more and consume less’: and this talk is given both by the bourgeoisie and by the social-reformists who have remained in the old socialist party, within which they intensify their propaganda for collaboration with the bourgeoisie.

The history of the last few years has taught these gentlemen nothing; conversely, it has taught the proletarians a great deal, as they now know how to distinguish their friends from their enemies. Your reformists dilate on lamentations every time fascist gangs wet the streets of towns and villages with proletarian blood; reformists call for calm and disarmament… What is the meaning of the reformists’ attitude? The capitulation and disarmament of the working class before the bourgeoisie armed to the teeth. It is not with speeches that the bourgeois reaction can be curbed, but with violence exercised by the entire, united oppressed class. In response to bourgeois violence, the Italian proletarian class must continuously and energetically put into practice its motto: ‘disarm the adversary, arm the proletariat’.

COMRADE WORKERS!

For the first time, the young Communist Party of Italy is taking part in an electoral struggle.

You all, of course, know how the Communist Party of Italy came into being at the Livorno Congress, from the split with the socialist party in which – due to the attitude of the Serrati current — the reformists remained. Subsequent events in Italian political life and in the socialist party have shown that the unitarians have favoured and continue to favour the pernicious and demolishing influence of the opportunists: and this, in the end, is all to the advantage of the bourgeoisie. This is precisely what the wily old fox of the bourgeoisie — Giolitti — is counting on. He knows that in the old socialist party the reformist elements are very strong (strong in parliament, in the labour confederation, in the cooperatives) who do not conceal their desire to enter the government and collaborate with the bourgeoisie ‘to — they say — carry out reconstructive work’.

We believe — and we hope — that the Communist Party has, despite its recent constitution, won the sympathy of the entire Italian proletariat through its unlimited devotion to the workers’ cause. Only the Communist Party has stood in solidarity with the workers who fought and lost in Florence and Puglia and who continue to fight everywhere. It alone openly and frankly declares its revolutionary communist programme. It alone prepares to organise armed insurrection. It alone does not hide its motto: ‘bourgeois violence must be answered with the organised violence of the proletariat’.

COMRADE WORKERS!

The MPs and the confederal bureaucracy of the old socialist party will not fail to make you, as always, at election time, fabulous promises of all kinds. But only the Communist Party, a section of the Communist International, having the banner of the Republic of Soviets on its flag, unambiguously declares to you that it enters parliament not to begin reconstructive work on what is doomed to ruin, but to propagandise communist ideas, to use the parliamentary forum for the purpose of increasing the cohesion and consciousness of the proletariat as it prepares for the final revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.

COMRADES!

Do not forget your duty of fraternity towards Russia, which for four years, rejecting all the attacks of the world bourgeoisie, has been striving in the peaceful work of reconstruction, useful not only to the masses of workers and peasants of Russia, but also to the proletariat of the whole world.

You will once again demonstrate your solidarity with the Russian proletariat and the Federation of Russian Soviets by sending as many communists as you can to the parliament, the bourgeois citadel. They will use all the means indicated by communist tactics to prevent the bourgeoisie from deceiving the proletariat; and, through the support of the broad masses, they will be able to hasten the day of the proletariat’s complete victory and the triumph of communism in Italy.

Vote, therefore, only for the candidates of the Communist Party of Italy. 

Vote for the Communist International and its section of Italy. 

Vote for Soviet Russia and for the Party linked to it by fraternal bond: the Communist Party of Italy. 

Long live the Italian proletariat and its only representative: the Communist Party of Italy! 

The Executive Committee of the Communist International

ON THE EVE OF THE ELECTIONS

Il Comunista, May 15, 1921

Italian proletarians !

On the eve of the conclusion of the electoral struggle, the Communist Party, which presents its lists for your suffrage, wants and must address one more word to you.

Our steadfast consistency with the truth of our doctrines and the honour of our flag, even and above all amidst the adversities of the present period, was reaffirmed in the manifestos launched by our Party at the beginning of the electoral struggle and on the occasion of May Day, and the Communist International, of which our Party is an integral part, has also addressed its appeal to you on both occasions.

So you know that we are taking up the struggle, that we are also taking up this episode in the class struggle, which the elections represent, with the entire unchanged baggage of our revolutionary programme, of our faith in the advent of communism.

We ask you to place the communist ballot in the ballot box to reaffirm that in Italy an immense number of exploited, of rebels, are in solidarity with the thought and work of the world communist revolution, whose flag is planted victoriously in Moscow, whose phalanxes fight in all the countries of the world against the same enemy: capitalism.

We affirm, with the Third International, and put into action, the need for the voice of communist propaganda and revolutionary incitement to be carried at election rallies and in bourgeois parliaments by representatives of the proletariat, chosen and strictly disciplined by its class party, the Communist Party.

At the same time we affirm that neither the ballot paper nor action in parliament will ever be able to give you, not just the achievements of economic, political and moral emancipation from the bourgeois yoke, but not even victory against the reactionary counteroffensive that the ruling class has unleashed against you today, or the alleviation of the storm of violence that is raging against your class institutions. We affirm that, by casting your communist ballot in the ballot box, you will not have made use of a decisive weapon that can defeat your adversary, but only affirmed and cemented, in the moral strength of a unanimous collective affirmation of the proletarian multitudes, your intention to follow in revolutionary action on the same terrain, with the same weapons, those much more offensive weapons that your adversary wields against you.

Neither electoral action nor parliamentary action will give you the means to change the exploitative conditions in which the bourgeois regime holds you, to begin in the slightest a work of reconstruction amidst the ruins with which it has sown the world. The struggle against bourgeois reaction, the work of reconstruction of economic life can only be undertaken on the basis of the organisation of proletarian force with the aim of overthrowing the power of the capitalist class, first defeating its regular and irregular armed forces, then breaking the very apparatus of the lying parliamentary democracy to establish the dictatorship of the proletarian councils. Voting for the communists means joining the phalanxes of the revolutionary army that will mobilise its forces tomorrow for this holy war of proletarian emancipation.

Workers!

Those who call you to the polls with other intentions, presenting your participation in them as the means to definitively emerge from the harshness of the situation, are deceiving you; and more culpable is the deception if it comes, rather than from the bourgeois parties, from the socialist party, which pretends to represent the interests of your class.

The electionism of the socialist party is only worthwhile to numb the revolutionary impulse in you, and will result in the bourgeoisie’s benefit, i.e. in the betrayal of your cause.

The Communist Party’s participation in the elections tends to awaken the revolutionary masses in Italy, to incite them to the imminent battle, with which they will take up the challenge and repulse the adversary provocation; it is the sound of a reveille that tells the class enemy how foolish is his illusion that he has eradicated the working class, that he can extinguish the flame of the revolutionary will in it.

After the elections, in parliament, but above all outside parliament, the communists will continue the class battle without a moment’s pause, in intimate contact with the proletarian phalanx.

Workers and peasants of Italy!

Demonstrate on the 15th of May that the army of the revolution is still standing, and that its numbers and faith are increasing every day. Come to the polls, and let this be your cry:

Down with bourgeois parliamentarianism! 

Down with the arrogance of reaction! 

Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Italian Republic of the Councils!

While social democracy, competing with all others in equivocations and lies, scurries towards Montecitorio the Communist Party fights, steadfastly, for the dictatorship of the proletariat

Il Comunista, May 19, 1921

We know the results of the electoral gazzarre very piecemeal. We do not tremble at this.

The Communist Party, alone among all parties and pseudo-parties, has not, while old men and old ideas are fighting for the conquest of the yearned for badges, uttered a single word with the aim of gaining a vote for its list, or just some sympathy. Rigidly it waved its flag that ignores contradictions and retreats with a firm hand.

Firmly bound to the discipline of the 3rd International, it has faithfully interpreted its electionist tactics; exploiting the convocation of electoral rallies to spread among the proletarian masses the revolutionary word, denial of any positive value to the parliamentary institution, the genuine expression of the bourgeois dictatorship with a democratic slant.

The bourgeois newspapers hasten, commenting on the election results, to document with accurate statistics the failure of our party. These funny gasconades will be a source of good cheer for us. If we were aiming — like the party to which we belonged until yesterday — at the conquest of power through the parliamentary institution, then we would only have cause for sadness, but we, on the other hand, have written on our flag: ‘We also go to parliament to fight against parliament, against all bourgeois institutions’.

Nor will we protest, rail with empty chatter against the violence used by the bourgeoisie to forge for itself — among its other aims — a parliament containing only its defenders or its tame opponents. We say instead: it is right that it should be so; indeed: it is necessary that it should be so. If the bourgeoisie, with all its weapons, did not defend itself, this would be an indication of our weakness, but the bourgeoisie defends itself — and in order to defend itself it has found it necessary to be the first to offend — this proves our strength.

We know that even the proletarians who did not cast their ballot for us today — and we therefore do not blame them — will only be with us tomorrow, when, forced by the inflexible dialectic of necessity, they will leap over all the bourgeois-democratic lies and through overwhelming violence conquer power for themselves through the great days of insurrection.

Animated by this unshakeable faith — which repeats its origins in the Marxist doctrine ever more victoriously affirmed by the evidence of facts — we know no other way to comment on the outcome of today’s contest of exhibitionism and invertebrate contortions than with our unchanging cry: Long live the revolution!

THE SAFE TRACK

We write while the outcome of the election cannot yet be known to us. In these hours of anticipation, we are certain that we are, among the participants in the struggle, the only ones immune from the anxieties of the last waits, that we are infinitely above the repugnant game of the basest resources and the vilest ploys to which, once again, the ignoble mechanism of the bourgeois democratic system has made us witness.

The fantastic jumble of figures who stand out in the opposing camps, and who are, to a very great extent, the same ones who once, with the same acts, in the same spirit and under the fire of our same contempt, danced their careerist saraband in other groupings and combinations, makes us smile with compassion; but looking into this abyssal whirlpool of political degeneration does not make us dizzy, because we are too solidly planted on unshakable ground, because we have too firm a sense of direction towards the goal to which we tend, because we too proudly feel, amidst the despicable contortions of these people, that we are still and always on the same path and under the same flag.

The magnetic storm that dazzles and inebriates them all in the sadistic eve of their basest appetites of groups and individuals, cannot make our compass go haywire, make us fail our course.

What more do we have than all these rutting people? What distinguishes us from them? One little thing on which, time after time, they have rained down the foam of their sophistry and irony without succeeding in dismantling us: our consistency with a doctrine and a faith.

