Page:Strategy of the Communists - A letter from the Communist International to the Mexican Communist Party.pdf/5

 from an exclusively revolutionary point of view. The parliamentary struggle of the communists is not one of reforms, but a struggle against the bourgeois system of society, a struggle to unmask bourgeois democracy, the entire spirit of which is to deceive the workers and peasants. The communists do not intend to "capture the Chamber of Deputies;" bourgeois parliaments do not allow themselves to be captured. The aim of the working class, on the contrary, is to smash parliament and to substitute proletarian organs of power (Factory Councils, Councils of Peasants and Soldiers, etc.).

But it would make the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the communists much easier if the latter did not send class enemies of the bourgeoisie to the parliamentary institutions. Of course, the Communist Party must not content itself with a purely opposition policy. The representatives in the district organizations especially, must do everything possible to help the poor sections of the population. They must make practical proposals for the protection of workers, housing, free education, etc. They must show that the bourgeois government sabotages every earnest attempt at fundamental change, and refuses to carry it through; they must "develop the keenest revolutionary propaganda on this basis without fearing to come in conflict with the State power." (Thesis of the Third Congress).

The Party must not undervalue the dangers of opportunism that confronts its representatives in the chamber of Deputies. These dangers are extraordinarily great, owing to the existing anarcho-idealistic mentality of your Party comrades and because of your inexperience in parliamentary struggles. Your representatives may be unconsciously dragged in the wake of the so-called socialist parties, labor parties, or agrarian parties. This danger will be especially great if the Party is already participating in the elections for provincial governments. Of course, the results of elections indicate our strength and influence over the masses, but we must on no account sacrifice our communist principles and the revolutionary class struggle in order to obtain a victory at the polls. Therefore, the choice of comrades who are to represent the Party in the national or provincial parliaments must be made very carefully. Before a comrade can be considered as a candidate, he must have behind him at least a year of activity within the Party itself or within a revolutionary trade union organization, and, in his attitude in general and his participation in the struggles of the labor movement in particular, he must have demonstrated his loyalty and discipline toward the proletarian revolution. The members of the Mexican Chamber