“The same Strakhov says that it is precisely the Chinese opportunists who aspire to substitute the slogan of the National Assembly for that of soviets. This is possible, probable, even inevitable. It was proved by all the experience of the world labour movement, of the Russian movement in particular, that the opportunists are the first to cling to parliamentary methods, in general to everything which resembles parliamentarism, or even approaches it.” (p 195)
In other words, even when those social conditions change, the actual opportunists continue to emphasis their support for bourgeois-democracy, rather than intensifying their criticism of it, and their activity, in seeking to develop proletarian democracy and self-government, in opposition to it. The opportunists and centrists continue to emphasise strikes and more militancy, the perspective of the next, bigger demo, and so on, rather than emphasising the dead-end that such activity represents.
“The Mensheviks clung to activity in the Duma as against revolutionary activity. The utilization of parliamentary methods inevitably brings up all the dangers connected with parliamentarism: constitutional illusions, legalism, a penchant for compromises, etc. These dangers and maladies can only be combated by a revolutionary course in policies.” (p 195)
Does that mean that, in a revolutionary situation, Marxists refuse to support workers strikes for higher wages, or still seeking an extension of that sham bourgeois-democracy? Of course, not, but, what it does mean is that Marxists, all the more emphasise the dead-end that both represent, and all the more devote their energy and resources to winning workers, practically, to a revolutionary alternative, to switching the workers' consciousness from the track of bourgeois ideology on to that of revolutionary proletarian ideology.
Rather than just demanding higher wages, they demand that workplaces be occupied under workers' control, instituted, along with linking up such workplaces, across society, to expand cooperation and planning; it requires an emphasis on developing factory committees, and soviets, as against advocacy of bourgeois-democracy, and, at a certain point, it means demanding the substitution of the former, and closing down the latter, even if a substantial number of workers still have illusions in it, if that is required to prevent it being used as the centre of a counter-revolutionary assault.
The basis for defending the workers' control, and for advancing the bourgeois-democracy itself, becomes the development of soviets and workers' militia, and workers' direct control in society. This is the fundamental dialectical contradiction at the heart of permanent revolution, and of transitional demands, of the tasks of the bourgeois-revolution, undertaken on the basis of the methods and organs of the proletarian revolution, establishing an inevitable dynamic of transition from the one to the other.
As Lenin pointed out, in 1917, even as the demand for a Constituent Assembly was pursued, it was the soviets, which already exercised power on the streets. It is that, as described in the theory of permanent revolution, that means that the stage of bourgeois-democracy may be short-lived, or stepped over entirely. As Trotsky describes, following the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, in Russia, and the coup of 1907, Lenin was alone, in the Bolsheviks, in advocating participation in the Duma.
“Obviously, Lenin’s “participation” had nothing in common with that of the Mensheviks, as was shown by the whole subsequent march of events; it was not opposed to the revolutionary tasks, but served them for the epoch included between two revolutions.” (p 195-6)
Part of that utilisation was to highlight its corrupted and sham nature, just as, in Britain, today, Marxists expose the corrupt and sham nature of its parliamentary democracy, complete with hereditary monarchy, hereditary and appointed peers, and so on. The same applies with the corrupt and sham democracy of the US, and everywhere else that such bourgeois-democracy exists.
“The right to renounce parliamentarism must be won by uniting the masses around the Party and by leading them to struggle openly for the conquest of power. It is naïve to think that one can simply substitute for this work the mere renunciation of the revolutionary utilization of the contradictory and oppressive methods and forms of parliamentarism. This is the crudest error of the resolution of the Congress, which makes here a flippant ultra-leftist leap.” (p 196)
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