[The following is our English translation of a 1930 text from L’Ouvrier Communiste, you can also find it in French here.]
What is parliament? An institution which has always served the bourgeoisie for its domination. Originally, in France, it was, in the form of the Constituent Assembly or the Legislative Assembly, an organ of struggle, and even a revolutionary organ in the bourgeois sense of this term. It served initially to overthrow the domination of the aristocracy and the divine right monarchies, to proclaim the rights of citizens, their equality before the law. This is naturally only a fiction: the revolutionary side of the first parliamentary forms, indeed, of the Convention itself, resides solely in the overthrow of the Ancien Régime (1). It does not at all consist of the introduction of real equality of citizens, since this is negated by economic inequality. It sanctions and tends to perpetuate this inequality; it wants to perpetuate a state of affairs in which the so-called freedom of citizens is reduced to the freedom of the bourgeois class to exploit and dominate. Once the struggle against the Ancien Régime, against feudal forms, had been liquidated, parliamentary constitutionalism became a form of simple domination for a developing capitalism, a reactionary form. Already in 1848 and 1849, the Constituent Assembly in France served as a weapon for the bourgeoisie to repress the nascent proletarian movement and to prepare for the advent of Napoleon the third. In 1871, the Rural Assembly was the reaction, the parliament of Thiers was the most effective weapon to strangle the Communard movement. Clerics, democrats and socialists collaborated morally and materially in the appalling massacre with which the revolution of 1871 ended. At its birth in Germany, in Berlin and Frankfurt, the assembly already demonstrated its reactionary tendencies.
As capitalist domination is definitively consolidated, parliament becomes, in so-called democratic nations, the most authentic expression of capitalist rule. At the time when the proletarian movement, as Chartism had done in England, formulated democratic demands, such as that of universal suffrage, it did not see that its participation in parliament through its representatives was only preparing a strengthening of the parliamentary system. Certainly, the sentiment which guided the proletarians had a revolutionary value at the time, but poorly directed worker enthusiasm was bound, with the subsequent development of the labor aristocracy, to founder on shores of collaboration.
The problems had not yet become fully clear, and it seemed then that universal suffrage would lead to great political activity among the masses and provoke a development of consciousness in them. It cannot be denied that the beginning of this movement had a positive side, insofar as it aroused new initiatives within the proletariat and directed its attention to somewhat broader problems. It allowed the Parisian proletariat to move into the field of conscious action: in fact, we must not forget that the conceptions from which the Commune was inspired found a broad basis in respect for universal suffrage and a certain democratic and national ideology, which was overcome too late in the struggle. It is for the same reasons that we must not hide the negative side that the movement for universal suffrage and parliamentary participation carried in itself; but this is a very vast field of experience to the extent that today, little by little, it leads the masses to attempt to measure the relative effect of the parliamentary policy of leaders and demagogues. The negative side was precisely the inevitable corruption of the proletarian layers who, in the electoral kitchens, lost sight of the fundamental problems of the revolution. Avoiding this process of corruption was certainly not a factor of will, because one could not direct the masses in a different direction in a historical era in which this experience was necessary.
The indisputable fact remains that if anarchist elements saw this different path for the working class, it has merit; it should, however, be noted that anti-parliamentary tendencies have become a somewhat dull tradition in the anarchist camp, while they have found a new and living expression in the Communist Worker tendencies (2) which, during the war and after it, developed in all countries.
Leninist anti-parliamentarism certainly cannot be counted within this movement, given that it represents a curious mixture, a contamination of bourgeois and proletarian tendencies. At home, parliament is condemned in principle, but, strangely, it is valued tactically, and this on the basis of the Russian experience. Leninism or Bolshevism believed for a moment in history in its proletarian nature and, as such, it believed that its experience should be replicated in Western countries. Today, it no longer believes in its proletarian nature, but it has every interest in allowing the workers to believe in it. Tested by the facts today, it clearly appears that the Russian revolution led over time to the elimination of all activity of the workers’ councils and to party dictatorship, which, although not having a parliamentary form, clearly reproduces all the systems of bourgeois politics.
