10.04.1997

No illusions in parliament

Wilhelm Liebknecht, the great German working class leader and contemporary of Marx and Engels, delivered this speech on May 31 1869 to a workingmen’s association meeting in Berlin

He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for his pains. In the same year he co-founded the German SDP with August Bebel and between 1879 and 1892 he was a deputy in the Reichstag. Although some of his arguments may have been flawed and circumstances were very much different from those of Britain today, Liebknecht clearly sets out the principle of revolutionary participation in bourgeois elections and the tactical use of elections and parliaments:

Since it was made impossible for me to take the floor at all during the Reichstag in this session, it is doubly pleasing to me now to be given this opportunity to present my social-political point of view.

The new society is in irreconcilable contradiction with the ancient state. This new society cannot develop in the feudal state, in the police state, in the military state. Anyone desiring the new society must aim above all things the destruction of the ancient state ...

The so-called ‘Prussian constitution struggle’ was an attempt on the part of the people, particularly of the bourgeoisie, to attain state power by means of parliamentary methods. The year 1866 lowered the parliamentary struggle to the status of a feat of stage prestidigitation, and transferred the true theatre of war to another field. The North German ‘Reichstag’ has absolutely no power in spite of universal suffrage; it has not a decisive vote; and, being powerless, it cannot be used by the democracy as a battlefield for the attainment of power.

... I shall now discuss the question: is it the duty of the democracy to send delegates to the Reichstag at all? The question of whether we shall vote or not, once universal suffrage has been attained, is merely a question of expediency, not a question of principle. We have a right to vote - the fact that this right has been refused does not deprive us of our natural right - and if there is any advantage to be gained thereby, let us vote.

It is from this point of view that we in Saxony judged the matter when the Reichstag was convoked. Some of us were opposed to the elections on grounds of expediency; others were in favour of the elections. It was pointed out by those who opposed the elections that elections merely emphasised the utter lack of rights on the part of the people; those in favour of the elections said that if the democracy should abstain from them, their opponents would have sole possession of the speaker’s platform, would have the sole right to be heard, and could thus more readily confuse the people’s sense of justice.

This consideration was triumphant - we decided to take part in the elections. My personal view was that the representatives elected by us should simply enter the Reichstag, deliver their protest, and then march right out again, without however resigning their mandates. This view of mine remained that of the minority; it was decided that the representatives of the democracy should make use of every opportunity that seemed practical, to make felt in the Reichstag their standpoint of negation and protest, but that they should refrain from taking part in the actual parliamentary transactions, because this would be equivalent to a recognition of the North German Alliance and the Bismarckian policy, and could only deceive the people with regard to the fact that the struggle in the Reichstag is merely a sham struggle, merely a comedy. This is the line we actually followed in the first and second sessions of the Reichstag.

In the study of the Gewerbeordnung [industry order], which constituted the principle subject of the present session, some of my party comrades considered it necessary, in the interests of the workers and for purposes of propaganda, to make an exception; I was opposed to this step. The Social Democratic Party must not, under any circumstances, or in any field, engage in transactions with its opponents. We can only transact business where there is a common basis. To do business with those who are your opponents in principle is equivalent to a sacrifice of principle. He who parliamentarises with the enemy is fencing in the air; he who parliamentarises compromises.

Ferdinand Lassalle ... condemned the procedure of the Progressive Party most emphatically and predicted the consequences of such action.¹ He advised the delegates to retire from the parliamentary scene and to lay down their mandates. Unfortunately however he did not go so far as to demand that they refuse to vote the budget, which in his day was the only means - and a sure means - of forcing the government into a corner. But, however this may be, Lassalle nevertheless did succeed in exposing the erroneous and distressing consequences of parliamentary eloquence for the sake of eloquence.

If the Social Democracy now commits the same error as the Progressive Party committed six years ago, the same cause will inevitably produce the same effect. But, altogether apart from the matter of a political point of view only, a participation by our party in the parliamentary debates cannot have the slightest practical result.

No one will pretend to say that there is any possibility, in view of the composition of the Reichstag, of presenting motions that are important in principle from our point of view; I think you will concede this at the outset.

‘But,’ one of you may say, ‘we have the best opportunity in the Reichstag to expound the principles of the Social Democracy.’ No doubt we have an opportunity, but I very much doubt whether it is the best opportunity or even a good one.

Do you believe that the Reichstag will permit us to use its speaker’s platform as a pulpit? ...

There is no possibility of our having an influence on legislation, as I have just said; then tell me, in heaven’s name, what would be the use of a presentation of our principles in the Reichstag? Do you think you would convert the members of the Reichstag? Merely to think of such a possibility would be more than childish: it would be infantile ...

Men like Braun and his followers know very well what we are after. As far as they are concerned, who now constitute almost the entire membership of the Reichstag, socialism is now no longer a question of theory, but a question of power, a question of the type of those that are fought out not in parliaments, but in the streets, on the battlefield, like any other question of power.

