Die Neue Zeit
6th October 2010, 04:06
It's acknowledged around here that some kind of amplified public platform is needed to get our points across. Those who argue against participation in the parliamentary system say that such traditional position would be instilling mass confusion. On the one hand, parliament is an illegitimate institution which must be overthrown, but on the other hand, we must participate in parliament.
When the Bolsheviks participated in the Duma, that body wasn't an established institution, and had very little power over an absolutist czar. When the SPD participated in the Reichstag, that body was not yet an established institution, and it too had little power over an absolutist kaiser (that doesn't excuse the war credits vote whatsoever).
Some here have argued, on the level of reforms, that two-chamber systems should be abolished and replaced with a unicameral legislature. However, what I propose is this:
What about agitating for communal or populist parliaments as new lower houses?
This means scrapping any existing upper houses, of course, but what this also means is a new lower house that has no power over the affairs of the bourgeois state. The only sovereign powers it should have are the exclusive abilities: to dissolve itself for elections, to verify purely technical credentials for its members, and to establish pay and benefits for its members.
The ramifications of this is that the mainstream parties won't bother to participate in these or would be prohibited from running, focusing instead on the lawmaking body, but that the "fringe" and the raw populists of left and right would.
When the Bolsheviks participated in the Duma, that body wasn't an established institution, and had very little power over an absolutist czar. When the SPD participated in the Reichstag, that body was not yet an established institution, and it too had little power over an absolutist kaiser (that doesn't excuse the war credits vote whatsoever).
Some here have argued, on the level of reforms, that two-chamber systems should be abolished and replaced with a unicameral legislature. However, what I propose is this:
What about agitating for communal or populist parliaments as new lower houses?
This means scrapping any existing upper houses, of course, but what this also means is a new lower house that has no power over the affairs of the bourgeois state. The only sovereign powers it should have are the exclusive abilities: to dissolve itself for elections, to verify purely technical credentials for its members, and to establish pay and benefits for its members.
The ramifications of this is that the mainstream parties won't bother to participate in these or would be prohibited from running, focusing instead on the lawmaking body, but that the "fringe" and the raw populists of left and right would.