Ernst Rieger on Participation in Elections at the Founding Party Congress of the KPD

Although I have been an opponent of parliamentarism for many years, I hesitated for a while as to whether it would be wise for us to withdraw from the National Assembly and renounce its use for the sake of the revolution. I initially hesitated because I told myself that some of the comrades would certainly not understand that here, where we are not directly dealing with a permanent legislative body, but with a special-purpose parliament whose sole task is to erect the structure of the future society, it might not be understood if we could not be present at this meeting of master carpenters. However, I have abandoned this hesitation by considering that if we participate in the elections to the National Assembly, this decidedly counter-revolutionary disgrace against the instrument of power on which we are willing to build all our strength and future—this counterpart to the council system—then only confusion would be created. A certain intellectual concession to the idea of ​​the National Assembly...1

We must free ourselves from the phrase "democracy" in its traditional, poisonous sense. It is not democracy if we have equal voting rights, but otherwise no equal social rights. Equal rights to enjoyment are far more important than anything else. We must break with this fraud, with parliamentarism in the bourgeois sense, outright. The majority in the workers' councils should become the most visible expression of true democracy. "Useless talk is a fool's delight," said Wilhelm Liebknecht. We must establish contact with the masses outside and force our way in, like the deputation of soldiers' councils in Berlin. We must reject the representative system under all circumstances. We must have the courage to confess the reactionary purposes the National Assembly is intended to serve, namely, to render the workers' councils illusory. Therefore, there can be no pacts with any bourgeois institutions. So remain consistent! Don't be dissuaded, and reject any participation in elections!

• 1This sentence is incomplete in the manuscript.