Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder/Appendix 4
APPENDIX IV.
INCORRECT CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM CORRECT PREMISES.
Yet Comrade Bordiga and his "Left" friends draw from their correct criticism of Messrs. Turati and Co. the wrong conclusion that Parliamentary participation is harmful generally. The Italian "Left" are incapable of bringing forward even a shadow of serious argument in support of this view. They do not know (or they are trying to forget), the international instances of actual revolutionary and Communist utilisation of the bourgeois parliament—a utilization which is essential for the proletarian revolution. They simply fail to concieve the new tactics and, repeating themselves endlessly, they keep up the cry regarding the old non-Bolshevik utilization of parliamentarism.
This is their cardinal mistake. Communism must introduce its new method, not only into parliament, but in every sphere of activity. The aim of this new method is, whilst retaining and developing all that is good in the Second International, radically to break with the traditions of that International; but without long and persistent labor this cannot be effected.
As an instance, let us take the Press. Newspapers, brochures, proclamations fulfill a necessary work of propaganda, agitation, and organization. Without a journalistic apparatus, no single mass movement can go on in a more or less civilized country. And, to carry on the work of the Press, it is absolutely necessary to employ the services of men from the bourgeois-intellectual class. No outcry against leaders, no kind of pledge or promise to preserve the purity of the masses from their influence, can abolish this necessity, can abolish the bourgeois democratic setting and atmosphere of property in which this work is being carried on under capitalism. Even two and a half years after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the acquirement of political power by the proletariat, we still see around us this atmosphere of mass (peasant and craftsmen), bourgeois-democratic, property relations.
Parliamentarism is one form of activity, journalism is another. Both can be Communist and should be communist, when the active workers in either sphere are really communists, are really members of the proletarian mass party. Yet in one as well as in the other (and, for the matter of that, in any sphere of activity), under the system of capitalism and during the transition period from capitalism to Socialism, it is impossible to avoid those difficulties which are inherent in their present organization. It is for the proletariat to solve the problem of utilizing for its own ends its assistants, press or political, of a bourgeois turn of mind; of gaining a victory over the bourgeois intellectual prejudices and influences; of weakening and, ultimately, of completing the transformation of the petit-bourgeois atmosphere.
Have we not all been witnesses of an abundance of instances, in all countries prior to the war of 1914–1918, of extreme "Left" Anarchists, Syndicalists, and others denouncing parliamentarism, and deriding parliamentary Socialists who became middle-class, flaying them as place-seekers and so forth, and yet themselves making the same kind of bourgeois career through the Press and through syndicalist trade union activity? To quote only France, are not the examples of Messrs. Jouhaux and Merrheim typical enough?
That is why the "repudiation" of participation in Parliament is mere childishness. Those who would boycott Parliament think it possible to "solve," by such a "simple" and "easy," alleged revolutionary, method, the difficult problem of the struggle against bourgeois democratic influences within the labor movement. In reality they are fleeing from their own shadow, they are closing their eyes to difficulties, and satisfying themselves with mere words. And there is no doubt whatever that capitalism universally generates, not only outside the labor movement, but also within it, certain prevailing characteristic traits, such as shameless place-hunting, a bourgeois readiness to accept soft jobs in the Government, a glaring reformist corruption in parliamentary activity, despicable middle-class routine. But this capitalist and bourgeois atmosphere disappears but slowly even after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie (owing to the fact that the latter is constantly reborn from the peasantry), and the same atmosphere tends to permeate every sphere of activity and life, still reappearing in the form of place-hunting, national chauvinism and middle-classness of outlook and attitude, etc.
To yourselves, dear boycottists and anti-parliamentarians, you seem to be "terribly revolutionary," but in reality you are intimidated by comparatively small difficulties in the struggle against bourgeois influences within the labor movement, when actually your victory—i.e., the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the conquest of the political power by the proletariat, will create these very difficulties on an infinitely larger scale. Like children, you have become frightened of a difficulty which confronts you to-day, failing to understand that, to-morrow and the day after, you will have to learn to overcome the same kind of difficulties, but on a far larger scale.
