Parliamentarianism: why Bolshevik participation???

Comrades, I think it was in Random Precision's thread on Engels' Critique of the Erfurt Program (quoted by Lenin in The State and Revolution) that I said that neither Lenin nor Luxemburg made any criticism whatsoever of the program's "official" Marxist commentary, Kautsky's The Class Struggle.

This is related to Bolshevik participation in the Duma. The questions are: why no criticism, and why the parliamentary participation (even CN is vividly against this)??? [Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-parliamentarianism comes to mind in terms of being able to force the ruling class to accede to minimum demands FROM THE OUTSIDE, especially with the development of Big Media. Then there are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Internet...]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/reformism-t72015/index.html

[Ironic that it is Random Precision who is saying this, BTW]

There was one time in 1912 the tsarist Duma (which the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had a handful each of deputies in) passed two insurance laws for workers regarding industrial accidents and injuries. The purpose the Tsarists and Kadets who supported this law had was to defuse the rising revolutionary fervor of the masses by granting them some concessions. The actual laws passed were a small step forward, but still quite unsatisfactory: no workers in home industry, enterprises with less than twenty people, agricultural workers, construction workers, workers in the Siberian and Central Asian provinces, invalids, the old and unemployed were disqualified. Only about 20% of industrial workers qualified for the law!

Now it may seem at this juncture that the Bolsheviks would have been right to spit on the piecemeal concessions by the feudal state. But in fact, they supported the law's passage, and once it was enacted, made sure to explain the exact terms of the legislation to the workers so they could extract the most benefit from it by putting daily articles in Pravda on the subject and calling meetings on it at which all workers could attend. They also took a lead role in gathering contributions for the workers' part of the insurance fund, and their deputies in the Duma agitated for a higher degree of worker control over the fund. The party itself agitated for extension of the law and even founded a journal called The Problems of Insurance, which Lenin himself frequently wrote for. Using these methods, the insurance issue, which the government had intended to use as a way to stabilize itself, was turned into a means for mobilizing the class-conscious proletariat against it! The Bolsheviks organized strikes and demonstrations on the issue, and during the imperialist war the insurance funds had 2 million worker members, among whom the influence of the Bolsheviks was immense.

I think that the Bolsheviks' approach to the insurance issue sets a model for how revolutionaries should deal with reforms. As Lenin said:

... any movement of the proletariat, however small, however modest he may be at the start, however slight its occasion, inevitably threatens to outgrow its immediate aims and to develop into a force irreconcilable to the entire old order and destructive of it. The movement of the proletariat, by reason of the essential peculiarities of the position of this class under capitalism, has a marked tendency to develop into a desperate, all-out struggle, a struggle for complete victory over all the dark forces of exploitation and oppression.

Revolutionaries must remember how important reforms are, especially in the current period of reaction. Of course, we must recognize, and tell the workers, as the Bolsheviks did, that reforms must not be pursued for their own sake as they are no fundamental change for the lot of workers. This fundamental change can only come through revolution, and the workers must understand and appreciate this.

It irks me quite a bit when I have to read this UNCRITICIZED part by Kautsky in Ch. 5 (the blatant REVISIONISM was there for ALL revolutionary Marxists of his time to read) - RIGHT AFTER MY QUOTES IN THE "MERGE MARXISM" THREAD" ( ):

The interest of the working-class is not limited to the laws which directly affect it; the great majority of laws touch its interests to some extent. Like every other class, the working-class must strive to influence the state authorities, to bend them to its purposes.

Great capitalists can influence rulers and legislators directly, but the workers can do so only through parliamentary activity. It matters little whether a government be republican in name. In all parliamentary countries it rests with the legislative body to grant tax levies. By electing representatives to parliament, therefore, the working-class can exercise an influence over the governmental powers.

