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.