Under the Soviet form of government, both our and your parties are invaded by an ever-growing number of bourgeois intellectuals. They will find their way into the Soviets, and into the courts of law, and into every sphere of administration, as it is impossible to build up Communism otherwise than out of the human material created by capitalism. Since it is impossible to expel and to destroy the bourgeois intelligentsia, it becomes indispensable to conquer this intelligentsia, to change, to re-train and to re-educate it, just as it is necessary to re-educate, in the process of a long struggle, the proletariat itself, on the basis of proletarian dictatorship. The proletariat cannot abolish its own petit-bourgeois prejudices at one miraculous stroke; this can be accomplished neither by the command of the Virgin Mary, nor by any slogan, resolution, or decree, but only by dint of a long and difficult mass struggle against petit-bourgeois influence. The same problems which at the present time the anti-parliamentarians brush aside with one hand so proudly, so loftily, so lightly, so childishly, will, under the Soviet system of government, arise within the very Soviets themselves, within the Soviet administration, with the Soviet "legal defenders." We have done well to abolish in Russia the bourgeois law fraternity, but it is reviving here under the cover of Soviet "legal defenders." In the case of the Soviet engineers, the Soviet teachers, and the privileged (i.e., the better skilled and better paid) working men at the Soviet factories, we observe a constant revival of absolutely all the negative traits peculiar to the bourgeois parliamentarism. It is only by dint of constant, untiring, long and stubborn struggle of proletarian organization and discipline that we can gradually conquer this evil.
True enough, under bourgeois domination it is most "difficult" to conquer bourgeois habits in one's own party—i.e., the labor party; it is "difficult" to expel from the party the accustomed parliamentary leaders who are hopelessly corrupt with bourgeois prejudices; it is "difficult" to subject the absolutely necessary even if limited, number, of bourgeois intellectuals to proletarian discipline; it is "difficult" to form, in the bourgeois parliament, a Communist Group worthy of the working class; it is "difficult" to ensure that the Communist parliamentarians do not engage in the bourgeois parliamentary game of wire-pulling, but take up the necessary and actual work of agitation, propaganda and organization of the masses. All this is most "difficult," there is no doubt about it; it was a difficult thing in Russia, and it is a still more difficult thing in Western Europe and in America, where the bourgeoisie is far stronger, and where bourgeois democratic traditions, and so forth, are more hide-bound.
"Yet all these "difficulties" are playthings in comparison with the same kind of problems with which the proletarians will inevitably be confronted just the same, and which it will be obliged to solve for the sake of its victory, both during the revolution and after the conquest of power by the proletariat. During the period of proletarian dictatorship it will become necessary to re-educate millions of peasants and small-owners of property; hundreds of thousands of employees, of officials, and of bourgeois intellectuals; it will become necessary to subject them all to the proletarian State and to proletarian leadership, to suppress and conquer in them their bourgeois habits and traditions. In comparison with these truly gigantic problems, it becomes a childishly easy matter to establish, under the bourgeois dictatorship and in the bourgeois parliament, a real Communist Group of a real proletarian party.
If our "Left" comrades and anti-parliamentarians fail now to learn to overcome even such small difficulties, we man assert with confidence that they will prove incapable of realizing proletarian dictatorship, of dealing on a large scale with the problem of changing the bourgeois intellectuals and the bourgeois institutions. Alternatively, they will have to complete their education in a hurry; and his haste will render great harm to the cause of the proletariat, and will cause it to commit more errors than usual; and to manifest more weakness and inefficiency than usual.
So long as the bourgeoisie is not overthrown, and, subsequently, until small economy and small production have utterly disappeared—the bourgeois atmosphere, proprietary habits, middle-class traditions, will impair the proletarian work from without as well as from within the labor movement; not only in one sphere of parliamentary activity, but unavoidably in each and every sphere of social activity, in each and every branch of politics, culture and life, this bourgeois atmosphere will manifest itself. The attempt to brush aside, to do away with, one of the "unpleasant" problems or difficulties in one field of activity, is a profound mistake and one which will have to be paid for dearly. It is necessary to learn and to master every sphere of activity and work without exception, to overcome all difficulties and all bourgeois habits, customs, and traditions. To put the question in any other form is to refuse to treat it seriously, and is mere childishness.
May 12, 1920