We repeated and repeat in the manifold contingencies and vicissitudes of political life, which from the daily chronicle presses on today in a precipitous becoming of history, what for our critics of today and of a thousand other previous moments is a sterile formulary, outdated by the weird gimmicks of which each of them boasts himself as the repository: coherence, discipline, intransigence of thought and action.

We believed and believe in a trace of history — oh, simplistic, schematic, abstract, gentlemen interpreters of reality! — along whose path an unceasing struggle separates the opposing classes, at the end of which there is in the flames of revolution the overthrow of this hated regime. We followed and continue to follow this path with the same conviction and faith that it is the goal, with the same decision to fight for it and for it alone.

From the other shores did they see us go and say we were mad or criminals? From our ranks, on a hundred occasions, for a hundred reasons, with a hundred arguments, hundreds broke away, trying to persuade us, or insulting us, as we were foolish not to realise that the path had to be changed, that it was not the great track of history but one of the many blind alleys of illusion and theorisation; that not to leave it meant not knowing how to go further than the terminal wall against which our useless stubbornness would ridiculously clash.

Well, it is interesting to take a look at all of them at a time when the erotic zeal of the electoral challenge makes them abandon all restraint and all memory of past commitments — is it not the intelligent and superior political practice of these people that is so much more enlightened and skilful than our flat monotony, the first rule of what was done and said? — in which they most obscenely indulge in their instinctive poses revealing their being.

All of them, as they left, pretended to ‘surpass’ us, to remove themselves from our course so as not to share our shipwreck and to draw shores we had not glimpsed, some pitied us, others vilified us, all of them had something to teach us that it was our fault for not understanding.

Is it worthwhile to review distinctly the different groups, the different ‘types’ of deserters? The different ‘discoveries’ of our errors that they made and the different formulations of new truths that they paraded before our astonished eyes, looking down on us, making of our disciplinary sanctions, in whose effectiveness we had and still have the naivety to believe, the halo of martyrdom? Should we take a raid through the thousand heresies that we, tireless red priests, ruthless and hardened custodians of dogma, have condemned, recall the thousand forms of violation of our intransigence that in so many and so many circumstances were perpetrated by intriguing with the elements of the opposing class, pontificating to explain to us that true socialism was not the [an illegible word] and shrivelled socialism in which we had crystallised, but that which with refinements of criticism and tactics was adapted to colonial or national war, to Masonic practices and electoral blockade concoctions and to a thousand other more or less glorious enterprises. ..

Resuming the polemic with all these degenerative deviations, reducing them to the result of subsequent facts that we have been waiting for in the same critical position, and which we set in a victorious ascertainment of the rightness of our views, but which the others experienced each time under different visual angles in their sublime excursions between the various schools of social doctrine and the very different colours of the political alignments, this is not the task of this article but the balance of our entire party battle that is made up of study, criticism, preparation and action.

But it is worth noting the common (monotonously, flatly common) direction that all of them, starting from very different, as we say above, attitudes and postures, end up taking, bartering that merit in which it pleased them to change our heavy rule of continuity into one doctrine and one discipline, the direction of originality, of novelty, of mutability towards new and previously unknown things.

They all told us, when leaving us, beautiful things, and with the same complacency the bourgeois audience felt their decadent sensibilities tickled by the new and peregrine intellectual gimmicks of those who opposed our constant and uniform asininity. Those who set off towards the new discoveries of an economy for which the old Marx was a beginner, those who declared our historical materialism stinking of rancidity in the face of the luminous gimmicks of modern thought and fashionable philosophers, those who scoffed at our messianic historical expectations of a revolutionary development that a shrewder study of reality proved to be relegated to the realm of illusions, each left our platform looking as if they were setting foot on a higher step. Instead, they all descended, in the same way, into the most lubricious depths of politicking! And the history of one is the history of all, and they all hate us and fight us today from the same front and with the same weapons with which we were offended when they were among us.

Somebody, endowed with culture and cerebral sparkle, said that theories, to which we clung like oysters to a rock, are rafts for crossing an obstacle that cuts our path, but once on the other shore we must abandon them. Others who happened to be with us against these and similar heresies, discovered afterwards with an arrogance equal to their flippancy (and preached with equal superiority over our discoloured insistence on the usual theorems), that by ‘overcoming’ – and whoever has nothing to overcome, let him come forward! —  our old conceptions of party relations, of the left and the right, it is asserted that the truly modern, innovative movement, the one that buries our idealistic carrion, is the one that makes an honour and a boast of betrayal and desertion and, by destroying the manifestations of communism with all forms of violence, fights not against our mirages of a new civilisation, but against the dark barbarism that we are plotting…

Everyone possesses an allegedly original formulation of the same faithless behaviour. War, in the extreme decomposition of all the manifestations of an epoch, has honed this morbid capacity to chisel into formal prostitution very old and notorious substantial shames.

Just look at them, these cerebrals of political hyper-revolutions in electoral travail. You see how terribly they resemble each other, how they practise the same traditional compromises, how they follow, not each one his own particular and harsh path towards the future, but the same path, pressing on, fighting with their elbows to achieve the same goals and the same conquest, which, when it is the last and ultimate conquest, is a livery.

In order to understand the complicated and differentiated development of these champions of the most modern politics, there was really no need to follow their elevation, from an apprenticeship made among us in the audacities of revolutionary ideas, to alleged higher spheres of research, knowledge and activity… they are much less incomprehensible, and in their spiritual complications one finds a vulgar simplicity, a monotony that is very old and well-known. They had contempt for our unattractive single-minded function as custodians of an idea and a method; to follow multicoloured fashions, for a uniformity that is the most horrendous, they lost the merit of coherence and seriousness but did not gain that of originality and novelty… Harlequin’s multicoloured suit in his somersaults appears a dull and fetid grey, if the colours of the spectrum are recomposed in the monochromatic light of black and white.

In order to understand them, it is pointless to rehash the refinements of their politics against us. They are far, far lower! It is not to elements of a very modern criticism that we will resort to in order to decipher them. Their figure is well known, it has been drawn long ago, it is the most stereotypical that traditions have consecrated. It is that of the politician who treads the witty boards of Greek comedy in the fifth century B.C., who reappeared as subject to literary satire, in all epochs, up to the Rabagas and the excellence of modern dramas and operettas, who delights today’s audiences in the clamorous and solemn revues.

It is the jumble of vulgar pushiness, which is performed on its universal theatre, the filthy stage of bourgeois parliamentarianism. But the boards are eaten by woodworms, and the abyss is open beneath the feet of the obscene characters of human comedy, of the tragedy of this agony of a regime.

Far from them we follow on our sure track. It is not only the ardour of a faith or the tension of a will that build our constancy and tenacious security. It is the continual testing of an unceasing proof, a work that transcends personal attitudes and activities, and that in the fate of every adverse movement, school, sub-school, reconfirms the certainty that has emerged from our doctrine, from its incessant elaboration in the crucible of reality by the multitudes that, by becoming restless, consecrate it in the formidable unity of their effort and go, on that same track, to the final collision that nothing will resist.

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

We interpret what has happened by trying to keep out of the clichés of parliamentarist interpretation, since for us parliamentarism is not the only terrain for the parties and political forces to meet and confront each other; on the contrary, it is the most equivocal and deceptive terrain.

Today’s Italian situation is all the more interesting to study insofar as it is [an unreadable line] and legal, and elections are merely a datum of the ongoing political process, never the conclusion or even the index for the definitive judgement on the character of this process.

* * *

Recapitulating the precedents, as they are presented in the interpretation we have constantly given them, and which we want to extend to the explanation of the most recent phase, to see if it keeps shedding light on the facts without receiving denials or corrections from them, the post-war elections constituted the venting of the discontent of the proletarian classes against the damage and consequences of the war wanted by the ruling class. The class party should have had the task of clarifying and organising this negative tendency into a positive direction of programme and action. But the Italian proletarian party, the socialist party, was not up to this task due to the incomplete formation of its structure and training. It adopted a revolutionary programme, but more out of a necessity to formulate the negatively revolutionary pressure of the masses anyway, and out of the convenience of finding it beautiful and formulated in the events of the Russian revolution, poorly understood to boot, than because it was intrinsically capable of deducing it as a mature conscience and experience of its past work, from which it had only been able to draw formulas whose value in solving radical post-war problems was zero, such as aversion to war and formal intransigence.

The programme served the party to gain the confidence of the masses, not to give them something that would increase and define their power of real intervention in the political social conflict. Thrown into the election, the party fearfully embraced its programme set-ups, and devised no other way to translate them into tactical action than by waving them as an electoral flag.

With the ‘avalanche’ of proletarian votes for the socialist party converged the instinctive impatience of the masses with their traditional participation in the social-democratic mechanism of normal times. Therefore, determined by the tremendous crisis underway, the 1919 elections served above all to immobilise the masses’ expectation and need for struggle in the electoral experiment with its unusual results — 160 deputies! — and to exempt the party from the further travail of translating the theoretical promises adopted under the very real pressure of the situation into facts and deeds by other means and to test and temper them [two lines illegible].

All this, while balancing the crisis in the bourgeois world, brought crisis into the party by imposing the split in it. The split came about as the detachment of that part that had understood how different the path and task of the revolutionary party had to be through the becoming of the class struggle in Italy.

The communist party resumed, or rather continued its work as the extreme minority of the old party, in giving the ideal and tactical revolutionary preparation a basis of serious consistency [an illegible line] consequences of this disastrous counter-revolutionary process — counter-revolutionary not because it traded the sure card of the revolution, but because it wasted its best cards in the game of class struggle, losing the most useful periods for revolutionary preparation; all the more counter-revolutionary for having concealed the defeatist reflections of its work under the trappings of its programmatic declarations.

Meanwhile, the unfolding of the situation precipitated. We had the fascist reaction, of which we have spoken so much in order to establish its characters. The ruling class felt at a certain point that the proletariat was no longer a pacifically administrable matter for it, a docile instrument of social activities. At a certain point, the working masses, even if still unable to conquer their own suitable regime equilibrium, demonstrate with a thousand manifestations the incompatibility of functioning any longer as the central engine of the present social machine. The time spent organising the revolutionary offensive, the specific task of the class political party, a capacity that the party must therefore possess, formed through past struggles and mistakes, clarity of historical vision and disciplined capacity for movement, does not delay the violent struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie, which is in the fatal consequences of an irrepressible, unchangeable state of affairs by the bourgeoisie, even if the revolutionary pressure does not clamp down on it. The bourgeoisie launches its offensives. This offensive has had fascism as a protagonist among us.