The struggle of all the classes which depend upon legislative action for political influence is directed, in the modern state, on the one hand toward an increase in the power of the parliament (or congress), and on the other toward an increase in their own influence within the parliament. The power of parliament depends on the energy and courage of the classes behind it and on the energy and courage of the classes on which its will is to be imposed. The influence of a class within a parliament depends, in the first place, on the nature of the electoral law in force. It is dependent, further, upon the influence of the class in question among the voters, and, lastly, upon its aptitude for parliamentary work.

A word must be added on this last point. The bourgeoisie, with all sorts of talent at its command, has hitherto been able to manipulate parliaments to its own purpose. Therefore, small capitalists and farmers have in large numbers lost all faith in legislative action. Some of these have declared in favor of the substitution of direct legislation for legislation by representatives; others have denounced all forms of political activity. This may sound very revolutionary, but in reality it indicates nothing but the political bankruptcy of the classes involved.

The proletariat is, however, more favorably situated in regard to parliamentary activity. We have already seen how the modern method of production reacts on the intellectual life of the proletariat, how it has awakened in them a thirst for knowledge and given them an understanding of great social problems. So far as their attitude toward politics is concerned, they are raised far above the farmers and small capitalists. It is easier for them to grasp party principles and act on them uninfluenced by personal and local motives. Their conditions of life, moreover, make it possible for them to act together in great numbers for a common end. Their regular forms of activity accustom them to rigid discipline. Their unions are to them an excellent parliamentary school; they afford opportunities for training in parliamentary law and public speaking.

The proletariat is, therefore, in a position to form an independent party. It knows how to control its representatives. Moreover, it finds in its own ranks an increasing number of persons well fitted to represent it in legislative halls.

Whenever the proletariat engages in parliamentary activity as a self-conscious class, parliamentarism begins to change its character. It ceases to be a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This very participation of the proletariat proves to be the most effective means of shaking up the hitherto indifferent divisions of the proletariat and giving them hope and confidence. It is the most powerful lever that can be utilized to raise the proletariat out of its economic, social and moral degradation.

The proletariat has, therefore, no reason to distrust parliamentary action; on the other hand, it has every reason to exert all its energy to increase the power of parliaments in their relation to other departments of government and to swell to the utmost its own parliamentary representation. Besides freedom of the press and the right to organize, the universal ballot is to be regarded as one of the conditions prerequisite to a sound development of the proletariat.

Given the implicit criticisms of parliamentarianism in my "The Life of the Party" article submission, it is guaranteed that I will revisit the anti-parliamentary material in this thread in my The Class Struggle Revisited paper.

A party for socialism in the context of the USA does not construct itself as an electoral party. While it may be the case that at some point in the future due to particularities of the struggle that a party for socialism runs candidates for office in its own name, a party for socialism will need to make that decision based on an assessment of the moment. A party for socialism should be envisioned as a party that leads the struggle of the oppressed and dispossessed. It must be a party deeply rooted among the oppressed and not be a party of "outsiders."

Electoral work will remain a critical site of struggle for the Left, and precisely for that reason specific forms of electoral organization will be necessary. While ultimately there will more than likely need to be an electoral people's party, at this particular moment in time the conditions for such a party do not exist and the nature of the US electoral system makes the construction and sustainability of such a party problematic. Running candidates for office simply to promote the name of the party or the program of the party--be it a party for socialism or a mass electoral people's party--represents self-indulgence rather than Left electoral strategy.

[Mind you, I do think that the article writer above is a bit behind in the times, considering Big Media, NGOs, and the Internet. Minimum demands - and possibly even genuinely reformist ones - can be achieved outside the cesspool of parliamentarianism.]

I'm running for Congress.

RP:

As a going-away present for Jacob, here is the first volume of Tony Cliff's biography of Lenin,

I add my admiration for this book, too. But I'd direct you also to chapter 14 'Strategy & Tactics' - a useful guide on how to avoid dogmatism.

