Parliament?

[Ned Kelly]

OK revlefters, time for some opinion!
I myself view parliament as a total sham, a bourgeois instrument of oppression to be essentially avoided by communist candidacy, and our efforts focussed on perpetuating that reality.
But how do others see parliament?

[scarletghoul]

Just about all of us would agree with you on the illegitimacy of bourgeois democracy.

But it's impractical and ultra-leftist to say we should avoid it at all costs. It can be a great way to get publicity, establish a presence, help weaken the bourgeois state, and so on. There is nothing wrong with manipulating the bourgeois electoral system with the goal of overthrowing the whole social order. This has taken various forms, from the Bolsheviks participation in the Duma to the extreme example of what Chavez is doing now. As long as electoral participation is viewed as a means and not an end, it is not a bad thing

[Ned Kelly]

Yeah, I agree to an extent. In our current condition in Australia, with an exceeding minority, it is foolhardy. But as a show of strength if we had those kind of numbers, just in terms of publicity it could be a success

[Kotze]

Suppose a party with a communist or even just a reformist agenda wins a majority of seats. If they want to do things that are not allowed by the constitution, they will need an XXL majority to change it and depending on which country we are talking about, there might be a review process where some mystified high court of assholes from the old establishment can then still block the change. If the party doesn't like that it gets smeared as undemocratic, nevermind how little say ordinary people really had when that constitution came into being.

But even if the party comes into a position where it can write any laws, to think of that as the victory would be an idealist position. If there isn't much sympathy for your cause inside the institutions that receive orders from the parliament you won't get shit done, support among the police and military is especially important. Unions are important: Work-related laws regarding the minimum wage, work time, and other job related stuff won't do shit if they aren't widely known; and even if they are widely known, that still doesn't mean they are respected if you demand respect as an individual employee. If getting enough support from some crucial institutions is too hard, build alternative institutions.

People are of two minds about parliaments: They like to have a right to vote, yet they think (and with good reason) that corruption among politicians is rampant. Parliaments are a piece of the puzzle of how to fundamentally change society, they can be used for agitation against the fake democracy. I know that the very idea of blueprints for the future gets a lot of ridicule among the left, but I think to be compelling here you really do need at least a sketch of an alternative way (http://www.revleft.com/vb/getting-closer-real-t138550/index.html?t=138550).

[The Idler]

If you're getting over 50% of the vote, your supporters are gonna be pretty hard to ignore. The Socialist Party's latest leaflet is called What's wrong with Parliament? (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/20C/Parliament_update.html)

[Zanthorus]

A lot of people will say that they agree that 'bourgeois democracy' is an institution that should be overthrown, but that in the meantime we can use parliament as some kind of platform to get our views across. This was the strategy advocated by Lenin on the basis of the Bolsheviks participation in the Duma. The problem is that the Duma was not an established institution of Russian society, it was formed under the pressure put upon the Russian establishment by the 1905 revolution. The organs of workers' power, the Soviets, had been formed prior to the Duma. Elections to the Duma only occured four times before the October revolution, and the Duma's powers were severely limited compared to most modern parliaments. To use the Bolsheviks participation in the Duma as a reason to participate in the parliaments of western countries, which have been existence for hundreds of years in places, and have established themselves as features of the political landscape, is a spurious inference at best. In countries were parliament has become an established institution, it would be simply be asking to instill confusion into the masses to say that, on the one hand, parliament is an illegitimate institution which must be overthrown and, on the other hand, that we must participate in parliament. In practice this could result in the kind of situation you had in Germany in 1918, where the Soviets have come into existence, but instead of exercising it's dictatorship, the proletariat simply hands power back over to the bourgeois republic under the command of the labour lieutenants of capital. The duty of Communists should be to fight against this kind of confusion inducing practice by maintaining a consistent opposition to the parliamentary system, by continually denouncing it as a sham organ, and by carrying out continual propaganda in favour of the system of proletarian democracy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I posted in comrade Kotze's thread. :)

Comrade Zanthorus, I chatted with comrade Miles months back about the potential for a truly lower-house "communal parliament." Basically this means scrapping all "upper houses" are they are now, make the current "lower houses" the single law-making body, and then establish a new lower house with little power within which to campaign. This "communal parliament" could be like the Duma or Reichstag, or even the British Parliament before or during the days of King John and his Magna Carta.

The politically correct parties would flock over to the single law-making body, but the new body would have a lot more politically incorrect voices (even from the populist right).

[stella2010]

OK revlefters, time for some opinion!
I myself view parliament as a total sham, a bourgeois instrument of oppression to be essentially avoided by communist candidacy, and our efforts focussed on perpetuating that reality.
But how do others see parliament?

I concur.

Do you concur?

Parliament. needs more hard work.
I don't give a damn how hard any of u wanna slam my posts. Hard work means hard work.

Remember that revlefters.
And.
The harder u are the more chance u have to smash open ur army police, whatever.
Never be marine.
Always bee mean.