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.