^^^ I like this part, though (in the chapter you cited):

In principle, Lenin was right when he insisted on “bending the stick,” one day in one direction, another in the opposite. if all aspects of the workers’ movement had been equally developed, if balanced growth had been the rule, then “stick bending” would have a deleterious effect on the movement. But in real life, the law of uneven development dominates. One aspect of the movement is decisive at any particular time. The key obstacle to advance may be a lack of party cadres, or, on the contrary, the conservatism of the party cadres may cause them to lag behind the advanced section of the class. Perfect synchronisation of all elements would obviate the need for “bending sticks,” but would also render a revolutionary party or a revolutionary leadership superfluous.

I never read this work before starting my Theory thread on the law of uneven development, but the words of the "Trotskyist revisionist" (RP's words ) Cliff here seem to justify my applications in that thread (the law of uneven development not being limited just to economic development on the basis of geography).



Nevertheless, he uses the word "dialectic" too much for my liking.

I'm running for Congress.

Meh. Good luck, though.



So far in this thread, nobody's talking about Kautsky!

Nevertheless, he uses the word "dialectic" too much for my liking.

That's because he's a Marxist.

I'm not sure if I need help here or if I'm already on to something (especially for Chapters 4 and 5 of my work, The Class Struggle Revisited):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/class-cons...906/index.html

In the link above, John Kautsky (the non-Marxist grandson) said in a book that his grandfather envisioned a parliamentary party as his particular material manifestation of the "union of the labor movement and socialism" (The Class Struggle, Chapter 5).

[And here, the elder Kautsky doesn't necessarily mean "Marxism" as being one half of the merger - just political socialism in general.]

Obviously this formulation has proven to be woefully incorrect by historical developments, so now I ask this: are there any works of Rosa Luxemburg that specifically mention the revolutionary mass party as being the material manifestation of the merger of Marxism and the workers' movement?

I ask this because Lenin had the correct formulation:

The task of Social-Democracy is to bring definite socialist ideals to the spontaneous working-class movement, to connect this movement with socialist convictions that should attain the level of contemporary science, to connect it with the regular political struggle for democracy as a means of achieving socialism—in a word, to fuse this spontaneous movement into one indestructible whole with the activity of the revolutionary party.

Anyhow, this is the first section of CHAPTER 4: ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK, AND BUILDING THE MASS PARTY OF THE WORKING CLASS. Enjoy:

Problems with “Social Democracy”

"As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpful - but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfill its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.'" (Lars Lih)

When Russian Marxism emerged, it came in the form of “social democracy,” modeled after the German experience. Although this classical “social democracy” was a far cry from the liberal and economistic “social democracy” of today, the theoretical underpinnings of the former were rife with serious problems from the outset, which will be explained in the following deconstruction of key parts of Chapter 5 of Kautsky’s The Class Struggle.

The interest of the working-class is not limited to the laws which directly affect it; the great majority of laws touch its interests to some extent. Like every other class, the working-class must strive to influence the state authorities, to bend them to its purposes.

Great capitalists can influence rulers and legislators directly, but the workers can do so only through parliamentary activity. It matters little whether a government be republican in name. In all parliamentary countries it rests with the legislative body to grant tax levies. By electing representatives to parliament, therefore, the working-class can exercise an influence over the governmental powers.

[…]

The proletariat is, however, more favorably situated in regard to parliamentary activity.

[…]

The proletariat is, therefore, in a position to form an independent party. It knows how to control its representatives. Moreover, it finds in its own ranks an increasing number of persons well fitted to represent it in legislative halls.

Whenever the proletariat engages in parliamentary activity as a self-conscious class, parliamentarism begins to change its character. It ceases to be a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This very participation of the proletariat proves to be the most effective means of shaking up the hitherto indifferent divisions of the proletariat and giving them hope and confidence. It is the most powerful lever that can be utilized to raise the proletariat out of its economic, social and moral degradation.