‘Yes, indeed, we do not have in mind any influencing of the Reichstag itself; all that we desire is to use the speaker’s platform of the Reichstag for the purpose of addressing the people on the outside.’

So far, so good. Even I have made use of the speaker’s platform of the Reichstag in my day for this purpose and shall again make use of it in due time. But is this the best place for such theoretical discussions? It is forbidden to read one’s speech in the Reichstag, and you will all agree with me that even the most skilled orator - even assuming a condition not present in the Reichstag: namely, that he is given silence and attention - would not be capable of delivering a piece of learned criticism from memory and dictating it in as good a form to the stenographer as he could write it at home, seated at his desk.

‘But he would be able to state many things in the Reichstag which he would not be permitted to state elsewhere.’

That is untrue. It is true that I can make attacks on the present political order of things that would not pass unpunished in any other meeting anywhere in Prussia, but as far as social matters are concerned, particularly from the point of view of theory, there is nothing that cannot be said elsewhere with just as great impunity as in the Reichstag. And why should we fear to take up the struggle with the laws? The fact is that far more revolutionary things are being written and spoken in Prussia every day than can be found in all the speeches on social questions that have ever been heard in the Reichstag.

... Even if we had smuggled important truths into the Reichstag, we should still be left with no other means for smuggling them out of the Reichstag among the people again, except the official stenographic report, which is entirely inaccessible to the masses however, because of its volume and price.

All that the workers learn of the debates concerning the social question is given them through the labour papers, and all that these papers print in the form of parliamentary reports could be far better published - and in much more careful elaboration - in the form of independent articles and essays ...

Therefore, what is the ‘practical’ value of making speeches in the Reichstag?

... There is not a single advantage. Now, on the other side, for the disadvantages: principle has been sacrificed; serious political struggle has been lowered to the plane of parliamentary bickering; the people have been deluded into thinking that the Bismarckian Reichstag has been installed for the purpose of solving the social question - and yet you ask us to parliamentarise for ‘practical reasons’. Only a traitor or a blind man could make such a proposal.

That which is correct in principle is always the best practical resort also. Fidelity to principle is the best politics.

I do not mean to say in this statement that the parliamentary struggle must always and under all circumstances be rejected. In periods of chronic enervation, in which the blood flows sluggishly through the channels of the body politic, in which the downcast spirit of the nation can perceive no salvation ahead for decades to come, in such periods it may be of value to keep alive a little lamp of liberty in some parliament or other, which may shed its bright light in the midst of the surrounding darkness.

And when the people, when the ‘battalions of workers’ stand armed and accoutred at the gates of parliament, perhaps on such occasions a word flung from the speaker’s platform may have a kindling effect, may give the signal for the liberating deed like an electric spark.

But - thank god - we are now no longer in a period of chronic passivity and, I regret to say, we are not yet at the eve of a revolutionary act about to issue forth from the inmost heart of the people.

To be sure, universal suffrage is a general privilege of the entire people, a fundamental condition of the democratic state. But when isolated, when detached from the liberty of citizens, when unsupported by freedom of the press and freedom of associations, when subjected to the domination of the sword of the soldiers - in a word in the absolutist state - universal suffrage can be nothing more nor less than a plaything of absolutism ...

It may be asserted with safety that no delegate can be elected in Prussia to the Reichstag if the government is seriously opposed to his candidacy ...

The government will confiscate the newspapers that advocate his election - it will do so legally; it will confiscate his election handbills - also legally; it will arrest the candidate’s campaign managers - quite legally; it will arrest the candidate himself - also legally ...

But let us assume that the government ... makes no use of its powers, and that it becomes possible, as some socialist statesmen of imagination still dream, to elect a Social Democratic majority in the Reichstag - what would the majority proceed to do? Hic Rhodus, hic salta! Now is the moment for transforming society and the state. The majority will adopt a world-historic decision; the new era is born. Don’t you believe it! A company of soldiers will eject the Social Democratic majority from its stronghold, and if these gentlemen make any objection to this procedure, a few policemen will take them to police headquarters and there they will have time enough to ponder the consequences of their Quixotic aspirations.

Revolutions are not made by getting the permission of the high powers that are in authority; the socialist ideal cannot be achieved within the frame of the present-day state; it must overthrow the state in order to secure the possibility of life.

No peace with the present-day state! Away with the worship of universal and direct suffrage!

Let us take part with all our energy, as we have done thus far, in the elections; but let us use the elections only as a means of agitation. And let us not neglect to point out that the ballot box can never be the cradle of the democratic state. Universal suffrage will not attain its decisive and final influence on state and society until the police and soldier state has definitely been eliminated.

1. Lassalle was one of the founders of the organised German labour movement. The Progressive Party was a liberal party founded in Prussia in 1861↩︎