Some Leninists have been debating recently whether participating in elections and parliament is ‘reformism’. Leaving aside that their aim is not the same as ours (they stand for state capitalism while we stand for socialism), this raises the more general question of the best way to pursue a given aim whatever that aim might be – gradualism, elections, outside pressure, whole hog-ism. It’s the same question that the German Greens faced (before they became completely reformist) when they had their debate some years ago between ‘realos’ and ‘fundis’.
The April issue of Frontline, ‘the central organ of the Front Line Socialist Party’, a Maoist party in Sri Lanka, had an article entitled ‘Elections: Leftwing extremism or petty bourgeois reformism?’ arising out of recent elections there. It states:
‘There is a growing tendency in left circles in Lanka to reject all forms of bourgeois elections. The main argument raised by these elements is that a proletarian party will definitely fall into reformism by participating in elections … According to these extremist elements, struggles for reforms cannot be separated from reformism.’
The article sets out to refute this view by citing Lenin’s attack on anti-parliamentarism in his 1920 pamphlet Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. That carries no weight with us but it is interesting is that some should be thinking about the relationship between elections, parliament and reforms and how to avoid sliding into reformism – the same debate that took place within the pre-WW1 international Social Democratic movement, from which we emerged, in which we took up a distinctive position.
Frontline’s ‘extremist elements’ are arguing that if a party struggles for reforms through elections and parliament it will end up as reformist by coming to concentrate on pursuing reforms within the system at the expense of the aim of replacing the system as a whole. They are right and they are wrong. Right that getting elected to parliament on the basis of a programme of reforms to capitalism will tend to lead (and historically has led) to a party that does this going reformist. But wrong in saying that the way to avoid this is not to participate in elections at all.
There is another option – to participate in elections on a straight socialist programme of ending capitalism rather than on a programme of reforms to it. This is the position we adopted in the pre-WW1 debate and which we maintain today in the face of criticism from anarchists (who claim that ‘direct action’ is the best way to get reforms) and other anti-parliamentarists (who favour armed insurrection as the only way to win control of political power).
Rejecting reformism – as the policy of try to reform capitalism gradually into socialism – is not the same as rejecting reforms that genuinely improve conditions for workers to the extent that this is possible. It is just not directly campaigning for them.
Another part of the position we worked out on this question was about what a minority of Socialist MPs should do. Our answer was that they should use parliament as a platform from which to denounce capitalism and advocate socialism but that they should not themselves propose any reforms. However, if others propose one, to judge the proposal on its merits, i.e. on whether it would benefit workers or favour the advance of the socialist movement.
Here is a description of how one group of pre-WW1 Social Democrats behaved in parliament:
‘They spoke from the floor, introduced exposes about the conditions of the working class, demanded answers from various government ministers about why things weren’t being done better or differently, and participated in committees. But they did not work on legislation or pass laws. On almost all the bills that came before the Duma, they abstained from the vote. When occasionally a law was introduced that would have a certain benefit for the working class, they would vote for it.’
Actually it is the position said to have to have been the policy adopted by the six members of the Bolshevik section of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in the Tsarist parliament in 1912-14, as described in Lenin as Election Campaign Manager (published by the American Trotskyist party, the SWP, which has nothing to do with the British one of the same name).
We are neither Leninists nor admirers of the Bolsheviks but this is not too different from how we would envisage a minority of Socialist MPs acting.
ALB
The April issue of Frontline, ‘the central organ of the Front Line Socialist Party’, a Maoist party in Sri Lanka, had an article entitled ‘Elections: Leftwing extremism or petty bourgeois reformism?’ arising out of recent elections there. It states:
‘There is a growing tendency in left circles in Lanka to reject all forms of bourgeois elections. The main argument raised by these elements is that a proletarian party will definitely fall into reformism by participating in elections … According to these extremist elements, struggles for reforms cannot be separated from reformism.’
The article sets out to refute this view by citing Lenin’s attack on anti-parliamentarism in his 1920 pamphlet Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. That carries no weight with us but it is interesting is that some should be thinking about the relationship between elections, parliament and reforms and how to avoid sliding into reformism – the same debate that took place within the pre-WW1 international Social Democratic movement, from which we emerged, in which we took up a distinctive position.
Frontline’s ‘extremist elements’ are arguing that if a party struggles for reforms through elections and parliament it will end up as reformist by coming to concentrate on pursuing reforms within the system at the expense of the aim of replacing the system as a whole. They are right and they are wrong. Right that getting elected to parliament on the basis of a programme of reforms to capitalism will tend to lead (and historically has led) to a party that does this going reformist. But wrong in saying that the way to avoid this is not to participate in elections at all.
There is another option – to participate in elections on a straight socialist programme of ending capitalism rather than on a programme of reforms to it. This is the position we adopted in the pre-WW1 debate and which we maintain today in the face of criticism from anarchists (who claim that ‘direct action’ is the best way to get reforms) and other anti-parliamentarists (who favour armed insurrection as the only way to win control of political power).
Rejecting reformism – as the policy of try to reform capitalism gradually into socialism – is not the same as rejecting reforms that genuinely improve conditions for workers to the extent that this is possible. It is just not directly campaigning for them.
Another part of the position we worked out on this question was about what a minority of Socialist MPs should do. Our answer was that they should use parliament as a platform from which to denounce capitalism and advocate socialism but that they should not themselves propose any reforms. However, if others propose one, to judge the proposal on its merits, i.e. on whether it would benefit workers or favour the advance of the socialist movement.
Here is a description of how one group of pre-WW1 Social Democrats behaved in parliament:
‘They spoke from the floor, introduced exposes about the conditions of the working class, demanded answers from various government ministers about why things weren’t being done better or differently, and participated in committees. But they did not work on legislation or pass laws. On almost all the bills that came before the Duma, they abstained from the vote. When occasionally a law was introduced that would have a certain benefit for the working class, they would vote for it.’
Actually it is the position said to have to have been the policy adopted by the six members of the Bolshevik section of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in the Tsarist parliament in 1912-14, as described in Lenin as Election Campaign Manager (published by the American Trotskyist party, the SWP, which has nothing to do with the British one of the same name).
We are neither Leninists nor admirers of the Bolsheviks but this is not too different from how we would envisage a minority of Socialist MPs acting.
ALB
1 comment:
I agree with your position. If a socialist is elected, that socialist should look at reforms on the basis of whether they get some of the wealth or some of the labour time back to the control of workers and support it while making clear that that is why they are supporting said reforms. Further, I think it is incumbent on all elected socialists to push for shorter work time and more bargaining power for workers who negotiate the price of their skills with their employers.
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