Let us say it again. The gross error would be to believe that this offensive has as its aim a change in the current political institutional relations, an impairment of democratic forms. This is the error of social democrats stemming from the fact that they admit that democratic forms guarantee freedom of movement and subsequent conquests for the working masses, whereas it is for Marxist communists a fundamental truth that they only guarantee bourgeois rule, and at some point the working class if it wants to breathe must confront and break them.

By anticipating the struggle, the bourgeoisie does not alter its objective of defending the democratic regime against the proletariat’s effort to violently overcome its cadres and realise its dictatorship; the only possible terrain in the current situation for its conquests. Just as in the proletarian offensives in Russia and Germany, history has proved our fundamental theorem that bourgeois reaction and the democratic regime are concomitant, allying the white forces with the socialists who believe in democracy, against the communists who want to destroy it, so in the offensive aspects of this struggle from the bourgeois point of view the term of contention is the same: bourgeois democracy against proletarian dictatorship.

The bourgeoisie is not overshadowed by the ‘free’ representation of the working class in parliament; it is only overshadowed by the fact that this can be the expression of forces ready to attack outside the parliamentary system, against the system itself.

The bourgeoisie needs to turn to its defence the political forces still relevant to the proletariat, who sign a promissory note on the observance of democratic and parliamentary methods of struggle.

Bourgeois fascism in Italy had therefore attacked to avoid the revolutionary anti-parliamentary offensive, not to suppress the function of social democrats within the proletariat, but to disarm them of any revolutionary intentions, even verbal ones.

That fascism was in principle ready to take the struggle to bloodless parliamentary terrain is shown by the way it welcomed the dissolution of the Chamber, enthusiastically accepting the electoral battle.

* * *

After the split, the socialist party did not formally renege on the revolutionary programme it had adopted, it did not openly declare that the intention to use violent methods to overthrow the current political and social regime had to be abandoned, but in the face of the fascist offensive it gave the word not to accept the challenge and to fight on ‘legal’ ground. The renunciation was implicit, as it did not invoke transitory reasons and momentary relations of forces, but socialism’s principled repugnance to violent methods. The socialist party prepared the general elections as a means to repel the violent offensive of the bourgeoisie and give the proletariat the chance to resume an upward path, on which there was no longer any mention of what forms of social change would be found. The party neither said nor could say anything more precise about the path that electoral action would open up to the masses. In 1919 this preluded, at least in noisy declarations, to extra-legal revolutionary action. Initiated by the bourgeoisie, the struggle is rejected in order to fall back on parliamentary terrain. To do what? To show that the fascist offensive did not take away the party’s electoral strength to hold those positions. But the fascist offensive aims to exclude them from serving as a starting point for revolutionary preparation. To take them back without this value is to have lost them, to the effects of the development of action then being exhibited to the masses.

It is a terrible vicious circle that today [an illegible line] at the point where it fatally closes in on itself. Fascism does not want to suppress the electoral regime. If it wanted to, if it really did prevent the democratic mechanism from functioning, this would only make the tactical line adopted by the socialist party more absurd: respond with the ballot paper. If you can’t use the ballot, you either have to return empty-handed or accept the battle with other weapons; in either case the socialist tactical formula is ridiculously destroyed.

But the socialist party was not prevented from making use of the electoral machine. It did not find itself completely in the position of having to declare that it was renouncing the struggle, without attempting to respond with violence to the adversary’s overpowering. It only needed to threaten this passive withdrawal for the opponents, who are not only supporters of the parliamentary system but who have come to understand that the true bourgeois application of this system lies in the participation of the proletariat in its mechanism, to renounce systematically preventing the exercise of the vote and only to do so, accentuating it in certain areas, through violence, corruption and fraud, which, apart from the measure of it this time, is an inevitable characteristic of the electoral system.

The socialist party gave the word to go to the polls, promising that from the disciplined execution of this watchword by the proletarian masses would come the best response to fascism.

Today the response has come, today the socialist party, facilitated by the detachment of the extremist communist elements, who counted themselves with an unusual electoral discipline, not with the formula of grabbing votes but with rules of opposite effect — and found themselves in comforting numbers, when all circumstances are taken into account, and it must be remembered that electoral lotteries are disastrous accidents from the proletarian and revolutionary point of view — today, however, when that figure of elected members or votes, which according to the latest clamorous official socialist preaching constitutes a real force, a decisive coefficient of political action, is assured, with great complacency with our former comrades, they must say what they want to do with it.

Since, unfortunately but predictably, a great many workers’ votes have concentrated on socialist lists, this question must be propagated among those voters.

There are two hypotheses. Either the socialist party retains the vision of revolutionary class action according to the Bologna programme, and then it was only waiting for electoral success in order to boost the morale of the masses, to re-establish in the proletariat that offensive capacity it had had in recent years and which appeared to have been lost, and then the momentum of victory had to be turned immediately into a counter-offensive against fascism.

By 15 May this had already taken shape. In many places the proletarians, communists in the front row, fought real battles with the whites, the balance of which was unfavourable, perhaps for the first time, to the latter. The wave of proletarian awakening was about to overwhelm them. Perhaps a similar application of the morale boost produced by the ballot box statistics was possible. Government, bourgeoisie, fascism, had a moment’s hesitation. They had to be hit. Maniples of communists did so in many places, but the word was with the party around which the most votes were polarised. Now the facts have already shown that that was not the directive of the P.S.I. Once again its word is disarm. Once again, it may well be said, it betrays by restraining the masses. The document is in the directorate’s latest proclamation, in all its manifestos exhorting proletarian voters to shun acts of violence, excessively ostentatious demonstrations, to ‘contain joy’.

Then the directive must be a different one. The use of electoral force, the socialist party must propose it on another level. Which one? It is the other hypothesis. This hypothesis has but one name: collaboration.

The socialists may formally deny it as much as they want. If they do not tend towards collaboration, to what further development of action must their electoral success, to which they attribute thaumaturgical virtues, lead? Is it perhaps the votes, the parliamentary mandates, an end in themselves? And if so, is this not another deception played on the masses?

The socialists might say that they will work for … other elections. In that case they still confirm their social-democratic directive. But in that case, the facts still confirm that this directive a dead end. The great electoral success already existed in 1919. Fascism has revealed its insubstantiality by demonstrating in the southern light that one hundred and fifty deputies are not even a sufficient defence for the proletariat’s achievements in the face of white violence. The proletariat responded by re-electing almost as many, we grant it. But to do what? Nothing! the socialist party answers! The situation had, from the revolutionary point of view, become so poisoned that this further turn in the vicious circle was necessary. Soon the workers will realise where social-democratic electoral success will lead [some words illegible] one cannot eternally turn in on oneself, the socialists will take the big step towards bourgeois collaboration.

The Communist Party is at its post. Ready to fulfil its mission. In spite of the boastfulness of vote-hunters, facts work for it.

FOR WHOM THE PROLETARIANS VOTED

Il Comunista, May 26, 1921

The votes cast by the socialist party far outnumbered those of the communist party, representative of the Third International. We have already said that we do not weep over this (of course we weep even less because the bourgeois parties have overtaken us) but this does not detract from the fact that the causes of this fact must be examined and discussed in order to draw useful conclusions for the class tactics of the proletariat.

Our party itself in its election manifestos and appeals had attributed to the indications of the election results the value of an index, had said that on the 15th of May the workers who are for communism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat and the sovietist republic, would be counted on the ground of the programme of the Moscow International. But in talking about this consultation, we did not give it a majority sense, as the social democrats give it. Just as the communists organised in the party ranks will never be more than a minority of the workers, so the communist voters cannot be a majority as long as the bourgeois regime is in place. This observation is so beyond suspicion that it, with the theoretical and historical arguments well known to the readers of our press, forms the basis of our criticism of the method, of the social-democratic illusion. As long as the elections are within the framework of bourgeois democracy, the ranks of proletarians who give the political manifestation of voting for the communist party, i.e. against the bourgeois democratic system itself, can only be a vanguard ranks.

Precisely because we give to this consultation not the value of a positive action in which we summarise all the contribution that the masses must bring to the political struggle, but the value of an indirect indication of the magnitude of the forces ready to act tomorrow on another terrain; we will never try in our electoral tactics to increase the number of voters at the expense of their quality, i.e. their consciousness of having embraced the communist programme, in its preponderant extra-electoral part.  For the same reasons that the membership of the communist party, where attention is paid to the quality of the adherents much more than in the social-democratic and labour parties, will always be lower than in these other parties; the number of communist voters will hardly exceed the number of social-democratic voters. On the contrary, it must be assumed that the number of sympathisers not organised in the party is proportionately much smaller for the communists than for the social democrats: hence a double reason for the decrease.

So while the number of communist voters, as well as the number of party members, when increasing undoubtedly indicates an increase in the revolutionary strength of the party, provided that the increase is not achieved through opportunistic softenings and concessions, when the question is posed as a comparison between communist and social-democratic votes, more comprehensive considerations must be made, bearing in mind that the number of communists registered in the party, and the wider field of communist voters, at the moment of non-parliamentary, but directly revolutionary actions, will see a large part of the immature masses coming round to them, who in the electoral contest allow themselves to be regimented by the social democrats.

With these general considerations in mind, let us see what degree of revolutionary development of the Italian masses can be deduced from the fact that, in the political struggle in general, a preponderant part of them allow themselves to be led by the socialist party.

* * *

1 — There is a tendency to make this figure appear discouraging for communism by comparing it with the elections of 1919 and evaluating the enormous harvest of votes reaped then by the socialist party, not yet split, and adherent to the Third International. We do not need to repeat the reasons that show how only in appearance was that struggle based on a maximalist programme; how the party had become communist only in the label, comprising a considerable current openly opposed to communism, and a majority that understood communism insufficiently to show with evidence that it was destined to close that brief demagogic parenthesis to reveal itself, as it has done today, as intimately social-democratic.

