Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/66

 bourgeoisie, which must be destroyed by the revolutionary proletariat and replaced by local Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

7. Consequently, Communism repudiates parliamentarism as the form of the future; it renounces the same as a form of the class dictatorship of the proletariat; it repudiates the possibility of winning over the parliaments: its aim is to destroy parliamentarism. Therefore it 1s only possible to speak of utilising the bourgeois state organisations with the object of destroying them. The question can only and exclusively be discussed on such a plane.

8. Every class struggle is a political struggle, because it is finally a struggle for power. Any strike, when it spreads through the whole country, is a threat to the bourgeois State and thus acquires a political character. To strive to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to destroy its State by any means whatever, means to carry on political warfare. To create one's own class apparatus—for the management and suppression of the resisting bourgeoisie—whatever such an apparatus may be—means to gain political power.

9. Consequently, the question of a political struggle does not end in the question of one's attitude towards the parliamentary system. It is a general condition of the class struggle of