Leninist anti-parliamentarism, equivocal and incomprehensible for a true revolutionary elite, is completely unmasked today since, instead of demolishing the prejudice of electoral suffrage, it reinforces it by proclaiming German electoral successes in particular as communist victories. In this way, universal suffrage is on the way to acquiring a clearly revolutionary value for Bolshevism. This is anything but anti-parliamentary propaganda! Thus, the anti-parliamentary parliamentarism of the Bolsheviks finds its reason, and it is in no way different from the electoralism of the Italian socialists of 1919. It serves to lead the proletariat, in this case, during the last German elections, onto a purely ultranationalist terrain by diverting them from the fundamental problems of the revolution. The Bolshevik mask falls openly once again as in 1923, and the German-Russian alliance once again proves an undeniable reality. The four and a half million votes that the German Communist Party won are a gift that the German bourgeoisie gave to the Russian neo-bourgeoisie. And this is the swamp into which the parliamentary anti-parliamentarism of the Bolsheviks ultimately ran aground.
In Italy, there appeared at a given moment, in the Italian Socialist Party, an abstentionist current which wanted, like similar groups in Holland, the English Communist Party, and part of the Spartacus League in Germany, a boycott of parliament. It was liquidated by the same Bordiga who had sponsored its formation. These abstainers supported the boycott of parliament somewhat weakly in the Soviet of Naples. But, in 1924, it was the same Bordiga who affirmed that participation in elections was an act of courage and therefore necessary.
As if the courage of revolutionaries had no other areas in which to manifest itself! Many can say today: “look, fascism no longer wants universal suffrage, but it wants us to vote for its list.” Well, today, today precisely, it is the refusal to vote that is an act of courage. Not voting is a condemnation of the fascist parliament and the democratic parliament. But it is not enough to refuse voting; for we must organize a boycott not only of parliament, but also of elections, in all countries.
In Italy, the fact is clear: the democratic parliament gave birth to the fascist parliament. In it, more than in any other country, the essence of parliament is unmasked. The heirs of Matteotti, the cowardly whiners of Concentration, seek to revive in the figure of a victim who, were he alive, would always have been an enemy of the working class, the tradition of good parliament, of the parliament in which the demagoguery of the 19th century found a worthy vessel. The parliament was transformed into a bivouac (3) in 1922 without much trouble at all; a parliament which in 1924 saved Il Duce because it did more than the filthy sycophant from Predappio (4). A parliament which saved the bourgeoisie during the farce of 1919 that parodied the proletarian revolution, and which covered it with shame. And yet, that stinking pile of shit called Concentration would still like to give us back a parliament in which the vilest of reformists, Filippo Turati, that decrepit parliamentary prostitute, would sit enthroned with the troupe of emigration profiteers: his accomplices in the League for the Rights of Man, the bootlickers and cops of the French bourgeoisie. In short, the republican assembly in which the Caporalis and the Salvis would—with the Baldinis and others—find their reward alongside a failed warmonger, a Schiavetti; the reward for their foul deeds committed on French soil. This will be the new parliament and, given enough time, it will include in lawful union Stalin’s mercenaries, whose backs we proletarians will break, and whom we will sweep away like the great halls of the Vatican and the rooms of the Quirinal: with machine-gun fire!
L’Ouvrier Communiste N°12 – October 1930
Notes
(1) The political regime of feudal society.
(2) The KAPD in Germany, KAPN in the Netherlands, Communist Workers’ Party in Britain, and Workers’ Group of the Russian Communist Party.
(3) Reference to the sentence that Mussolini utters during his presentation before parliament: “I can turn this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples“.
(4) Predappio is the birthplace of Mussolini.
League of Internationalist Communists 