Fritz Tetens on Participation in Elections at the Founding Party Congress of the KPD

Comrades! We must be clear about the effects that will be produced if we participate in the elections to the National Assembly. Yesterday, we constituted ourselves as a new party. If we decide today to participate in the National Assembly, we will be carrying a stillborn party out of the conference. We must not fall into the same mistakes for which we are fighting the Independents. We must clearly state our goals to the class-conscious proletariat, otherwise we will confuse our own supporters and lose their trust. The National Assembly under the Ebert-Scheidemann protectorate will only drive the state cart further into the ground, just as Kerensky did in Russia, and we must not participate in that. The National Assembly, the playground of the bourgeoisie, will not be able to banish the existing chaos or the food shortage. The chaos will become even greater; the masses, slapped in the face by the National Assembly and currently still unthinking, will come to us because we have pursued a clear-cut policy. Economic anarchy will allow the proletarian revolution to mature of its own accord. Then our time will have come to take the reins, and we must then seek to win the trust of the broadest masses through the immediate implementation of our program. Above all, we must not forget that if we participate in the elections, which would also mean a waste of our energy, we will lose all sympathy among our revolutionary comrades abroad. On the other hand, if we also clearly unfurl our banner, we will strengthen them in their struggle for world revolution. For us, there is only one way to educate the masses for political action, only one goal for which we must devote all our energies: the Soviet Republic.