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.)