V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v41; en:CW/CW31;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

The Austrian Communist Party decided to boycott the elections to the bourgeois-democratic parliament. The recently concluded Second Congress of the Communist International recognised as correct the tactic of Communists participating in elections to bourgeois parliaments and in the parliaments themselves.

I have no doubt, on the basis of reports from delegates of the Austrian Communist Party, that it will place the decision of the Communist International above the decision of one of the parties. There is also hardly any doubt that the Austrian Social-Democrats, those traitors to socialism who have gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie, will gloat over the decision of the Communist International, which differed from the boycott decision of the Austrian Communist Party. But the class-conscious workers will, of course, pay no attention to the gloating of such gentry as the Austrian Social-Democrats, the comrades of Scheidemanns and Noskes, Alberts Thomas and Gomperses. The servility to the bourgeoisie of the Renners has sufficiently revealed itself, and in all countries the indignation of the workers against the heroes of the Second, or Yellow, International is growing and spreading more and more.

First page of the newspaper *Die Rote Fahne* No. 396, August 31, 1920, with V. I. Lenin’s letter to the Austrian Communists (Reduced)

The gentlemen of the Austrian Social-Democrats in the bourgeois parliament, as in all fields of their “work”, right up to their own press, behave like petty-bourgeois democrats, capable only of characterless wavering while being in complete factual dependence on the class of capitalists. We Communists go into the bourgeois parliament in order to expose deception from this tribune as well, of a thoroughly rotten capitalist institution in which the workers and working people are deceived.

One argument of the Austrian Communists against participation in the bourgeois parliament deserves somewhat more careful consideration. This argument is as follows:

“The parliament has significance for Communists only as a tribune for agitation. In Austria we have a Council of Workers’ Deputies as a tribune for agitation. Therefore we refuse to participate in elections to the bourgeois parliament. In Germany there is no Council of Workers’ Deputies that could be taken seriously. Therefore the German Communists follow a different tactic.”

I consider this argument incorrect. As long as we are not yet strong enough to disperse the bourgeois parliament, we must work against it both from without and from within. As long as any considerable number of working people—not only proletarians but also semi-proletarians and small peasants—still trust the bourgeois-democratic instruments for deceiving the workers by the bourgeoisie, we must expose the deception precisely from that tribune which the backward strata of workers and especially the non-proletarian working masses consider the most important, the most authoritative.

As long as we Communists are not yet able to take state power and conduct elections only by the working people of their Soviets against the bourgeoisie, as long as the bourgeoisie still disposes of state power, summoning different classes of the population to elections, we are obliged to participate in the elections for agitation among all working people, not only the proletarians. As long as in the bourgeois parliament the workers are deceived, covering up financial swindles and all kinds of bribery with phrases about “democracy” (nowhere is bribery of a particularly “subtle” kind in relation to writers, deputies, lawyers, etc., carried out by the bourgeoisie so widely as in the bourgeois parliament),—so long must we Communists, precisely in this institution, which supposedly expresses the will of the people but in reality covers up the deception of the people by the rich, steadily expose the deception, expose every single case of the Renners and Co. going over to the side of the capitalists against the workers. The relations between bourgeois parties and factions most often reveal themselves precisely in parliament and reflect the relations between all classes of bourgeois society. Therefore, precisely in the bourgeois parliament, from within it, we Communists must explain to the people the truth about the relation of classes to parties, about the relation of landowners to farm labourers, rich peasants to the poorest peasantry, big capital to employees and small proprietors, etc.

All this the proletariat must know in order to learn to understand all the vile and subtle machinations of capital, in order to learn to influence the petty-bourgeois masses, the non-proletarian working masses. Without this “science” the proletariat cannot successfully cope with the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for even then the bourgeoisie from its new position (the position of the overthrown class) will continue its policy of fooling the peasants, bribing and intimidating employees, covering up its selfish and dirty aspirations with phrases about “democracy” in other forms, in other fields.

No. The Austrian Communists will not be frightened by the gloating of the Renners and similar lackeys of the bourgeoisie. The Austrian Communists will not be afraid to come out openly and directly with the recognition of international proletarian discipline. We are proud that we decide the great questions of the workers’ struggle for their emancipation by submitting to the international discipline of the revolutionary proletariat, taking into account the experience of the workers of different countries, reckoning with their knowledge, with their will, thus carrying out in practice (and not in words, like the Renners, Fritz Adlers and Otto Bauers) the unity of the class struggle of the workers for communism throughout the world.

August 15, 1920.