The struggle gave a large number of reformist and pseudo-maximalist deputies; magna pars of it was the reformist Confederation of Labour, the party worked in it with all the traditional social-democratic method and resources, without demanding that the propaganda be based on a precise and constant programme; above all it gravitated the struggle on the question of war by exploiting, even among elements who were not only non-maximalist, but even non-proletarian, its past opposition to it. The socialist party then skilfully succeeded in [taking] the votes of the proletarians who tended to be revolutionaries — but whose tendency deserved to be cultivated seriously rather than bastardised in that orgy of demagogy — with those of all the undecided elements of intermediate classes, tending by logic to social-democratic politics. Subsequent events, the same ones that condemned the party’s action by proving it to be non-revolutionary, have given an idea of the significance of the 1919 elections, have proven how they, and in them the socialist triumph, were a way of salvation for the Italian bourgeoisie; far from being welcomed, not only as a revolutionary assault, but not even as an indication of revolutionary forces in the process of being safely prepared for greater and more decisive struggles.

2 — In the elections of 1919 and in all its action the socialist party paralysed the formation of a communist consciousness in the masses by suggesting the democratic concept of ‘majoritarianism’ — putting in the shade all the demands of preparation as individual and collective values of theoretical and practical nourishment in the face of the need to ‘be many’; many in the party, in the ‘proletarian fortalices’, in the elections, with the formula of unity at any cost that was not unity to achieve with truly concerted efforts a common goal. The elections themselves with their result and the subsequent bitter disappointments of the proletariat should have disgraced this ‘majoritarian’ concept; but these processes among the masses take place slowly: and so the social-democratic movement is everywhere the most effective counter-revolutionary expedient. The 156 deputies, and then municipalities and provinces galore, bringing instead of revolutionary acceleration the cooling and recoil. What a lesson from history! But if the party, if the boiling maximalists in Bologna understood it only in their minority, it was absurd to expect that, before other intrinsic upheavals and repercussions on the real situation of the masses, vast strata of the proletariat could understand it.

The fascist phenomenon, properly understood, is but a clear confirmation of the illusionism contained in that ‘majoritarian’, or, pardon the word, ‘numeritarian’ concept. Suffice it to say that it has raged most where the numeritarian laurels have been most (count the deputies, provincial councillors, socialist municipalities in the Ferrara area!) and has retreated where, as in the south, it believed it was effortlessly the master. But instead, the Italian socialist party’s call to eradicate fascism by ballots, by numbers, was still successful after the split in Livorno. Logically, if the party had done nothing to seriously uproot the traditionally legalitarian mirage from its followers, and if its extremist declamations had not even dented the breeding of the parliamentarist microbe that is its essential function, it was able, without losing all its followers, to make this admirable conversion in its outward attitudes (although in substance nothing has changed) by moving from a false and forced anti-democratic preaching to the exaltation of legal methods of action.

Undoubtedly, the Italian proletariat still believed that the number of ballots and deputies was a protection and a class weapon against the bullying of the adversary. Communist propaganda had neither the time nor the opportunity to disgrace this ignominious and cretinous concept: too much has been allowed for the opportunism of ballot maximalism to poison consciences and ruin situations, before openly shouting at those the epithet they deserve: traitors! And so it is explained how many proletarians having to choose between the effectiveness of their vote given to the communists and that of the vote given to the social democrats have reasoned as follows: on the one hand you ask for the vote but deny it any intrinsic value; on the other hand you attribute to it, in large numbers, a decisive value; and you are on the way to accumulating many more: let us vote for the second, for the socialists.

Certainly these proletarians are not communists, and it is not bad that they did not vote for us. If as soon as we had in the obvious and palpable predictions (in some places it has happened) reached a certain ‘numeritarian’ strength, the avalanche would have rained down on our lists, where the instinctively revolutionary conviction of the voters would concur with the ‘numeritarian’ mania to count us as many, to beat, on the harmless ground of minutes and counts, ‘the bourgeoisie’. Let us hope that this misfortune will never befall us. All these proletarian voters have thus wanted to experiment with a method that sufficient evidence has already debunked. It may be regrettable that a test was still needed, but it is so. What anti-democratic conviction loses in readiness, it gains in depth and power. The writer has never believed that the thousand clowns who rant at the Bologna congress and many other gatherings the amusing formulas of an anarchic and decomposed revolutionarism had the conviction of the revolution in fifteen days in their pockets instead of the deputy badge.

3 — It is hardly necessary to recall the reasons why the Communist Party could not deploy all its forces against this mirage. First of all, this critical propaganda work is not done during the election campaign. During the election campaign, votes are stolen, and nothing else good or useful is done, if there is no prior solid preparation of the party in the field of propaganda and disciplining its forces. It is an enormous achievement to have made it through the elections, taking the votes that reasonably could and should have been taken, without having bastardised the whole apparatus of the work in progress and the clarity of our theoretical and tactical orientations, without making ourselves prisoners of illogical situations.

We barely remember that we had a party in the course of being constituted, made up of abstentionists as convinced as they were disciplined and of electivists… who were beginning to regret having disciplined the former. The framing of the masses by the party is a formidable work, which is done in many fields, from trade union action to street clashes, which in elections is noted, but not developed. Above all, we are sure, because of the esteem in which we hold the party, that it does not see its future task in the easy prospect of a rise in electoral statistics; but it hopes to be left to carry out its work of preparation, so harsh and difficult, before a new election comes along to repeat the risk of diverting all its energies into it. If it were to happen, we would still do our duty, we would still leave the morbid ‘numeritarian’ itch unstimulated…

4 — The detailed communications that the Executive will make will show how the outcome of the struggle has corresponded to the forecasts, taking into account various circumstances that have influenced it. The Communist deputies are roughly the same number as before. One cannot take as the basis for the number of elected members — in comparison with the socialist party — the number of party members as it was at the Livorno congress. We had the votes of one-third of the party; while our deputies were, according to an old rule, which always gives fewer deputies to left-wing tendencies, one-seventh (18 against 132) of those of the united party; a proportion that the elections have preserved almost exactly. And it is logical that the socialist party has a larger group of sympathisers, for the reasons mentioned. Moreover, as many Unitarians openly acknowledge (see the Canalini interview in Ordine Nuovo) the communist secession gained the socialist party many votes on the right. If one takes into account the abstention of a great many revolutionary workers, one can see that the ratio of proletarian votes, and of proletarian followers above all, between us and the social democrats cannot be deduced from electoral figures for this consideration either.

It should be added that our policy has been not to seek the votes of the syndicalist and anarchist working masses, many of whom, with shrewd manoeuvres, were attracted precisely by the social democrats. For them, the vote of a bourgeois who awaits the salvation of Italy from Turati is as good as that of an anarchist worker whose abstentionism falls before the petty-bourgeois mirage of the protest-candidacy. We asked for and got the vote of those who are on the precise line of the communist programme.

5 — The skilful resources of the social democrats had no small influence. Their hypocritical conduct has already been denounced by us: all our party newspapers publish repugnant details of it. Instead of fighting fairly in debates of ideas and methods, the socialist gentlemen have pretended that they do not want the fratricidal struggle in order to show themselves in a good light before the masses and to conceal more and more the terms of their defection from the revolutionary directives; but in the shadows they have spread the most shamelessly false and defamatory rumours, they have spread false news of the withdrawal of the communist lists at the last hour: they have influenced the unsuspecting masses by telling them that by voting for the communists ‘the vote was lost’ etc. etc. On our side, we responded with much saner methods, albeit less suited to immediate popularity success, with direct and open attacks, even violent ones, but holding our head up.

This is how the enormous difference in votes between socialists and communists should be judged. It is only because we are concerned with following the development of the political consciousness of the proletariat towards communism that we examine all this, not out of foolish recriminations or regret for not having had greater electoral success.

On the contrary, our objective remains to measure ourselves against the social democrats on other ground, and we are quite certain that the situations which are being prepared will completely detach the revolutionary masses from them, despite all their lying resources and all the speculations on the past with which they try to obscure the clear approach to the problems of today. The large number of votes received by the Italian socialist party is for us, according to Marxist criticism, a new indication that it is a dangerously anti-revolutionary apparatus. If the communists believe that our numerical defeat was something to be consoled about, and if they are pleased with the large number of socialist votes to console themselves, then we offer them our heartfelt condolences — after observing that it is not enough to be pleased or sorry about the facts, that they must be understood in order to use them for further action.

But we have reason to believe that they are very few.

ABSTENTIONIST NOSTALGIAS?

Stato Operaio, February 28, 1924

One could not even conceive of a practical attitude of comrades in the Communist Party for electoral abstention. It is not just a question of party discipline: it is enough to reflect that the opinions of various comrades expressed in 1919 and 1920 for abstentionist tactics only made sense as a proposal made to the International, the applicability of which could only be understood on the basis of precise deliberations for the various countries of the International itself. None of us questioned in 1921 that the Communist Party founded on the basis of the decisions of the Second Congress of the Communist International should intervene in the electoral struggle at that time.

Nor is it necessary to reopen the debate on the question of whether the abstentionist theses of that time are still theoretically tenable. What is certain is that those theses supported by a group of comrades insisted on a double order of premises: an international situation preluding an offensive by the proletariat, and the regime of broad democracy in force in an important group of countries: everyone knows that both internationally, and in the Italian political field, those conditions, if perhaps they should not be said to have been overturned, have however been modified in the opposite direction to that from which our known conditions stemmed.

Our abstentionist thesis had no purely contingent value, but comrade Grieco rightly pointed out how today the dangers posed by the abstentionists in 1919, when Nitti averted the gathering of the revolutionary storm thanks to the electoral diversion thrown open in front of the Socialist Party, do not exist. Today the situation is quite different and everyone knows why. We are not threatened by the disaster of a hundred and fifty proletarian, or self-styled such, MPs.

I will not pause to examine all the problems of the present election campaign: it is enough for me to note that the very serious dangers of that time are completely removed from it.

I am only concerned, through the manifestations of some comrades for a contingent thesis of abstention — certainly not for a practical attitude of abstentionism from the party struggle — that these nostalgias, rather than going back to the revolutionary reasons we once put forward for the abstentionist thesis, evidently go back to appreciations, to states of mind, to ideological premises, which savour little of communism; and this would be a drawback no less than formal indiscipline.

Whoever wants to be sincere must acknowledge that the reasoning that leads to the conclusion: we would have done better to abstain, can only be this: we do not go to the elections because they are not held in complete freedom, they will not translate into their results the legitimate expression of the will of the voters, they will not give us the satisfaction of reaching comforting numbers of votes and elected members; and also: if we abstain, we would be spiteful to fascism by devaluing it abroad.

