Parliaments
Parliaments are the backbone of traditional democracy as it exists to-day. A parliament is a misrepresentation of the people and parliamentary governments are a misleading: solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent the people, but this in itself, is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people, but true democracy exists only through the participation of the people, not through the activity of their representatives. Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the peoples and the exercise of authority, excluding masses from power while usurping sovereignty in their place. People are left with only false external appearance of democracy manifested in long queues to cast their votes in the ballot boxes.
To lay bare the character of the parliament, we have to look to the origin of such a parliament. The parliament is either elected from constituencies or a party or a coalition of parties, or is formed by some method of appointment. But all these procedures are undemocratic, for dividing the population into constituencies means that one Member of Parliament represents thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people, depending on the size of population. It also means that the member keeps no popular organizational link with the electors since he, like other members, is looked upon as a representative of the whole people. This is what the prevailing traditional democracy requires. The masses, therefore, are completely isolated from the representative and he, in turn, is totally separated from them. For immediately after winning their votes he himself usurps their sovereignty and acts instead of them. The prevailing traditional democracy endows the member of a parliament with a sacredness and immunity denied to other individual members of the people. That means that parliaments have become a means of plundering and usurping the people’s authority. Hence the people have the right to struggle, through the popular revolution, to destroy instruments which usurp democracy and sovereignty and take them away from the masses.
