Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive
Social Democracy and Parliamentarism
Written: June 1904
Source: Sachsische Arbeiter zeitung, June 5-6, 1904
Transcription/Markup: Dario Romeo and Brian Basgen
Online Version: Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000
Once again the Reichstag
has convened under very characteristic circumstances. On the one
hand there are renewed and brazed attacks by the reactionary press
– of the calibre of the Post– against the universal
franchise, and on the other, clear signs of a ‘parliamentary
weariness’ in the bourgeois circles themselves; together with
this, there is the government’s evident intention to defer the
convocation of the Reichstag until shortly before the Christmas
holiday – all this presents a crass picture of a rapid decline
of the supreme German parliament, and of its political
significance. It is now obvious that in the main the Reichstag
convenes only to endorse the budget, a new army bill, new credits
for the colonial war in Africa, the inevitable new naval demands
beckoning in the background, and the trade treaties – nothing
but faits accomplis, the results of the
extra-parliamentary influence of political managers on the
Reichstag which then acts as an automatic rubber stamp to approve
the recovery of the expenses incurred by these extra-parliamentary
political groups. A classic demonstration of the extent to which
the bourgeoisie consciously and devoutly acquiesces in the
deplorable role assigned to its parliament is given in a statement
made by Left-liberal Berlin paper. In view of the exorbitant new
military requisitions, which mean an increase in its size of more
than 10.000 men and in its expenditure of 74 million marks in the
coming quinquennial [one-fifth of a year], and which are
accompanied with the usual threat, field like a pistol on the
Reichstag’s head, to re-introduce the three-year term of
service, this newspapers predicts with a resigned sign that since
the representatives of the people cannot desire [the three-year
term of service], one might as well already regard’ the army
bill ‘as approved’. And this heroic liberal prophecy will be
as outstandingly correct as any account that takes as its
starting-point the disgraceful self-renunciation of the bourgeois
Reichstag majority.
In the fate if the German Reichstag we seen an important
episode in the history of the bourgeois parliamentarism in
general, and it is entirely in the interests of the proletariat to
understand thoroughly its tendencies and inner connections. The
illusion held by a bourgeoisie struggling for power (and even more
by a bourgeoisie in power), namely the its parliament is the
central axis of social life and the driving force of world
history, is not only historically explicable but also
necessary. This is a notion which naturally flowers in the
splendid ‘parliamentary cretinism’ which cannot see beyond
the complacent speechification of a few hundred parliamentary
deputies in a bourgeois legislative chamber, to the gigantic
forces of world history, forces which are at work on the outside,
in the bosom of social development, and which are quite
unconcerned with their parliamentary law-making. However, it is
this very play of the blind elementary forces of social
development toward which the bourgeois classes themselves
unknowingly and unwillingly contribute, which leads to the
inexorable undermining not only of the imagined, but also of the
real significance of bourgeois parliamentarism.
For here – and this can be examined more conclusively in the
fate of the German Reichstag than in any other country – it is
the twofold effect of the international and the domestic
developments which is bringing about the decline of the bourgeois
parliament. On the one hand global politics, which in the past ten
years have become increasingly powerful, are forcing the entire
and economic and social life of the capitalist countries into a
vortex of incalculable, uncontrollable international actions,
conflict and transformations, in which bourgeois parliaments are
tossed about powerlessly like logs in a stormy sea.
On the other hand, the internal development of classes and
parties in capitalist society is paving the way for and bringing
to maturity the pliancy and impotence of the bourgeois parliament
vis-à-vis this destructive clash of global politics, of
militarism, of naval growth, of colonial politics.