Why do all these reasons lack a classist and communist character? It is not communist to suggest that under democracy and freedom, elections translate the actual will of the masses. Our entire doctrine rises against this colossal bourgeois lie, our entire battle is against the proponents of it, deniers of the revolutionary method of proletarian action. The liberal mechanism of election is made only to give a necessary and constant answer: bourgeois regime, bourgeois regime…

What is to be denounced in the electoralist degeneration is the ‘sporting’ method of achieving high numerical results, which grips all participants and sometimes even us. Today’s abstentionist nostalgia seems to me to derive precisely from the morbidity of electioneering for electioneering’s sake

We, on the other hand, go — the international demands it, and it is not to abstentionists that this task must be more difficult — not as to that exercise in parliamentary cretinism, so reminiscent of the manias for Spalla or Girardengo, the famous sportsmen, but as to a moment and an episode of the incessant class struggle. The degeneration of electionism into class collaborationism is less difficult to avoid today. The instinctive revolutionary dislike for the ballot contest has every reason to be silenced today.

I am not saying, mind you, that we must accept the elections as a challenge to be fought on the terrain of violence: the appropriateness of accepting provocations of this nature is decided by quite different coefficients of political strategy, which today certainly exclude it. But since we cannot speak of transforming the electoral campaign into a class war, we must at least strictly guard against political attitudes that make the masses lose the sense of the necessity of the revolutionary solution to come, as would happen with abstention — and above all with that ultra-cretinous form of it that could unite us with the reformist professional mourners, weeping over the lost freedom, as over the lost opportunity of having, them, in place of fascism, the merit of cutting off the proletariat’s hocks.

And is the argument based on the alleged damage that widespread abstention would do to fascism’s reputation abroad perhaps classist in nature? Never! This would only mean deluding ourselves that the foreign bourgeoisie can help us rid ourselves of fascism, whereas a good communist knows that the foreign bourgeoisie can only rejoice at the works of fascism in Italy and if they do not find it proper to imitate it at home, it is only for their own interests and certainly not because they are scandalised by violations of pure democracy. Do we perhaps want to learn the methods of revolutionary struggle from the Corriere della Sera or Nittian newspapers? Such abstentionism would reek of blockade-ism, the purulent form of electoral syphilis.

Every good communist today has no other duty than to combat with these classist arguments the tendency of many proletarians to abstain, an erroneous derivative of their aversion to fascism. By doing this we will carry out magnificent propaganda and help the formation of a resolutely revolutionary consciousness, which will serve, when the time has come, marked by real situations and not by our desire alone, to boycott, in order to tear it down, the obscene apparatus of the bourgeois parliament.

DECLARATION BY REPOSSI TO THE CHAMBER ON BEHALF OF THE PCd’I, 12 NOVEMBER 1924

From: I Comunisti al Parlamento — Contro il Fascismo e contro le Opposizioni,  Libreria del PCd’I, 1925

Repossi. I speak of the minutes of the sitting of 13 June. If my, I mean the Communist Group’s, statements are judged to refer to the current situation, it is because today’s situation is merely the development of the one that existed on 13 June. If I had been present at that sitting, I would have had to point out to Members Rocco, Soleri and Delcroix that a Chamber of fascists and supporters of fascism, a Chamber elected by Cesare Rossi and Marinelli, cannot commemorate Giacomo Matteotti without committing a shameful desecration.

President. Hon. Repossi, I call you to order!

Repossi. These things I must repeat to you today. It is not a question of the political responsibilities of the regime, which today has no support other than the squadrists shouting ‘Viva Dumini’; nor is it just a question of the moral responsibilities of those who daily consider the bloody violence exercised on workers to be legitimate. It is a question in this case of direct personal responsibilities, which cannot be evaded by forcing the resignation of an under-secretary or by the monstrous contradiction of renouncing the Ministry of the Interior.

President. I cannot let you continue in this way!

Repossi. Since time immemorial, murderers and accomplices of murderers have never been allowed to commemorate their victims. This assembly bears the burden of complicity.

President. I call you to order for the second time.

Repossi. We are only returning here today to repeat our indictment of you, and nothing will prevent us from returning whenever we deem it necessary to use this forum to show the workers and peasants of Italy the way to liberation from the regime of capitalist reaction that you represent. If we had been present on 13 June, we should and would have said that the Matteotti murder appeared to be the determinant of a situation precisely because in reality it was its gruesome index.

President. Hon. Repossi, you do not speak on the record….

Repossi. The Matteotti murder was the spasmodic sign of fascist failure.

Greco. You cannot go on like that!

Repossi. Even then it was quite clear that you can weaken a proletarian organisation for an instant, but that you can’t weaken the proletariat for long, because that means reducing the whole country to slavery.

Capanni (snaps and shouts). I won’t touch you because you disgust me!

Repossi. Even then we could tell you, and today we repeat, that the proletariat does not even forget the responsibilities of those who prepared and flanked fascism, of anyone who favoured its coming to power, of anyone: even the invoked ‘whoever’ of the Quirinal. Even then we foresaw that, by restricting the anti-fascist struggle to the search for a parliamentary compromise, which leaves intact the reactionary substance of the regime from which millions of workers and peasants throughout Italy suffer and which they curse, no positive outcome could be achieved. On the contrary, help was being given to fascism. We do not live in the expectation of a bourgeois compromise for which the bourgeoisie today calls for the intervention of the king, for which reformist and maximalist social democracy renounces class struggle and calls for a ‘superior administration that is alien to the interests of each party’, i.e., a military dictatorship that should prevent the inexorable advent of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The centre of our action is outside this courtroom, among the working masses who are becoming increasingly convinced that the end of the shameful situation in which the country is kept by you, your pro-fascist supporters and your democratic and liberal allies and flankers, will only come about with the return to the field and the prevailing over you of their organised force. We also point out from this tribune to the workers which path they must follow: it is the path of resistance and physical defence against your violence, of unremitting struggle for trade union conquests, of organised intervention against the rising cost of living and against the precipitating economic crisis; it is the path of the constitution of Workers‘ and Peasants’ Committees. Around the Workers‘ and Peasants’ Committees must be gathered all those who want to fight against you with appropriate weapons. From the Workers‘ and Peasants’ Committees must come the only watchwords that contain a radical solution to the present situation: Away with the government of the murderers and starvers of the people. Disarmament of the black shirts. Arming of the proletariat. Establishment of a workers‘ and peasants’ government. The Workers‘ and Peasants’ Committees will be the basis of this government and the dictatorship of the working class.

And now, go ahead and commemorate Giacomo Matteotti, but remember that the cry uttered by the Martyr’s mother also became the cry of millions of workers: ‘Murderers! Murderers!’.

A balance sheet of the Antifascist Aventine

From: Lyon Theses, Part III – Italian questions, chapter 6, in L’Unità, january 12–26, 1926

(…) Participating in the 1924 elections was a very fortunate political act, but one cannot say the same about the proposal for joint action with the socialist parties nor of the way it was labelled «proletarian unity». Just as deplorable was the excessive tolerance shown towards some of the «Terzini’s» electoral manoeuvres. But the most serious problems are posed apropos the open crisis that followed Matteotti’s assassination.
The leadership’s policies were based on the absurd view that the weakening of fascism would propel the middle classes into action first, and then the proletariat. This implied on the one hand a lack of faith in the capacity of the proletariat to act as a class, despite its continued alertness under the suffocating strictures of fascism, and on the other, an over-estimation of the initiative of the middle-class. In fact, even without referring to the clear marxist theoretical positions on this matter, the central lesson to draw from the Italian experience has been that the intermediary layers will passively tail along behind the strongest and may therefore back either side. Thus in 1919-1920 they backed the proletariat, then between 1921-22-23 they went behind fascism, and now, after a significant period of major upheaval in 1924-25, they are backing fascism again.
The leadership were mistaken in abandoning parliament and participating in the first meetings of the Aventine when they should have remained in Parliament, launched a political attack on the government, and immediately taken up a position opposed to the moral and constitutional prejudices of the Aventine, which would determine the outcome of the crisis in fascism’s favour. This wouldn’t have prevented the communists from making the decision to abandon parliament, and would have allowed them to do so whilst keeping their specific identity intact, and allowed them to leave at the only appropriate time, i.e. when the situation was ripe to call on the masses to take direct action. It was one of those crucial moments which affect how future situations will turn out; the error was therefore a fundamental one, a decisive test of the leadership’s capabilities, and it led to a highly unfavourable utilisation by the working class both of the weakening of fascism and the resounding failure of the Aventine.
The Return to Parliament in November 1924 and the statement issued by Repossi were beneficial, as the wave of proletarian consensus showed, but they came too late. The leadership wavered for a long time, and only finally made a decision under pressure from the party and the Left. The preparation of the Party was made on the basis of dreary directives and a fantastically erroneous assessment of the situation’s latent possibilities (report by Gramsci to the Central Committee, August 1924). The preparation of the masses, which leant towards supporting the Aventine rather than wishing for its collapse, was in any case made worse when the party proposed to the opposition parties that they set up their own Anti-parliament. This tactic in any case conflicted with the decisions of the International, which never envisaged proposals being made to parties which were clearly bourgeois; worse still, it lay totally outside the domain of communist principles and tactics, and outside the marxist conception of history. Any possible explanation that the leadership might have had for this tactic aside – an explanation which was doomed to have very limited repercussions anyway – there is no doubt that it presented the masses with an illusory Anti-State, opposed to and warring against the traditional State apparatus, whilst in the historical perspective of our programme, there is no basis for an Anti-State other than the representation of the one productive class, namely, the Soviet.
To call for an Anti-parliament, relying in the country on the support of the workers’ and peasants’ committees, meant entrusting the leadership of the proletariat to representatives of groups that are socially capitalist, like Amendola, Agnelli, Albertini, etc.
Besides the certainty that such a situation won’t arise, a situation which could only be described as a betrayal anyway, just putting it forward in the first place as a point of view derived from a communist proposal involves a betrayal of principles and a weakening of the revolutionary preparation of the proletariat. (…)

PART V

FINAL BALANCE

“The capitalist State taking on a constantly more evident form of class dictatorship which Marxism has denounced since the beginning, parliamentarianism  loses necessarily all importance. The elected organs and the parliament of the old bourgeois tradition are no more than survivals. They have no content any longer, only the democratic phraseology subsists and this cannot hide the fact that at the moment of social crises, the State dictatorship is the ultimate resource or capitalism, and that the proletarian revolutionary violence must be directed against this State.”

Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1952, Part IV, 12

If, in 1926, shortly after the Lyon Congress, at the February-March Enlarged Executive of the Communist International, Bukharin, then busy unloading all his batteries against “Bordighism” in anticipation of being able to turn them against “Trotskyism,” could have done, in the spirit of the Second Congress, the balance sheet of five years of “revolutionary parliamentarianism ” in the major Communist parties of the West, the picture would have been no less grim than the one he drew in 1920 in reference to parties still harboring within their bosoms large reformist wings.

The German Party had indeed achieved great electoral successes, but, to the same extent, it had lost in combativeness and bite on the terrain of class clashes—the only one that was taken as a criterion of judgment in 1920: it would continue to reap votes even on the eve of Hitler’s bloodless rise to power! As for his parliamentary activity, not only could he boast of no example of “exploitation” of the Reichstag tribune for propaganda and revolutionary battle, but he had fully justified the Left’s alarm at the Second Congress, going in 1923 to the government with the Social Democrats in Saxony and Thuringia (paranymph the Executive of the International) and, after Hindenburg’s election to the Reich presidency, launching proposals for a single electoral and parliamentary front not just to Social Democracy, but to the bourgeois “left.”

The C.P. of France had attracted, at each new meeting in Moscow, the International’s thunderbolts for its chronic, parliamentary recidivism, for its missing or inadequate “use of parliament” during the occupation of the Ruhr and, worse, during the Riff colonial war, while on the level of local elections he returned to his old traditions of supporting “leftist cartels” (Clichy tactics), and still in 1927 scandalized none other than Palmiro Togliatti for its incurable “parliamentary cretinism.”

The Italian Party had risked throwing itself body and soul into the arms of Aventinism in 1924, and in 1936 — rid of the uncomfortable Left — matured the evolution that, in the name of “freedom” to be saved, was to lead it to be the vanguard of revisionism.

Kicked out the door in 1920, parliamentarianism was re-entering, albeit still timidly, through the window. It was what, unheeded, we had warned against. Beyond the initial dèfaillances of a tactical method, we can now see how the failure to adopt Marxist abstentionism in 1920 weighed — which is far more serious — on the developments of the revolutionary workers’ movement in the years 1925-1927 in which the fate of Lenin’s International was being played out.

At the Second Congress, the Left had pointed out how the insistence on parliamentary practice in the delicate period of the formation of Communist Parties, especially in countries with overripe capitalism, threatened to delay or weaken the necessary process of selecting healthy communist and proletarian forces from the entrenched democraticism and reformism of the right and center. The refusal to apply at once to the fledgling parties this which was for us a salutary reagent, a bolt a thousand times more effective than any condition of admission to repel from us the reformist assault on the young parties of the International, was severely paid for in those dramatic years, when to the courageous, however belated battle of the Russian Opposition against rampant Stalinism, from the sister parties of the West did not come that support which the Left had urgently demanded. It could not come, because they were born almost all plethoric, bloated with reformists hiding behind the screen of only formal acceptance of Moscow’s 21 points, and substantial adherence to the only point that would assure them a chance of returning to parliament anyway. They were chock-full of parliamentarists in disguise, momentarily silent but ready to return to the forefront — as — precisely happened in 1925-27 — as the star of “socialism in one country,” that is, of the newest opportunist, revisionist, counterrevolutionary wave, rose on the horizon. The warning had been given in 1920: 1926, unhappily, showed how realistic it had been. It was too late.

That, since then, of the 1920 construction of “revolutionary parliamentarianism” nothing has remained standing in the parties that still call themselves communists, we do not even need to spend time to prove: in parliament they are and remain — nor do they hide it — not to destroy it, but to keep it standing should it ever collapse. “Parliamentary cretinism” has taken its revenge: our warning in 1920 about the tenacity of this disease in countries that have accomplished the bourgeois democratic revolution for a hundred years or more might have appeared then to be dictated by ‘pure theoretical considerations’; today, it is the flesh and blood of history.

But something more has happened, and it constitutes another victory of ours, theoretical once again, but precisely therefore extraordinarily practical. To the same extent that the parties of the erstwhile Communist International imbibed parliamentarianism  to a degree unknown to the Turati and Kautsky — respectable still, in the face of today’s disciples — the democratic bourgeoisie took off that last fig leaf, to let it subsist only as a soporific drug to be administered to the proletarians. Victorious in war over fascism, democracy survives today solely by virtue of not only an integral but a hundredfold adoption of the fascist method, which is then the other side of the totalitarian domination of the great imperialist powers at the scale of the world. This is noted by the ruling class “ideologues” themselves, they who first groan — groaning is their function, while history takes its inexorable course — about the divorce between “real country” and “legal country,” about the overwhelming pre-eminence of the executive, on the suffocating “dictatorship” of the “political class” and its parties, on the reduction of the very honorable deputies and senators to salaried bureaucrats, to managers of state enterprise, to shadows — laboriously greened by television screens — of what is supposed to be their “historic” function. In this framework, the parliamentary “tribune” is no longer anything, not even a microphone, and the “halls” ha long ceased to be the theater of great battles, let us not say of principle, but even merely oratory: it is the realm of ordinary administration, and to restore its pale luster there remain — inane toil — only the columns of any ‘Unità’…

“The corpse still walks,” yes, but only as a mirror for proletarian larks. If these, by absurd hypothesis, were to disappear of the stormy sky of bourgeois society, it too would disappear without anyone noticing its disappearance, because the state machine runs on its own account and the maintenance costs of Montecitorio and Palazzo Madama do not enter its budget other than as faux frais of social preservation. Its “socialist” and “communist” props no longer even have the justification that from there “we speak to the masses”: the voice, in there, dies out before it even leaves the lips (delicate lips, for that matter) of those who articulate it. The fair booth has the sole task of making an act of presence: its function is reduced to “being there,” a corpse cluttering the road to proletarian class revival.

Stalin said — it was regime preservation needs that made him say this — that it was up to the communist parties to raise the flags mocked and trampled by the bourgeoisie. No other task the ruling class assigns to traitors; no other is the trade for which, handsomely, it pays them.

The class party, the Marxist revolutionary party, has only to take note of this. We did so, as can be seen in the article that follows, on the eve of the general elections called for May 1952 — not for one year of the second half of the century, but for the entire span of time that separates us from the revolution. In 1920, we said that the adoption of “revolutionary parliamentarianism ,” especially in countries of advanced capitalism, was dangerous. Today, the balance sheet of long decades authorizes us to say that, regardless of good intentions, to attempt it again would be defeatist: it would be tantamount, consciously or not, to restoring the semblance of life to what history itself, to our great joy, has killed off; it would mean restoring oxygen to what the bourgeoisie — denying itself and agreeing with us — has shown to be only a ghost.

Let the proletariat turn its back forever to the ignoble string puppet theatre, and seek oxygen of the great battles past and future — as Trotsky put it — there where it is only possible to breathe it: outside those walls, in the squares.

THE CORPSE STILL WALKS

From our pamphlet Sul filo del tempo, May 1953) 

It is not to sacrifice to the topicality of the ignoble May that passes, and takes worthy place among several of its predecessors consecrated to the past of the “tough virago” Liberty, now reduced to an old trotter, that we will once again deal with the theme: proletariat and electoralism.

Without giving, in fact, any importance to polls, or frantically examining statistics of results, to which for more than thirty years we have been contesting even this last alleged usefulness as a quantitative index of social forces, and without therefore attempting the cold sketch or admiring the pale photograph in numbers of today, and of the Italian country, we shall connect in brief strokes the positions of a historical period whose immense lessons are, at present, largely unused by the masses who flock — but with visible broad ebbs of distrust and disgust — to the usual ballot boxes.

In 1892 the Italian Socialist Party was formed at the Genoa Congress with the separation of Marxists from anarchists. The controversy and split reflects from afar that which ended the First International between Marx and Bakunin, and as it was said between authoritarians and libertarians. In the foreground it is seen thus: the Marxists are, in the situation of the time, for participation in the elections of administrative and political public bodies, the libertarians are against. But the real background of the issue is another (see the writings of the time by Marx, Engels on Spain, etc.). It is a matter of beating the individualist revolutionary conception that one should not vote for “not recognizing” by that act the State of the Bourgeois, with the historical and dialectical conception that the class state is a real fact and not a dogma that one only needs to erase, more or less idly, from one’s “consciousness,” and will be historically destroyed only by revolution. It is this (have you, Engels said, ever seen any?) par excellence fact of force and not of persuasion (much less of opinion counting), of authority and not of freedom, which will not be so naive as to throw autonomous individuals flying as if from a cage of pigeons, but will build the power and strength of a new state.

Hence, in this dispute between those who wanted to enter Parliaments and those who wanted to stay out of them (but as a corollary of the far more serious errors of inciting proletarians to deny the class state, the class political party, and even trade union organization) it was the Marxist socialists and not the anti-electionist and anti-organization anarchists who denied the bourgeois fable of freedom, the basis of the deception of elective democracy.

The correct programmatic position was to claim not so much the formal “conquest of public power”, but the revolutionary future “conquest of political power”, and in vain the possibilist and reformist right wing tried to cover up the formula given by Marx since 1848: dictatorship of the working class!

* * *

The European bourgeoisie, while allowing advances in the field of social reforms and seductive invitations of collaboration to the workers’ trade union and parliamentary leaders, enters the explosive circle of Imperialism, and in 1914 the First World War breaks out. A wave of bewilderment assails the socialists and workers who had however proclaimed on the eve, in Stuttgart and Basel, that social revolution would be opposed to war. The traitors take to measuring the catastrophic situation sweeping away decades of rosy illusions not by the yardstick of proletarian Marxism, but by that of bourgeois Liberty, whose highest clamors are raised whenever the cause and force of our Revolution forces them to their knees.

The existence of Parliaments and of the ballot right is invoked as a patrimony assured to the proletariat, which must defend it by allowing itself to be regimented and armed in the national army: and thus the German workers will be persuaded to be killed to ward off the Czarist spectre, the Western workers to do so against the Kaiserist spectre.