The proletariat has, therefore, no reason to distrust parliamentary action; on the other hand, it has every reason to exert all its energy to increase the power of parliaments in their relation to other departments of government and to swell to the utmost its own parliamentary representation.

All of the above – albeit within the context of the lapsing of the Anti-Socialist Laws shortly following the dismissal of the “Iron Chancellor” Bismarck – is an expression of the then-newfound parliamentary reductionism on the part of Kautsky, in part because of his “apocalyptic predestinationist” belief that capitalism would soon collapse because of a crisis either in the here and now or on the horizon, which would “explain away” his revisionist conclusions that no real revolutionary theory was needed and that only a Rabocheye Dyelo-style “economism” (albeit only in the polemical sense) was necessary. For him, the “union of the labor movement and socialism” – the central theme of this thesis – culminated in a mere parliamentarian “Socialist Party”: the social-democratic party. It is unfortunate that his most serious Russian disciple, when he scrambled to “find” the earliest traces of Kautsky’s transformation from the founder of “Marxism” to an anti-proletarian “renegade” – and then committed his “findings” to The State and Revolution – did not find the answers right under his proverbial nose.

On another note, even the word “democracy” in “social democracy” raises serious concerns. First, Kautsky entertained fetishes of “pure” (bourgeois) democracy, hence the aforementioned parliamentary reductionism. Therefore, the question to ask is: “social democracy” for whom? That is, was this “social democracy” for the working class, for the petit-bourgeoisie, or for the bourgeoisie? History has irrevocably answered that question. Second, it would appear that Kautsky, in spite of what he said about educated proletarians, was the intellectual forerunner of modern sectoral chauvinism (the application of the word “proletarian” to only those who work strictly to produce commodities, thus separating them from the rest of the working class) – hence the need for the confused “social democracy” and not the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (which will be revisited upon as a term later in the thesis):

The Socialist movement has, in the nature of things, been from the beginning international in its character. But in each country it has at the same time the tendency to become a national party. That is, it tends to become the representative, not only of the industrial wage-earners, but of all laboring and exploited classes, or, in other words, of the great majority of the population. We have already seen that the industrial proletariat tends to become the only working-class. We have pointed out, also, that the other working-classes are coming more and more to resemble the proletariat in the conditions of labor and way of living. And we have discovered that the proletariat is the only one among the working-classes that grows steadily in energy, in intelligence, and in clear consciousness of its purpose. It is becoming the center about which the disappearing survivals of the other working-classes group themselves. Its ways of feeling and thinking are becoming standard for the whole mass of non-capitalists, no matter what their status may be.

As rapidly as the wage-earners become the leaders of the people, the labor party becomes a people’s party. When an independent craftsman feels like a proletarian, when he recognizes that he, or at any rate his children, will sooner or later be thrust into the proletariat, that there is no salvation for him except through the liberation of the proletariat – from that moment on he will see in the Socialist Party the natural representative of his interests.

We have already explained that he has nothing to fear from a socialist victory. In fact such a victory would be distinctly to his advantage, for it would usher in a society that would free all workers from exploitation and oppression and give them security and prosperity.

But the Socialist Party represents the interests of all non-capitalist classes, not only in the future, but in the present. The proletariat, as the lowest of the exploited strata, cannot free itself from exploitation and oppression without putting an end to all exploitation and oppression. It is, therefore, their sworn enemy, no matter in what form they may appear; it is the champion of all the exploited and oppressed.

Third, this is rather surprisingly the forerunner to Lenin’s historically validated theory of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. The key problem with Kautsky’s formulation here is that it is best applied only during the beginning of the capitalist mode of production in any particular nation-state, and not during towards the end, when a proper socialist revolution occurs.