Parliamentarism is far from being an absolute product of
democratic development, of the progress of the human species, and
of such nice things. It is, rather, the historically determined
form of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and – what is only
the reverse of this rule – of its struggle against
feudalism. Bourgeois parliamentary will stay alive only so long as
the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the feudalism lasts. If
the stimulating fire of this struggle should go out, then from the
bourgeois standpoint parliamentary would lose its historical
purpose. For the past quarter-century, however, the universal
feature of political development in the capitalistic countries has
been a compromise between the bourgeoisie and feudalism. The
obliteration of the difference between the Whigs and Tories in
England, between the republicans and the clerical-monarchist
nobility in France, is the product and manifestation of this
compromise. In Germany this compromise stunted the growth of the
emancipation of the nascent bourgeois class, choked its
starting-point – the March Revolution – and left German
parliamentarism with the crippled figure of a misfit hovering
constantly between death and life. The Prussian constitutional
conflict was the last time the class struggle of the German
bourgeoisie flared up against the feudal monarchy. Since then, the
foundations of parliamentarism has not been, as in England,
France, Italy and United States, the congruity of popular
representation with governmental power in such a way that the
government is drawn from the current parliamentary
majority. Instead, parliamentarism has been founded on the
opposite method, one which correspond with the special
Prussian-German wretchedness: every bourgeois party that achieves
power in the Reichstag becomes, eo ipso, the governing
party, that is, the instrument of feudal reaction. Consider only
the fate of the National Liberals and the Centre Party.
The perfected feudal-bourgeois compromise has, even from the
historical standpoint, made parliamentarism into a rudiment, an
organ deprived of all function, and, with compelling logic, has
also produced all the streaking features of parliamentary decline
today. So long as the class conflict between the bourgeoisie and
the feudal monarchy lasts, its natural expression is the open
party struggle in parliament. But when the compromise has been
perfected, bourgeois party struggles in parliament are
useless. The conflict of interest among the various groups of the
dominant bourgeois-feudal reaction are no longer settled in
parliamentary trials of strength, but in the form of
string-pulling in the parliamentary back-rooms. What remains of
open bourgeois parliamentary struggles is no longer class and
party conflicts, but at most, in backward countries such as
Austria, brawls between nationalities, i.e. between cliques; their
appropriate parliamentary form is the scuffle, the scandal. The
dying out of bourgeois party struggles also means the
disappearance of their natural adjuncts: the prominent
parliamentary personalities, the famous orators and the powerful
speeches. The battle of speeches is useful as a parliamentary
method only to a fighting party which is seeking popular
support. To give a speech in parliament, essentially, is always to
‘talk through the window’. From the standpoint of the
string-pullers in the back-rooms – whose method is the normal
way of setting conflicts of interest on the basis of the
bourgeois-feudal compromise – speech-making is futile, indeed
it only defeats their purpose. Hence the bourgeois parties’
indignation at ‘to much talking’ in Reichstag; hence the
crippling, exhausted sense of their own uselessness which
encumbers the speech-making campaigns of the bourgeois parties
like a leaden blanket and which transform the Reichstag into a
house of lethal intellectual desolation.
And finally, the bourgeois-feudal compromise has called into
question the cornerstone of parliamentarism – universal
suffrage itself. But from the bourgeois point of view, this too is
significant historically only as a weapon in the struggle between
the two great factions of the propertied classes. The bourgeoisie
needed the universal suffrage in order to lead ‘the people’
into the battle against feudalism. And feudalism needed it to
mobilize the countryside against the industrial city. After the
conflict itself had ended in compromise, and a third force –
neither liberal nor agrarian troops but Social Democracy –
arose from the two attempts, universal suffrage became senseless
from the viewpoint of the ruling bourgeois-feudal interests.
Bourgeois parliamentarism has thus completed the cycle of its
historical development and has arrived at the point of
self-negation. Social Democracy, however, has taken up its post in
the country and in parliament as, simultaneously, the cause and
effect of this fate of the bourgeoisie. If parliamentarism has
lost all significance for capitalist society, it is for the rising
working class one of the most powerful and indispensable means of
carrying on the class struggle. To save bourgeois parliamentarism
from the bourgeoisie and use it against the bourgeoisie is one of
Social Democracy’s most urgent political tasks.
Thus formulated, the task seems to be intrinsically
contradictory. But, says Hegel, ‘contradictions leads to
progress’. The contradictory task of Social Democracy
vis-à-vis parliamentarism gives rise to the party’s duty
of protecting and supporting this ruinous decay of
bourgeois-democratic splendour, a duty which at the same time
accelerates the ultimate decline of the whole bourgeois order and
the seizure of power by the socialist proletariat.