The Italian Socialist Party had the advantage of a lapse of time to decide before acceding to the national union: it decisively refused when for political alliance the Italian state would have to follow the Germans, and took refuge in the formula of neutrality (insufficient, as declared by the revolutionary wing even before the radiant May of 1915) and was then able to resist opposition when the bourgeoisie descended “into the field of freedom” by attacking Austria.

* * *

In 1919 the war is over, with national victory and the liberation of the “unredeemed” cities, but after immense blood sacrifice and with the inevitable aftermath of economic and social upheaval: inflation, crisis of production, crisis of war industry. Two powerful historical results are acquired and evident before the masses and their party. In the domestic field we have seen what an antithesis there is between the postulates of democracy and nation, identified with war and massacre, and those of class and socialist: the interventionists of all colors, from the nationalists (later fascists) to the demomasons and republicans, whether they were in the war or not, anxious to bask in the orgy of victory, soon cooled by the lashings of the imperialist allies, are rightly hated and mocked by the workers who sweep them from the squares where they descend determined to fight. In the international arena, the Bolshevik Revolution gave the de facto extremes to the theory of revolution opposed to demobourgeois and anarchists: victory can be achieved insofar as we radically rid ourselves of errors, illusions and scruples of democracy and freedom.

And then the crossroads opens before the great party beaten by the interventionists in May 1915. By the democratic way is easy to have a mighty numerical revenge. Much harder is the other way, which is faced by founding a revolutionary party, eliminating our own social democrats à la Turati, Modigliani, Treves, though saved from the shame of social patriotism, organizing the insurrectional seizure of power, which in the meantime is hoped to be possible throughout central Europe, in the territories of the defeated empires.

In the situation of 1892, there was no antithesis between the revolutionary path and that of electoral activity, the former having historically no other venue than the clear party program, not the maneuver of action.

An advanced group of Italian socialists at the Bologna Congress argued that in 1919 the antithesis was open. To take the path of elections meant closing the path of revolution. Evident was the perplexity of the bourgeoisie, which did not want, in its majority at the time, to prevent civil war by forceful initiatives, and with Giolitti and Nitti invited the workers to enter the defenseless factories, the one hundred and fifty MPs to pour into Montecitorio: let them sing Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag) in both precincts!

It was not possible to curb the enthusiasm for the election campaign, and to enforce the historically confirmed prediction that its effect, especially if successful, would be to lose all the gain made with the vigorous campaign of shaming the “democratic war,” with the enthusiasm with which the Italian workers, strongly deployed alone on the class front, had welcomed the seizure of power by the Russian Soviets, and the dispersal of the born-dead Democratic Assembly.

Mussolini, who had in 1914 betrayed us by switching to the opposite front with the partisans of democratic and irredentist intervention, advocate—would that he had succeeded earlier in that! — of a forceful initiative of the national bourgeoisie to stifle the proletarian organs — was in the elections ridiculed, and the infatuation subsequently ran its irresistible course.

In 1920, when laying the foundations of the Communist Party in Italy divided from the Social Democrats, the Moscow International held that an antithesis between elections and insurrection did not exist, in the sense that for the Communist parties solidly established across the dividing line between the two Internationals, it could be useful to make use of parliamentary action, to blow up Parliament itself, and by that means bury parliamentarianism . The question posed too generically was a difficult one, and all Italian Communists deferred to the decision of the Second Moscow Congress (June 1920), the solution being clear: in principle, all against parliamentarianism ; in tactics, neither participation always and everywhere, nor boycott always and everywhere.

The opinions of majorities are a little thing before the evidence of history. Such a decision, and its general acceptance in Italy, takes nothing away from the remembered antithesis of 1919: elections with a hybrid party of revolutionaries mostly on a slow path to orientation and well-determined social democrats — i.e., the breakup of the party (October 1919, it was time; in January 1921 it was late) and preparation for the conquest of revolutionary power.

It is unquestionable that Lenin did little good to collimate the position of antiwar socialists in Italy in the aftermath of a longtime democratic, and victorious, state and that of the Bolsheviks in Russia in the Czarist Dumas during the lost wars. But no less indisputable is that Lenin saw in time the historical antithesis posed by us then and confirmed by the future.

In the famous booklet on “Left wing communism, an infantile disorder” — in which the tendency to the left is not despised as puerile, but considered as an element of growth of communism, against right and center positions, elements of senescence and decomposition, which against Lenin’s desperate struggle and after breaking his brain had to triumph — in that text so exploited by the maniacs of the electoral method, this is how Lenin expressed himself on the struggle in the Italian party; these are the only passages:

Note of April 27, 1920: “I have had too little opportunity to acquaint myself with “Left-wing” communism in Italy. Comrade Bordiga and his faction of Abstentionist Communists (Comunista astensionista — in Italian in the text) are certainly wrong in advocating non-participation in parliament. But on one point, it seems to me, Comrade Bordiga is right—as far as can be judged from two issues of his paper, Il Soviet (Nos. 3 and 4, January 18 and February 1, 1920), from four issues of Comrade Serrati’s excellent periodical, Comunismo (Nos. 1–4, October l–November 30, 1919), and from separate issues of Italian bourgeois papers which I have seen. Comrade Bordiga and his group are right in attacking Turati and his partisans, who remain in a party which has recognised Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and yet continue their former pernicious and opportunist policy as members of parliament. Of course, in tolerating this, Comrade Serrati and the entire Italian Socialist Party are making a mistake which threatens to do as much harm and give rise to the same dangers as it did in Hungary, where the Hungarian Turatis sabotaged both the party and the Soviet government from within. Such a mistaken, inconsistent, or spineless attitude towards the opportunist parliamentarians gives rise to “Left-wing” communism, on the one hand, and to a certain extent justifies its existence, on the other. Comrade Serrati is obviously wrong when he accuses Deputy Turati of being “inconsistent” (Comunismo No. 3), for it is the Italian Socialist Party itself that is inconsistent in tolerating such opportunist parliamentarians as Turati and Co.

There is then the “Appendix,” dated May 12, 1920. “The issues of the Italian newspaper Il Soviet referred to above fully confirm what I have said in the pamphlet about the Italian Socialist Party” This is followed by a quotation from an interview of Turati with the “Manchester Guardian,” calling for labor discipline, order and prosperity for Italy. “Indeed, the correspondent of the British bourgeois-liberal newspaper has rendered Turati and Co. a disservice and has excellently confirmed the correctness of the demand by Comrade Bordiga and his friends on Il Soviet, who are insisting that the Italian Socialist Party, if it really wants to be for the Third International, should drum Turati and Co. out of its ranks and become a Communist Party both in name and in deed.”

So it is clear that the main issue is the elimination of socialpacifists from the proletarian party, secondary issue is whether it should participate in elections, in Lenin’s thinking at that time as well as in the subsequent debates and theses on parliamentarianism  of the Second Congress, shortly afterwards.

But for us today it is also clear what we argued then: that the only way to achieve the transport of forces to the revolutionary terrain was an enormous effort to liquidate, immediately after the end of the war, the tremendous democratic and electoral suggestion, which too many saturnalia had already celebrated.

The tactics desired by Moscow were duly, indeed demanding, followed by the Livorno party. But unfortunately, the subordination of revolution to the corrupting instances of democracy was now underway internationally and locally, and the Leninist meeting point of the two problems, as well as their relative weight, proved untenable. Parliamentarianism is like a cog that if it grabs you by a flap will inexorably crush you. Its employment in “reactionary” times advocated by Lenin was proposable; in times of possible revolutionary attacks it is a maneuver in which bourgeois counterrevolution too easily gains the upper hand. In various situations and under a thousand times history has convinced that better diversion from revolution than electoralism cannot be found.

* * *

From the concession to parliamentary tactics with wholly destructive application it slowly slid toward positions reminiscent of those of the Social Democrats. Alliances were proposed to these, where they led to a possible majority of seats, and since it made no sense to avail oneself of this numerical weight only to make platonic opposition and to bring down ministries there arose the other unfortunate formula of the “workers’ government.”

It was clear that there was a return toward the conception of parliament as the way to establish working-class political power. The facts proved that to the extent that this historical illusion was resurrected it all the positions previously won were gradually abandoned. From the destruction of Parliament among all the other cogs of the state by means of the insurrection, there had been a shift to the utilization of Parliament to accelerate the insurrection. It fell back to the utilization of Parliament as a means of arriving with the majority at class power. The fourth step, as clearly stated in the theses that the Left presented in Moscow in 1920, 1922, 1924, 1926, was to move from parliament as a means to parliament as an end. All parliamentary majorities are right, and sacred and inviolable, even if they are against the proletariat.

Turati himself would never have said this: but the “communists” of today say it at every hour and they inculcate it well down deep among the masses who follow them.

If we recall these stages once again, it is to establish the close link between every affirmation of electoralism, parliamentarianism, democracy, freedom, and a defeat, a step backward of the proletarian class potential.

The backward race had its completion without any more veils when, in reversed situations, the power of capital took the initiative of civil war against proletarian bodies. The situation was turned upside down in large part because of the work of the liberal bourgeoisie and the democratic socialists, of the same right wing nested in our ranks, as Lenin said for Hungary. In Germany it was those parties who were cops and executioners of the revolutionary communists, in Italy they not only favored the false retreats à la Nitti and Giolitti but gave their hand to the preparation of the open fascist forces, using for the purpose magistracy, police, army (Bonomi) to counterattack whenever the illegal communist forces (alone, and in full “pacification pact” signed by those parties) reported tactical successes (Empoli, Prato, Sarzana, Foiano, Bari, Ancona, Parma, Trieste, etc.). That in these cases the Fascists, not having been able to do so on their own, with the help of the forces of the constitutional and parliamentary state massacred our workers and comrades, burned newspapers and red headquarters, did not represent for them the greatest scandal: this erupted when fascists went against Parliament and killed, by then post festum, Deputy Matteotti.

The cycle was completed. No longer was Parliament for the cause of the proletariat, but the proletariat for the cause of Parliament. The general front of all non-Fascist parties above different ideologies and different class bases was invoked and proclaimed, with the sole aim of uniting all forces to overthrow fascism, resurrect democracy, and reopen parliament.

Several times we have reported the historical stages: the Aventine, in which the 1924 leadership of our party participated, but from which it had to withdraw because of the will of the party itself, which only out of discipline had had to put up with the directives prevailed in Moscow, but still retained intact its precious horror, born of a thousand struggles, at any interclass alliance; then the long pause and the further pratfall during emigration, to the policy of national liberation and partisan warfare, as we have repeatedly explained that the use of armed and insurrectional means took nothing away from the character of opportunism and betrayal of such a policy. We will not follow the whole narrative here.

