Rosi Wolfstein on Participation in Elections at the Founding Party Congress of the KPD

I readily admit that the arguments of the speakers who spoke out against participation were misguided and went far beyond the intended purpose. The comrades have also in some cases accused us, who are against participation, of something that is not true. Comrade Luxemburg, when she says that the radicals who are in favor of rejecting the National Assembly elections are making things easy for themselves, does us an injustice. We did not decide to do it out of laziness, but because, if we were to reckon with the possibility at all that our representatives should go, we see it as a much easier skirmish than what we want to fight out. We are of the opinion that what will not be evident in the number of votes on January 19th will be summoned beforehand. Liebknecht says that positive work must be done. We have already issued the slogan: through economic uprising, the current government must be nipped in the bud, so that it either withdraws the deadline or is overthrown, and that events accelerate this, as we all wish. We do not intend to remain passive or complacent. We know full well that our tactics are far more intensive than participating in the elections to the National Assembly. The question is being asked what should be done. The comrades in Düsseldorf expressed this in a resolution that coincides with Comrade Rühle's resolution. Furthermore, we intend to convene our own assembly to address this issue. We must go to the opposing assemblies, to the USP and the Scheidemanns, and there we will force our voices to be heard in the discussion and explain what the National Assembly is all about—that it is really nothing more than the gathering of the counter-revolution. We will refuse to send anyone there to legalize this groundwork. The comrades at the Central Committee also tried to portray participation in the elections as lower than it actually is. I know that the USP has already caused confusion with its mixed attitude toward the National Assembly, first postponing it for years and then participating on January 19th. We, who have spoken out against this parliamentarism, cannot now also make a small zigzag by saying we want to go anyway. The article of December 23rd caused enormous resentment among the workers.1

Then I would like to cite two more reasons for opposing the National Assembly: 1. Through the wartime elections and the workers' councils, we have seen that the radical, determined elements have an aversion to any election in which the bourgeoisie can still vote. The fact that our representatives receive so few votes does not mean that we have so few supporters. The disappointment among the enlightened workers about what a National Assembly has brought to the Russian comrades and about the worthlessness of a parliament is so great that we cannot get them to participate in the election work, whereas we can now have them for the work of mobilizing the economic forces, not to fight in parliament through mass strikes, but to blow it up with such arguments. A second argument is that by joining forces with the communists, who are absolutely against participation in elections, we immediately come into conflict with them. We do not want to subject our young association to such a test. (Loud applause)

• 1This refers to the leading article in the Rote Fahne , No. 38 of 23 December 1918, The Elections to the National Assembly , written by Rosa Luxemburg.