II
In our own ranks one frequently hears the predominant view that
a candid description of the inner decay of bourgeois
parliamentarism and an open and severe criticism of it is a
politically dangerous beginning, since in this way one
disillusions the people in their belief in parliamentarism and
thus facilitates reactionary efforts to undermine universal
suffrage.
The error of such an approach will be immediately obvious to
everyone who is inwardly sympathetic toward and engrossed in
Social Democracy’s ideas. The real interests of Social
Democracy – indeed those of democracy in general – can never
be furthered by concealing the actual relationship from the great
masses of the people. Artful diplomatic dodges might well be of
value here and there for the petty parliamentary chess moves of
bourgeois clique. The great historical movement of Social
Democracy can practise only the most ruthless frankness and
sincerity toward the working masses. After all, Social
Democracy’s real nature, its historical calling, is to impart
to the proletariat a clear consciousness of the social and
political motive forces of bourgeois development, both as a whole
and in all their details.
Especially with regard to parliamentarism, it is absolutely
necessary to recognize as clearly as possible the real causes of
its decline, as they follow from the logic of the bourgeois
development, in order to warn the class-conscious workers against
the destructive illusion that any moderation of Social-Democratic
class struggle could artificially breathe new life into bourgeois
democracy and into the bourgeois opposition in parliament.
We are witness to the most extreme consequences of applying
this method of salvaging parliamentarism in Jaurès’s
ministerial tactics in France. These tactics rest on a twofold
artifice. On the one hand the workers are given the most
exaggerated hopes and illusions regarding the positive
achievements the might expect from parliament in general. The
bourgeois parliament is praised not merely as the competent
instrument of social progress and justice, of the elevation of the
working class, of world peace and of such wondrous things; it is
even represented as the agent competent to realize the ultimate
goal of socialism. Thus all the expectations, all the efforts, all
the attention of the working class, are concentrated on
parliament.
On the other hand, the behavior of the socialist ministers in
parliament itself is directed exclusively at bringing about the
rule of, and keeping alive, the sad and inwardly lifeless remnants
of bourgeois democracy. For this purpose the class conflict
between proletariat and bourgeois-democratic policy is completely
disavowed and socialist opposition abandoned; ultimately the
Jaurès socialists’ own parliamentary tactics resemble
those of the purely bourgeois democrats. These disguised democrats
are distinguishable from the genuine thing only by their socialist
label – and their grater moderation.
More cannot be done, it would seem, toward self-renunciation,
toward sacrificing socialism upon the altar of bourgeois
parliamentarism. And the results?
The disastrous effect of Jaurès’s tactic on the class
movement of the French proletariat is well known: the dissolution
of the labour movement, the confusion of ideas, the demoralization
of the party deputies. But this is not what concerns us here, for
we are interested in the consequences to parliamentarism itself of
the tactics described, and these are fatal in the extreme. Not
only were the policies of the bourgeois democrats, the
republicans, the ‘radicals’, not strengthened and
regenerated, but, on the contrary, these parties lost all the
respect and fear for socialism that had once, as it were,
stiffened their backbones. Much more dangerous, however, is
another symptom which has made its appearance in the recent days:
the increasing disillusionment of the French worker concerning
parliamentarism. The exaggerated illusions of the proletariat, fed
by Jaurès’s phrase-making policy, had to lead to a
violent reaction; and indeed they have led to a situation in which
today a large number of French workers no longer want to know
anything not only of Jaurèsism but also of parliament and
politics in general.
The organ of the young French Marxists, the Mauvement
Socialiste, which is usually so intelligent and useful, has
just published a surprising series of articles preaching a
rejection of parliamentarism in favour of a return to pure trade
unionism, and seeing the ‘true revolutionism’ in the purely
economic struggle of the of the worker. At the same time, one
provincial socialist paper, the Travailleur de
l’Yonne, puts forward an even more original idea when it
explains that for the proletariat, parliamentary action is
completely unproductive and that it corrupts us – which is why
it would be better to forgo the election of socialist deputies
from now on and to send only, say, bourgeois radicals into
parliament.
These then are the beautiful fruits of Jaurès’s
attempts to rescue parliamentarism: an increasing popular aversion
to every parliamentary action and a revision to anarchism –
which, in a word, is the greatest real danger to the existence of
parliament and even of the republic in general.
