PARTISAN!

Elections bring out the best and the worst of the Left. Edith Fischer gives a historical perspective on socialist electoral strategy, arguing for the socialist left in Australia to take elections seriously as contests of power.

Considering,
That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a distinct political party;
That a such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation…

Karl Marx and Jules Guesde, Program of the French Workers Party, 1880

Parliamentary Cretinism and Revolutionary Abstentionism: Two Sides of the Same Coin

In his magisterial and oft-forgotten survey of the development of socialism in the French Third Republic, Karl Kautsky clearly elucidated the relationship between parliamentary cretinism and political abstention in the workers movement. Parliamentary cretinism has a long history in the French socialist movement. In 1848, one of the principal leaders of the socialists, Louis Blanc, entered into the government of the petit-bourgeois democrats, trading socialism for “petit-bourgeois illusions” in Lenin’s words. This pattern was repeated again in the 1899 Waldeck-Rousseau government, when Alexandre Millerand (who would himself go on to lead a conservative government after abandoning socialism in 1912) a member of the French Section of the Workers International (SFIO) and leader of the socialist parliamentary faction, took the post of commerce minister. The Waldeck-Rousseau government was a government of “republican defence”, and argued that all defenders of republican principles needed to form a united government to oppose clerical and monarchist reaction. This coalition included Millerand, as well as Moderate Republicans, some of whom had overseen the massacre of the French working class during the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.

Millerand’s entry into the Waldeck-Rousseau government was widely seen as a betrayal, and in the wake of his right-wing turn the socialist movement in France began to fragment. In the wake of this breakdown of the socialist movement, revolutionary syndicalism became increasingly popular amongst the French working class. The syndicalist movement was based in the trade unions, and was popular amongst younger, more militant workers who were alienated by the Millerandist turn in French socialism. The syndicalists rejected political participation in favour of “direct action” – strikes, mass action tactics, and street battles with the bourgeois police. They rejected all forms of political representation, and called for a corporate state – a revolutionary state organised on the basis of industry and occupation. The growth of the syndicalists was fueled by the mighty class struggles of that period, but also by the parliamentary-cretinism of the French social democrats. However, the syndicalist tactic led the militant sectors of the French working class into a blind alley. The syndicalists rejected systematic political struggle, and as such rejected the highest form of unity of the working class. Instead, they believed, in economistic terms, that the working class could achieve a revolutionary consciousness through direct struggle with capital.

The rejection of political struggle did not make the French syndicalists immune to opportunism. However, its form was different to the reformists in the French socialist movement. The revolutionary syndicalists never represented the majority of the working class, who had not yet come to revolutionary consciousness. This minority struggled consistently to reach the masses of workers – but they lacked a political program and systematic propaganda apparatus. When the syndicalists were consistently politically defeated, they increasingly turned towards a populist nationalism for their base of support. Figures like Georges Sorel, a revolutionary syndicalist influenced by Marx, would begin to associate with Action Francaise (French Action), a monarchist paramilitary organisation led by Charles Maurras. In turn, Sorel would develop a synthesis of syndicalist, anarchist, and nationalist thinking as part of the Cercle Proudhon (Proudhon Circle), which would later inspire fascist thinkers like Gentile and Mussolini. The confluences between revolutionary syndicalism and revolutionary nationalism were many – rejection of political representation, a fetish for direct action and a politics of confrontation, a belief in an organic, apolitical political model based on occupation, a cult of action, and a disdain for intellectuals. This confluence was repeated in Italy, where former Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organisers would go on to found fascist trade unions, and Benito Mussolini himself would make the short leap from the revolutionary syndicalist wing of the Italian Socialist Party to the growing revolutionary nationalist movement.

The pattern in France was repeated in different countries in different ways, and everywhere it left the same result – the working class was divided between a moderate wing, led by ministerial socialists (Millerandists) who sought coalitions with bourgeois governments in order to advance the immediate interests of workers, and a revolutionary wing which abstained from parliamentary tactics and limited itself only to the most militant tactics of the class struggle. Even in periods where revolutionary struggles break out (such as in Spain in the 1930s), the syndicalists remain a minority of the working class, and cannot win the vital political majority for socialism that is required in order to actually make a revolution. The working class is divided and defeated.

The Marxist Alternative

Between these two poles, Marx and Engels consistently intervened in favour of a revolutionary use of the electoral tactic. The working class, appearing on the political scene in the 1840s, quickly began a struggle for universal suffrage. This struggle, which served as the confluence between the radical republican tradition that emerged out of the bourgeois revolutions and the growing socialist movement, was vital to the development of a working class consciousness, and placed the working class at the centre of the struggle for democracy. This struggle, the “battle for democracy” as Marx and Engels put it, was at the centre of working class strategy. In fact, it was far more important than the daily trade union struggles of the working class over economic questions.

Of course, universal suffrage is a necessary but insufficient condition for working class power. In the hands of the bourgeoisie, it becomes a tool for the deception of the working class. Only if the working class can organise an independent political party can they turn this tool of deception into a weapon for emancipation. The struggle for this independent party, which notably must be independent of all other class forces, including bourgeois and petit-bourgeois democrats, is the struggle to which Marx and Engels dedicated their lives. It was under the slogan of political independence that Marx and Engels, and early social democrats such as Bebel and Leibknecht, argued so consistently against the Millerandists and other parliamentary cretins. A class cannot be independent when it relies on another class for its political power. The working class must be able to take power in its own right.

