From Unity, 14 January 2006

Never arrive in the system

by Patrik Köbele
Translation and introduction by Hermann Glaser-Baur
There has always been debate among communists about their participation in bourgeois parliaments and, more so, governments. The recent electoral gains by communist parties right across Europe, and indeed beyond, has refuelled these discussions.
    Patrik Köbele is the regional chairperson of the German Communist Party (DKP) for the Ruhr area and a member of the party’s National Executive Committee. This article, which has been published in several theoretical journals, is an attempt to underpin debates with some theoretical thought, move discussions forward, and help prevent the mistakes of the past.

Communists and parliamentarism

I would like to place three basic thoughts as a starting-point for this.
    1. There are tasks that have to determine the political work of communists everywhere and at all times.
• The theoretical and practical interventions of communists have to aim at shaping the working class into a conscious class (from the class in itself to the class for itself).
• Communists carry into the struggles and movements, into the developing class consciousness, the understanding of the necessity for a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism as the major step towards building a society without class differences. All our activities have to be cross-examined time and again to see how they fit into a revolutionary strategy and how they help move such a strategy forward.
    2. Bourgeois and non-revolutionary parties are usually the parliamentary arm of certain groups of the ruling class. Their major political aim is to maintain the capitalist system. This is their objective role, which is often contradictory to the subjective wishes of their members and the interests of the people who follow them. Conservatives and social democrats, for example, have at present more supporters in the German working class than the Communist Party. The reformist “Left Party” has maybe as many members, or more, who “feel” communist than the DKP.
    3. Parliamentarism is a bourgeois form of exercising power. It is an attempt to democratically disguise the rule of capitalism and to hide the class character of the state. In the countries of monopoly capitalism, parliament has been converted into an institution that legitimises the economic decisions made by the monopolies. Spectacular debates in parliament (the making of coalitions, resignation of chairpersons, etc.) are aiming to make every decision that is against the interest of the people look like the unchangeable results of discussions between the “freely elected representatives” of the people.

Communists and bourgeois parliaments

It has been a widespread suspicion that our emphasis on the struggle outside the parliaments is the result of a lack of success in elections. This is wrong. There can be sustainable success in class struggle and struggles for social progress only if there are movements outside the parliaments, especially working-class movements.
    In the short term there may be concessions by the forces in parliament who try to maintain the system; but such reforms are two-sided. Along with improvements in the people’s situation they will always tend to integrate the people into the system, the more so the less they are the results of struggles by the people.
    We have to focus on the effects of parliamentarism on revolutionaries. Wherever a parliamentary presence is not accompanied by strong movements from outside, the mechanisms of integration are stronger. This goes for the elected representatives as well as for the parties.
    On many occasions in history, opportunist developments within revolutionary parties originally started among their parliamentary representations.
    Saying this should never mean that revolutionaries keep out of parliaments. As long as large sections of the population (even those who don’t themselves vote) believe in the parliament as a legitimate representation of the people, it would be highly sectarian not to fight for representation in these parliaments at all times and at all levels.
    But this struggle must always focus on the priority of struggle outside parliaments. Election campaigns and the parliamentary work of revolutionaries have to be measured by
• whether they give impulses to lead the people, especially the working class, into struggle for their own interests, whether they strengthen the movements outside parliament;
• whether they help to make the people realise that there is a system behind all the individual contradictions, that the overthrow of capitalism is the final aim;
• whether they help to strengthen the revolutionary organisations.
    One important tool for preventing the integration of revolutionaries into parliamentarism is their constant control by the people who elected them. For a communist party the relationship between any group of elected representatives and the party has to be structured in such a way that the party has “the last word” at all times.
    Should a situation arise in which the true function of parliament is being understood by many people and the majority of the working class, should the class get prepared to withdraw support for the system, revolutionaries have to spearhead all initiatives that fight for new and really democratic structures of representation. (In revolutionary Russia such a situation led to “All power to the soviets.”)

Communists and government

Concluding from what I have said, I think revolutionaries’ participation in bourgeois governments is absolutely wrong in the vast majority of cases. They would always be part of loading the results of capitalist crisis onto the shoulders of the working people. They would always be (and have been in many cases throughout history) the “left fig-leaf” to cover imperialist policies and social cuts.
    I think this goes for all types of government: local, regional, and national. There are but few exceptions I can see:
• Pre-revolutionary situations with strong movements outside parliament and a balance of power ready to tilt towards the working class.
• Situations that make participation in government necessary to prevent reactionary dictatorship, a fascist regime, or imperialist wars.
• Governments that occur as a result of liberation from reactionary dictatorships or fascism and that seek to open a road to an anti-fascist democratic period.
• If participation in government seems absolutely certain to drive forward a shift in the balance of power and thereby to enhance the progressive struggles.
    It remains crucial, even in such situations, that communists and revolutionaries make sure to create no illusions among the exploited people about the class character of government and to point out that gains by the working class can be made only as a result of struggle.

Communists and the party

The communist party is party and anti-party at the same time. Of course it will, and it must always, take part in elections and fight for influence in bourgeois parliaments. Alongside this it must always show the true nature of parliamentarism, use the parliament as a stage; and, first and foremost, it has to make sure that it won’t “arrive” in parliamentarism. If it does, its days as a revolutionary, communist party will soon be over.

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