In Germany, under existing conditions, such deviations in
socialist practice from the basis of the class struggle are of
course unthinkable. However, the extreme consequences of this
tactic in France serve as a clear warning to the entire
international movement of the proletariat that this is not the way
to pursue its task of supporting a declining bourgeois
parliamentarism. The real way is not to conceal and abandon the
proletarian class struggle, but the very reverse: to emphasize
strongly and develop this struggle both within and without
parliament. This includes strengthening the extra-parliamentary
action of the proletariat as well as a certain organization of the
parliamentary action of our deputies.
In direct contrast to the erroneous assumptions on which
Jaurès’s tactics are based, the foundations of
parliamentarism are better and more securely protected in
proportion as our tactics are tailored not to parliament alone,
but also to the direct action of the proletarian masses. The
danger to universal suffrage will be lessened to the degree that
we can make the ruling classes clearly aware that the real power
of Social Democracy by no means rests on the influence of its
deputies in the Reichstag, but that it lies outside, in the people
themselves, ‘in the streets’, and that if the need arise
Social Democracy is able and willing to mobilize the people
directly for the protection of their political rights. This does
not mean that, for example, it is sufficient to keep the general
strike, as it were, at the ready, up our sleeves in order to
believe ourselves equipped for any political eventuality. The
political general strike is surely one of the more important
manifestation of the mass action of the proletariat, and it is
entirely necessary that the German working class accustom itself
to regarding this method (which until now has been tested only in
the Latin countries), without any arrogance or doctrinaire
preconceptions, as one of the forms of the struggle which might
possibly be attempted in Germany. More important, however, is to
organize our agitation and our press in such a general way as to
make the working masses increasingly aware of their own power,
their own action, and not to consider parliamentary struggle as
the central axis of political life.
Very closely connected with this are our tactics in the
Reichstag itself. That which always so facilitates our
deputies’ lustrous campaigns and outstanding role is – and
we must be completely aware of this – the absence in the German
Reichstag of any bourgeois democracy and opposition worthy of the
name. Social Democracy has an easy time of it vis-à-vis the
reactionary majority, since the party is the sole consistent and
reliable advocate of the interests of the people’s prosperity
and of progress in all areas of public life.
This same unique situation, however, give rise to the difficult
task for the Social-Democratic parliamentary party of appearing
not merely as the representative of an oppositional party, but
also as the representative of a revolutionary class. In other
words, the task that arises is not merely to criticize the policy
of the ruling classes from the standpoint of the people’s
present interests, that is, from the standpoint of the existing
society itself, but also to contrast existing society as its every
move with the socialist ideal of society, a ideal which goes
beyond the most progressive bourgeois policy. And if the people
can convince themselves at each Reichstag debate of how much more
intelligently, more progressively, economically more
advantageously the conditions in the present State would be
arranged if the wishes and proposal of Social Democracy were met
each time, then the Reichstag debates should now convince them
more then ever how necessary it is to overthrow the whole order in
order to realize socialism.
Discussing the Italian election in an article in the latest
issue of the Sozialistiche Monatshefte, the leader of the
Italian opportunists, Bissolati, writes, ‘In my opinion, one
indication of the backwardness of political life is when the
struggle between individual parties revolves around basic
tendencies instead of around individual questions which originate
in the reality of daily life and through which these tendencies
can be articulated.’ It is obvious that this typical
opportunistic line of reasoning turns the truth upside down. As
Social Democracy develops and grows stronger, it becomes
increasingly necessary, especially in parliament, that it is not
submerged in individual questions of daily life and thus only
carries on political opposition. Instead, Social Democracy must
stress ever more energetically its ‘basic tendency’: the
endeavour to seize political power with the help of the
proletariat, for the purpose of achieving the socialist
revolution.
The more the fresh and bold agitation of Social Democracy
resound in the Reichstag in extreme dissonance to the
trivial-insipid tone and the dull, business-like mediocrity of all
the bourgeois parties, advocating not only its minimal programme
but also its ultimate socialist goal, then the more will be the
great masses’ respect for the Reichstag increase. And the more
secure will be the guarantee that the masses of the people will
not stand idly by and allow the reaction to snatch this tribune
and the universal suffrage from them.