IWG online meeting on state capitalism in the USSR.
DATE
April 22nd, 7 PM EST
WHERE
Online
CONTACT INFO
IG: @iwg.official | Twitter: @IWGOfficial | FB: @iwgusa | Email: us@leftcom.org
We are publishing again the “Theses on Parliamentarism”. We first published these in 1976 in Revolutionary Perspectives 3 [old series] which has for many years been out of print. We consider it timely to republish these theses for two principal reasons. The first is that the use of democracy as a weapon against the working class and in particular against independent class politics has become stronger in the last two decades. The second is the use of bourgeois democracy as a weapon in the armoury of US imperialism in its struggle to control the oil supplies of the Middle East and the territories of the former Soviet Union.
The Theses were drawn up by Bordiga who represented the minority position of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) on this issue. The original motivation was to get rid of the corrupt parliamentary faction of Turati and Modigliani, and so to enable a communist party to be formed. The theses were presented at the Second Congress of the Third International (Comintern). Although other left communists like the German KAPD and the Pankhurst group in Britain supported these theses the majority did not. The majority which included Lenin and Trotsky supported “revolutionary parliamentarism” or using parliament as a tribune to denounce capitalism. They did not support using parliament as a lever of revolutionary change. The Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) was formed by the Communist (Abstentionist) Fraction of the PSI in 1921 but accepted the majority position of the Comintern in the interests of international unity. PCd’I candidates thus stood in elections in 1923 but the Fascist abolition of parliament after 1925 made this issue academic at a time when the Communist Left was already questioning other policies of the degenerating Comintern (e.g. the united front with the PSI). We consider the theses are more relevant today than when they were first published and that today the possibility of using parliament, even as a tribune to popularise revolution, has disappeared.
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IWG online meeting on state capitalism in the USSR.
DATE
April 22nd, 7 PM EST
WHERE
Online
CONTACT INFO
IG: @iwg.official | Twitter: @IWGOfficial | FB: @iwgusa | Email: us@leftcom.org
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.