* * *

Ever since before Italian Fascism and the other war we had enough to argue that in the West of Europe never the proletarian party had to accede to parallel political actions with the “left” or popular bourgeoisie, of which we have seen the most unthinkable editions ever since: anti-clerical Freemasons once, then Christian Democrat Catholics and convent friars, republicans and monarchists, protectionists and liberals, centralists and federalists, and on and on.

Opposite to our method, which regards every “rightward” movement of the bourgeoisie, in the sense of throwing off the mask of ostentatious guarantees and concessions, as a verified prediction, a “theoretical victory” (Marx, Engels) and thus a useful revolutionary opportunity, which a righteously initiated party must welcome not with mourning but with joy, lies the opposite method whereby at each of those turning points the class front is demobilized and we rush to the rescue, as prejudicial treasure, of what the bourgeoisie has dismantled and rejected: democracy, freedom, constitution, parliament.

Let us therefore leave doctrinal polemics, which can be proposed only to avowed anti-Marxists, and let us see where that method rejected by us has led, given that to it, by the concurrence of so many forces and so many accomplices, the proletariat, European and Italian, has been queued up and pinned down.

National resistance, war of the eastern and western states on the democratic front, stopping the Germans at Stalingrad, landing in France, fall of Mussolini and hanging by his feet, fall of Hitler. The stakes of the immense struggle, to which the proletarians have denied nothing: blood, flesh, class plot of their troubled century-long movement, are safe! Thanks to the armies of America above all, they are saved forever: Freedom, Democracy, elective constitution! All has been risked and given for you, Parliament, temple of modern civilization, and, having closed the doors of the temple of Janus, we have the joy of reopening yours!

A little gasping, human civilization resumes its generous and tolerant path, undertakes to hang people only by the neck, reconsecrates the human person who by necessity had been suitable material for making the omelet with liberating bombs: if historically all these apologists were right, the danger of Dictatorship is over, and from now until the end of the centuries we shall not see the thing, terrible to think of, of being without Members of Parliament, of doing without parliamentary chambers. From Yalta to Potsdam, from Washington to Moscow, from London to Berlin, and to Rome, all this was in May-always a May! — of 1945, entirely sunny and safe.

* * *

Let us look, then, at what the same subjects, and the transmitters from the same centers, say in this May 1953, not so far away, but “quantum mutatus ab illo!” Everything was safe then, on the agreement of all. Now to hear each of them all is still about to be lost, all is to be done over again.

So let us at least admit that in 1922-1945 we were dragged into an idiotic and stinking method!

Let us limit the demonstration to the Italian electoral array, subject to the application of the gas mask.

Basically there are three groups in the struggle, if we put aside the timid reappearance of the Fascists, who had every right to be evaluated a qualified historical fact as much as any other, but who with the ballot in their hands instead of the truncheon cut the sorry figure of being the most democratic. And in fact the most in-character Democrat of all time is the one who plays the victim of state persecution and police reprisals. Free apology for the baton, to be obtained, tut-tut, with a paper-based circus show.

So there are three groups into which broke the anti-fascist front and the bloc — and first government after salvation — of national liberation. Three groups that came together in mutual certainty — and gave each other mutual endorsement — that they were equals in the holy war, in the world crusade against dictatorships. Well, let us listen to the logorrhoea of the speakers and newspapers, albeit for three or four sentences, as more can hardly be endured. Each of the three sectors asks for votes with one and only argument: the other two impersonate “danger of dictatorship.”

According to the monarchist side, which rejects the definition of right-wing, and asserts itself as democratic and constitutional on the glorious traditions of the Giolitti era, which does not hesitate to make antivatican moves such as the breach of Porta Pia, it is clear that the communists will lead the country, if they win, to the red dictatorship and thus will blow up parliament. But they are no less virulent in asserting overpowering, police and reactionary Christian Democracy, which, with its minor allies, leads Italy back under the despotism of clerics in Phrygian caps. So they, too, see in De Gasperi a threat to parliament, to which he will substitute the council of bishops, replacing elections with Communion in the squares.

According to the communistoid left, no need to explain, not only are the monarchists preparing no more and no less than a new fascism and absolutism, but the Christian Democrat center is an agent of America’s dictatorship and Scelba’s Celere police corps worse than Benito’s militia. . Which, insofar as it is true, was possible only in grace of the policy of antifascist blockade and national liberation that made “military police” and national cops welcome with open arms, and with the immediate disarmament on the orders of the corridor “generals” of the workers “brigades” as soon as fascists and their militia were eliminated.

The Christian Democrats and allies, bombarded on two sides as certain impersonators of totalitarianism of tomorrow and of the new two decades, and especially swept up in the accusation of traitors to democracy with the immense boondoggle of the campaign on the swindle law (legge truffa), say they are no less than the saviors of the threatened Italy free from two opposing, and converging with gnashing teeth, ferocious totalitarianisms: the neo-fascist on one side, the communist on the other, painted the one with the traits of past Hitlerism and Mussolinism, the other with the present connotations of the ultra-state and ultra-dispotic Sovietism of Russia.

The cycle thus unfolded as follows. Starting point: loyal alliance among three ranks of equally fervent friends of Freedom to annihilate Dictatorship and the possibility of any Dictatorship. Killing the Black Dictatorship. End point: choice among three paths each of which leads to a new Dictatorship more vicious than the others. The voter has but to choose between the Red Dictatorship, the White Dictatorship and the Blue Dictatorship. 

Two methods bankrupt here historically, in all respects, but especially in that of the proletarian class that we are interested in. The first method is that of employing the legal means, the constitution and parliamentarianism  with a broad political bloc in order to avoid Dictatorship. The second is to lead the same crusade and form the same bloc on the ground of struggle with arms, when the Dictatorship is in place, to the sole democratic end.

Today’s historical problems are not dissolved by legality but by force. One does not overcome force except by greater force. Dictatorship is not destroyed than by a more solid dictatorship.

It is little to say that this dirty institution of Parliament does not serve us. It no longer serves anyone.

* * *

All the alternatives boasted and made to be feared by the three fronts have no substance. Should one of the lateral forces prevail it would immediately split up and a large part of its elected membership would pass to the Atlantic-American bourgeois center. The royalists make no mystery of this. The self-styled communists say it less openly, but it would be the inevitable outcome of their eventual success as a majority that appears impossible.

Little will change in the headcount of those who will be sitting “at another five-year banquet” of which the voters will not even get the crumbs.

At the time of the Matteotti crisis we said it was a trade union movement of professional MPs, who saw privileges and income in danger and resorted to strike action. The same should be said of the “historic battle” against the “swindle law.” Not only are elections themselves a scam, but it is all the more so as it is claimed to give equal weight to every personal vote. All of this meatloaf in Italy is cooked by a few thousand cooks, undercooks and scullions, who grossly share the twenty million voters.

If Parliament served to technically administer something and not just make fools of citizens, out of five years of maximum life it would not devote one to elections and another to debating the law to constitute itself! When the hours of ranting are counted, it goes beyond two-fifths. This arrogant sodality is but an end in itself: and the peoples who got themselves killed to put it back on have been cheated of more than twenty percent of their small share of sovereignty! By now those people vote in the other world.

If the parliamentarians of all bourgeois fractions don’t give a damn about the democratic principle, no less do the false communists laugh at it. This is not because they return in the slightest to positions of class and dictatorship after the bankruptcy of freedom-blocardism. And in fact they do not retrace the same path, disguising all party connotations, and put back on their feet a bloc of the sound Italian people, of the enlightened, the honest, not just with the dumb Nenni alternative, who basically promises what we said: give us access to parliament and we will govern with you and like you; but they raise up a whole host of flabby flankers, whom only inexorable decrepitude and arteriosclerosis has prevented from associating with the most bourgeois names in politics: Bonomi, Croce, Orlando, Nitti, De Nicola, Labriola and the like. ..

And they are so alien from thinking remotely of remounting the downward slope that they are not only the most ardent in invoking legality and constitutionality, when they claim against De Gasperi, whom they claim is “Austrian” (the Austrian bourgeoisie can teach how to administer without stealing, to the Italian bourgeoisie), the tradition of May 1915, of the war for democracy and Trieste, but they rant nationalist and patriot more than anyone else.

It is not only the consistent and respectable Turati who could re-enter holding his head up, but especially the 1914 Mussolini, both teachers for them for being able to betray the proletariat for democracy, and democracy for dictatorship.

* * *

The correspondent of a London newspaper described a scene he swears he witnessed with his mortal eyes, while sane and free from drug fumes, in a valley of mysterious Tibet.

In the lunar night, the ritual gathers, perhaps by the thousands, monks dressed in white, moving slowly, impassively, stiffly, among long dirges, pauses and repeated prayers. When they form a very wide circle, something can be seen in the center of the clearing: it is the body of one of their brothers lying supine on the ground. He is not spellbound or unconscious, he is dead, not only because of the absolute stillness that the moonlight reveals, but because the stench of decomposed flesh, at a turn of the wind’s direction, reaches the nares of the stunned European.

After much circling and chanting, and after more unintelligible prayers, one of the priests leaves the circle and approaches the corpse. As the chanting continues unceasingly he bends over the dead man, stretches himself over him adhering to his whole body, and places his living mouth over the decaying one.

The prayer continues intense and vibrant, and the priest lifts the corpse under his armpits, slowly lifts it back up and holds it before him in an upright position. The ritual and the dirge do not cease: the two bodies begin a long turn, like a slow dance step, and the living man looks at the dead man and makes him walk in front of him. The foreign spectator watches with barred pupils: this is the great experiment of reviving the occult Asian doctrine being carried out. The two are always walking in the circle of prayerful people. Suddenly there is no doubt: in one of the curves the pair describes, the moonbeam has passed between the two walking bodies: the one of the living has released its arms and the other, alone, is holding on, moving. Under the force of collective magnetism, the life force of the healthy mouth has penetrated the undone body, and the ritual is at its climax: for moments or hours the corpse, standing upright, by its own strength walks.

Thus sinisterly, once again, the generous young mouth of the mighty and vital proletariat has applied itself against the putrescent and stinking one of capitalism, and given it back in the tight inhuman embrace another span of life.