One can only wonder about the petit-bourgeois and lumpen elements – non-bourgeois classes – who flocked to the fascist causes, as well as wonder about modern “social democracy” (that is, “social democracy” for the bourgeoisie) being the direct result of not orienting the classical “social democracy” in the most advanced bourgeois-capitalist countries to the working class only. Lenin wrote a rather lengthy work attacking populism, titled What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats. Today, it is more apt to comment on what the populist “social-democrats” are – and how they fight the working class!

With regard to parliamentary participation, I would like to make the following points:

1. The powers of the executive branch in bourgeois governments have been growing for many decades, and today most capitalist "democratic" countries have reached the point where parliaments act either as rubber stamps for the policies of majority governments or bargaining chips to be used in the internal power struggle of coalition governments. Only in the case of minority governments do parliaments retain some significant powers, and even then the power is always concentrated in the hands of a handful of opportunists who can either support or oppose the government depending on what will bring them the greatest benefit. There is essentially no difference between a party in opposition and a party outside parliament, except perhaps for the fact that opposition parties get more funding from various sections of the bourgeoisie (which a Marxist party would obviously not receive) and more media attention. Thus the only apparent reason for a Marxist party to enter parliament is the media attention. It may be worth it, but it is certainly a low priority.

2. Under no circumstances should a Marxist party attempt to become the party of government through normal parliamentary channels. Entering parliament in order to become a more high-profile opposition is acceptable. Trying to win a majority of seats is suicidal, for two reasons: (a) The effort to win seats will consume all the party's resources and inevitably become the party's raison d'etre; once that happens, voices within the party will begin to call for Marxist principles to be abandoned for opportunistic reasons, and these calls will get harder and harder to resist. Eventually the party will degenerate into a vote-winning machine. (b) It is extremely unlikely that any party can go from being in opposition to winning a majority of seats in one fell swoop. In the growth of all parties there is always an intermediate phase when the party gets to participate in a coalition government as a junior member. Under normal circumstances, a Marxist party must cease to be Marxist before it can enter a coalition government with bourgeois parties.

1) Comrade, your first point links well with my OI thread on "libertarianism." Over there I spoke of "imperial" executives. I actually read a bourgeois-academic book on the increasingly "presidential" office of "prime ministers." More power is devolved to "chiefs of staff" and advisors within the "prime ministers' offices" at the expense of cabinet ministers.

In the case of minority governments, I think you're a bit too optimistic here. Where I live, the minority government has consistently acted as if it were a majority government, and the Prime Minister's Office still wields its influence.

2) As made explicitly clear in my first post above, I am advocating a COMPLETE abandonment of parliamentary tactics - preferrably for both the pre-party "United Social Labour" mass organization and the ultimate revolutionary mass organization to come out of this, the Social-Proletocratic Party (a must in the case of the latter) - justifying my supposedly "ultra-left" position on this by the development of the media. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of MLK Jr.'s death:

Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-parliamentarianism comes to mind in terms of being able to force the ruling class to accede to minimum demands FROM THE OUTSIDE, especially with the development of Big Media. Then there are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Internet...

Minimum demands (economistic) -> Civil disobedience
Reformist demands (real, genuine reform here) -> Mass/general strikes (Rosa Luxemburg)
Revolutionary demands -> Self-explanatory



3) The only form of "parliamentarianism" that would be acceptable is the kind that would exist in the emerging organs of workers' power themselves, akin to soviets, workplace committees, and non-bourgeois communal councils. This is where the line is drawn between myself and the left-communists (who don't want the Social-Proletocratic Party to take power at all, even after the revolution).

I think your third point is particularly important. One advantage of entering parliament which I forgot to mention in my previous post (separate from the media attention) is the fact that winning seats may give your supporters more hope; it may create the impression that you're achieving something, that you are making progress. This would be an illusion, of course, but the fact remains that it is very easy to lose hope if your party has been out of power for decades and its demands are completely ignored by the ruling class.

It is therefore important to build alternative organs of workers' power not just for the sake of good organization or for post-revolutionary purposes, but also as a concrete reminder that things are changing and your party is making progress after all.