Bolshevism and Democracy (1918) - Anton Pannekoek

The question of democracy has now become the big discussion of the reorganisation of Germany.

The provisional government is doing everything against the new revolutionary power of the working masses. In that, the whole spiritual heritage of the old Social Democratic Party is coming to their aid. With their old doctrines, which they have hammered into the heads of the masses, they hope to keep the less conscious workers pacified. In contrast to that, the revolutionary theoretical leaders of the proletariat can base themselves on the experience of the past few years. And these experiences mainly concern themselves with democracy.

What does democracy mean and what is its intention? The governing of the people (Volk - K.V.). The people should govern themselves, instead of being ruled by others. Their affairs should be dealt with through their own initiative.

From this sentence alone, it is clear that this has no ties to reality and that the discussion concerns itself with insubstantial terms. Because a people cannot rule over their own affairs, such a people doesn’t exist. The people themselves are split into classes, workers and explorers, and this split provides a sharp contrast and contradictions which cannot be resolved through mutual rule. Workers and exploiters have, if, then only very few common affairs, interests and concerns. They therefore cannot have a universal will. And if a complete, strict and radical democracy such as named above did exist, where the workers and the bourgeoisie are accurately represented in the parliament relative to their amount in the actual population, how could they rule together?

What could they do other than produce conflict and paralyse their own work?

When we speak of the people (Volk - K.V.), we mean the popular masses instead of the propertied minority. This people, the poor, working people, the proletarian class, they should rule themselves. This same class forms the mass, the majority, therefore, their interest must be ruler of everything occurring within society.

It should not simply be a majority, while ten percent of bourgeois interests are still recognised. This is as impossible as the concept of reformism, where hope remained for the recognition of working class interest while capitalism was actually the sole ruler. The interest of the proletarian mass should rule alone. Of two contradictory political interests, only one can be pursued.

Earlier, we also criticised the general right to vote. We said: the people are not the same, so their respective votes shouldn’t be considered as such. A person, who only lives off of their capital and does not work, who only represents a parasite, an insect leeching off of the body of society, should not have the same right of opinion as a worker, who, through his work, holds society together in the first place. This reason was surely an ethical one. Now, we can say it even more clearly: the intention of our political goals, the now necessary work towards a socialist construction of society, is so foreign to bourgeois interest that it does everything in its might to stop and manipulate this development. After all, who would consider employing a person whose only interest is sabotage and destruction to build a house? Once it is clear to the working masses that the goal of their rule should be the construction of socialism, the necessary expulsion of the bourgeoise from this rule becomes apparent. The interests of capital cannot be allowed to have a say. Formally, this is of course no democracy, but in actuality, it is a higher, better form of democracy, the workers' democracy, representing the living interest of the masses. This is precisely what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is what is now called Communism or Bolshevism. It has now been implemented on a big scale in Russia, after the Paris Commune in 1871 showed its first beginnings.

Of course, you could now pose the question on how to implement such a democracy. How does one achieve excluding certain people from voting because of their bourgeois background, which additionally appears as an unfair act of arbitrariness? When such things are being asked, the real structure of the proletarian rule is forgotten. This rule will not appear in the form of a parliamentary government, this has already become apparent during the Paris Commune. The commune divided itself into a number of working commissions, which concerned themselves with a variety of managerial tasks. Transport, organisation of work, food supply, organisation of army, teaching, etc. All of this could not simply be decided from above, the commissions needed to come in contact with the self-organised managerial commissions of different city departments. Had the commune survived longer, the detour of parliamentary vote surely would have been abolished in order to let the managerial commissions (Verwaltungskommissionen - K.V.) be established by the working organisations. Basing themselves on the traditional form of parliament, the small and big organs of proletarian governing still sprang up by themselves.