This battle was carried on by Lenin, who was a consistent advocate of the electoral tactic. Even when the majority of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) were opposed to participation in the Third Tsarist Duma (parliament), Lenin argued for the consistent combination of electoral work with illegal street organisation. When the Liquidationists (a faction within the Menshevik group) sought to dissolve the party underground and abandon the struggle to overthrow the Tsar in order to seek a better electoral footing, Lenin campaigned relentlessly for their expulsion, branding them traitors. When the Otzovists (Recallists) organised within the Bolsheviks to cease all participation in the Duma and to only undertake illegal work, Lenin fiercely opposed them. Revolutionary social democracy, in Lenin’s view, embraced all potential tactics – electoral organising, electoral boycotts, strikes, armed street demonstrations, partisan warfare – in the struggle for socialism. The question was when a given tactic was appropriate given the level of class struggle in a given country. Opportunistic fetishism of one tactic over another would only lead to disaster.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

Revolutionary social democracy presents a narrow path by which the working class can come to power. The working class is the subject of the communist revolution by virtue of its specific place in capitalist society. Stripped of pre-capitalist social relations, homogenised as the collective labourer and exploited by the collective capitalist, the working class is more cooperative, cosmopolitan, and social than any other class in human history. As such, it is uniquely predisposed to political organisation and to political democracy. However, in itself, this political organisation will not take on a revolutionary character while socialism is not hegemonic in the workers movement. The working class needs to become conscious of its own role in history, and the historical task of its class – to overturn capitalist society and emancipate humanity.

In the realm of high politics, that is in the theatre of the bourgeois parliament, the working class has a unique opportunity to develop its political consciousness. Not only do electoral tactics allow for the presentation of the socialist program to the entirety of society, but it allows this program to be put on the ballot, every single election. Through this process, and through the tireless efforts of the socialist representatives, the working class will come to understand the nature of politics as the struggle between political programs, each representing the interests of social classes and class fractions. In the hands of the bourgeoisie, the electoral weapon is a tool of mass deception. In the hands of the Bolshevik, the electoral weapon is a tool of emancipation – it is used to draw the class line across all of society, and to expose the machinations and illusions of the bourgeoisie.

This strategy is not without dangers. Electoral tactics consistently expose the working class and its organisations to the risk of opportunist tendencies. These tendencies would advocate for a strategy of parliamentary cretinism – seeking alliances with the capitalist parties at the expense of the independence of the working class. This tendency is an inevitable result of electoral work. However, the same is true of consistent trade union work. The case of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is indicative here. A revolutionary social democratic party, the SPD was eventually conquered by reformist elements. These elements had two sources – the Bavarian section of the party, and the party’s trade union faction. In the latter case, trade union work gave rise to a desire to moderate the revolutionary program of the social democrats in order to appeal to more workers in trade union struggles. The daily battles for better contracts and trade union recognition give rise to a distinct reformist tendency in trade union work. This tendency must be relentlessly combated in the working class and in the workers party. However, to abstain completely from trade union work on this basis (as some revolutionary abstentionists would advocate) would be a fatal error. So too would splitting the trade union movement into distinct, revolutionary unions. Such a tactic would isolate the most militant workers and totally relinquish the majority of workers to the leadership of state loyalists and social imperialist traitors. Abstention, in the electoral realm or in trade union work, is not the answer. The answer is political democracy, open political struggle, and a consistent communist message.

We can ascertain from the consistent work of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary social democrats nine lessons:

1. The Communist Party must be consistently independent, and are consistent advocates for the political independence of the working class. It must reject governing coalitions with all capitalist parties, petit-bourgeois parties, and state-loyalist workers parties. The Communist Party must not form a government unless it can guarantee the implementation of its minimum program in full. This principle applies at all levels of government.
2. The Communist Party must run on a revolutionary program. This program must include a revolutionary minimum: a fully democratic republic, socialisation of key industries, and the political supremacy of the working class. This program provides the minimum basis on which the Communist Party would support a government.
3. The Communist Party and its Central Committee must consistently inspect and oversee its parliamentary faction, and assert organisational control over all of its representatives. All elected representatives must be proven cadres with a firm political education and a proven loyalty to the Party.
4. Communist representatives must be subordinate to the decisions of the Party and its Congress and Central Committee. Discipline in voting must be strictly enforced. Representatives who abdicate the party line must be severely disciplined, and those who betray the working class must be driven out of the movement.
5. Communist representatives must consistently oppose all war budgets and war machinations of the capitalists. Even when this position may temporarily place us in a minority even amongst the working class, principled opposition to all budgets of the bourgeois war machine is the only way to guarantee a principled defence of the interests of the working class.
6. Communist representatives must be integrated into both the legal and illegal work of the Party. They must be revolutionaries by trade, and be willing to undertake all work assigned by the Party. They must subordinate all electoral activity to the extra-parliamentary activity of the Party – they must be active in the organisation of strikes, of mass demonstrations, and other vital political work.
7. Communist representatives are not career politicians, nor do they exist to cultivate a career in politics. They are operators in the enemy camp. They are not legislators seeking arrangements with other legislators; they are tribunes of the class, and must ruthlessly pursue the interests of the class.
8. Communist representatives must work constantly in their districts to organise for revolution. They must give speeches and organise demonstrations, support unions and cooperatives, and develop popular assemblies. They must meet consistently with the workers and hear their views, and consistently present the communist perspective in clear terms.
9. Communist representatives do not just seek to expose the bourgeoisie – they must also expose the servants of the bourgeoisie amongst the working class. Social patriots and social imperialists, who operate in the name of the working class but in reality serve the capitalists, must be relentlessly attacked and exposed. A Communist representative only earns the title of communist when they show consistent hostility to the entire bourgeois system.

Today, few socialist or communist parties live up to these basic principles. There are very few who are willing to campaign on a consistent socialist message, with consistent socialist tactics. However, revolutionary social democracy – the tradition of Marx, Engels, Bebel, Liebknecht, and Lenin, presents a path forward.