A similar thing, but in a much more final form, has developed in Russia. The workers' councils in the cities, the peasant councils in the rural areas and the other elements from below on which the government is build , they form the councils which concern themselves with the different organisational tasks. The city management (Stadtverwaltung- K.V.) is voted in by the workers' councils in the city and the workers' councils in the factories of a specific branch vote for the management of this branch for the entire country. A general congress of the Soviets, which meets regularly then decides the general policy, but for each specific task, such as production, foodstuffs, transport, health, study, special congresses are held, for which the local Soviets send their members of expertise in order to exchange experience and to decide the further proceedings.

This moving apparatus has been born out of the practical need of the Russian masses to reconstruct their social life. At the same time, this apparatus also represents the organ of proletarian dictatorship – and the bourgeoisie cannot be part of it. The bourgeoisie isn’t artificially, through the preservation of the vote, excluded from the government, it is simply excluded on the basis of having no place in the above described organisational form. Because this organisational form, which is also the government, is based on work rather than individual participation, and those who do not work automatically lose the possibility of influencing the forming of policies for the country. The former director or factory owner, who was ready to stay and work as a technical expert – under control of the workers' council – can have the same opportunity to have a say in all related affairs as do the other factory workers. The intellectual professions, the doctors, teachers, artists, form their own councils which have the right of (partial) decision on issues concerning them. All of these councils are always tied to the masses, because the members need to be continually delegated anew and are therefore constantly replaced. This is necessary in order to prevent the formation of a new bureaucracy, and it only becomes possible because of the intensified learning and teaching ability ensuring that the necessary skill does not remain exclusive to certain individuals.

In the light of this actual self governing of the masses, it becomes abundantly clear that the democratic parliament cannot realise a true popular government. It only realises a government of parliamentarians. Once every four years or every single year, they need to gain the trust of the people, through attractive words, promises and programmes they gain their votes and from then on rule as masters. Estranged from the direct participation of the masses, only influencing themselves, they decide the legislative measures, hold long speeches and pass laws. But this rule is only illusory, the entire management lies in the hands of the bureaucracy, which actually forms the authority (Behörde - K.V.) ruling over the people. This so-called division of the legislative and executive power in the democratic republic is the method of controlling the masses while also making them believe that they [the masses - K.V.] rule themselves, in other words, the method of ensuring the continued rule of capital. The practice of this in France, the USA and Switzerland proves that there, despite democracy, capital continues to rule and exploit the people. Given even the universal right to vote, the masses still remain powerless and incapable of changing this [in the constraints of the given system - K.V.]. They stand in front of an elaborate machinery of oppression, formed by parliament, parliamentary government and bureaucrats. They only get one single option of influence, through voting, but even with this their will cannot be executed clearly over all of the deafening speeches and rattling party programmes. The parliamentarians might initially be concerned with pleasing the will of the masses, but soon they find themselves in the middle of the parliamentary waste. Party-discipline, deception, intrigue; and with that, the parliamentary rule of the party executives becomes alienated from the people’s will. And this rule again is nearly powerless against the strictly knitted state bureaucracy, the authorities which present themselves as a foreign rulership in front of the masses.

Parliamentary rule is the essence of the professional politicians, which try to prove their indispensability by long talks in their "chatterbox". They fear Bolshevism, for where would they go? Once actual practical work becomes necessary and not the holding of insubstantial speeches, they do indeed become useless.

Marx and Engels called the state the organisation of capital in order to hold down the exploited class. They could have added that democracy changes nothing about this and only serves as a means to blind the masses of the fact that they exist under the yoke of capitalism, of letting the masses believe that they are their own rulers. All of this means that this machine, which rules over the masses and exists beyond their grasp, this apparatus of parliaments and authorities (Behörden - K.V) , needs to be done away with. This question now becomes the core point of the fight between revolutionary and bourgeois tendencies. The future will be decided by it, because if the state power isn’t done away with, it can regain its position as a tool of oppression of the now insurgent masses under new conditions and it will be able to reestablish the rule of capital once again.