The Constitution of the Republic and the Grand Assembly of the Comintern
The Constitutional Congress than ran in Cologne through the month of February sparked heated and varied debate. Elements of the Congress demanded a complete overhaul of the VSVR’s political system whilst others demanded that the Constitution not be issued at all. Overall the discussion seemed to point to 3 important rules: establish some basic rights for citizens, set out the democratic system in a single document and make sure the Constitution is neither permanent nor overbearing.
When the Congress ended and the Central Committee began to tough process of drafting the Constitution. The Committee members decided to divide the constitution into a declaration of rights and a legal document dealing with the government institutions of the Republic.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
Each and every citizen of the United Socialist People’s Republic must maintain certain inalienable rights. The rights of the citizen are not limited to those listed below, but these are the most unmoving and unshakeable of the citizen’s rights. These rights are the foundation stones for the Republic; they are the point which any and all governments must adhere to. These are the rights of man.
• All men and all women are born equal and are to be treated as such
• Every man and woman citizen above the age of 18 has the right to vote in any citizen’s election within the Republic
• All citizens of the Republic have the right not to go hungry
• All children between the ages of 5 and 16 have the right to an education provided by the state
• All citizens of the Republic have the right to free healthcare provided by the state
• All citizens have the right to whatever political beliefs they wish
• All citizens of the Republic may maintain whatever religious beliefs they wish although they do not have the right to force their faith upon others
• No one is to be discriminated against based solely on their sex or their race
• All widows and widowers with children have the right to a state provided supplement to their wage
• All citizens who have spent 40 years of their lives at work have the right to a state provided wage from their retirement until their deaths
These are the inalienable rights of man. They may not be infringed by the state or by any citizen of the Republic.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man, named so in honour of a similar declaration made during the French Revolution, was a controversial document. The freedom of religion in particular had large sections of the Republic and even larger sections of the Party in uproar. Trotsky initially called it a reactionary strike at the heart of the revolution. This particular article was forced through by Anton Drexler – the National Communists had been surprisingly willing to back off from squabbles ever since the election and this was Drexler’s only true sticking point in the entire Constitution. The whole period after the election saw a large scale shift in public opinion away from the squabbling and politicking of the Old Right and the Left and towards the New Right. By remaining outside of the debate and acting as the voice of reason Drexler destroyed many misconceptions of his faction whilst the sticking point of religion only angered the hard line Marxists and Anarchists who would never vote National Communist anyway. By mid March many political pundits claimed that if the election was to be held again the National Communists would be sure to be the largest faction.
The second half of the Constitution dealt with the drier side of things.
The Republic and the People’s Party
The government of the United Socialist People’s Republic and the People’s Party are not a single entity. The government of the United Socialist People’s Republic is administered, on behalf of the proletariat, by the People’s Party.
In order to achieve admission into the People’s Party the potential member must:
• Not support the idea of capitalism
• Must support the idea of proletarian control over the means of production
• Must be either a citizen of the Republic or a member of a Party that is accepted by the Comintern
• Not be a supporter of the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy of any state
• Not publically follow any religion
• Not discriminate based on sex, race or cultural background
• Swear not to infringe on any of the Rights of Man
There are three key facets of government within the United Socialist People’s Republic. The first is the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly represents the People. It is elected every 5 years (unless extreme mitigating circumstances are present) by Proportional Representation. For any Bill drafted by the Central Committee to become law the Bill must gain the confidence of the Assembly ie it must have more votes in favour than against. Members of the Assembly have the right to petition the Central Committee to place Bills before the Assembly but they may not propose them without the agreement of the Committee. All members of the Assembly have the right to vote in favour, against or abstain from any vote.
The next facet of the government of the United Socialist People’s Republic is the most powerful – the Central Committee. Positions within the Central Committee are awarded to each faction according to how many seats that faction wins in the Assembly. For every 10 seats the faction gains one member. An eleventh member is then appointed by the Committee as a whole. Any member of the Central Committee may propose a Bill. In order for a Bill to be put before the Assembly it must first be put to a vote before the Committee. All Committee members may vote in favour, against or abstain from a vote. Any ties in voting are to be broken by the Chairman.
The Chairman of the United Socialist People’s Republic is both the leader of the People’s Party and the head of government of the United Socialist People’s Republic (being the leader of the governing Party). He is a member of the Central Committee and his vote shall act as a tie breaker in the event of any ties in voting. Whilst any Central Committee member may propose a Bill the agenda for discussion within the Committee is to be drawn up by the Chairman or, if he wishes, the General Secretary.
Elections in the United Socialist People’s Republic:
The Assembly is elected according to proportional representation. For every percent of the population that votes for a particular faction that faction shall gain one seat in the Assembly.
The Chairman is to be elected by the People’s Party. Each Party member shall have the right to cast a single vote. Votes are to cast according the faction. The faction with the single largest number of votes shall appoint a Chairman. In the event of a draw in votes the faction that can ensure the support of the single largest number of members in the Assembly shall have the right to appoint a Chairman.
In order to stand as Chairman a candidate requires the confidence a full ¼ of the Assembly. This shall discourage candidates with little popular support cannot win the Chairmanship. It shall also encourage either joint tickets or the simple withdrawal from the Chairmanship election. In order to ensure the ability of entirely new factions to compete in the Chairmanship election if a faction that is not represented in the Assembly wishes to put up a candidate for the Chairmanship election then it must produce a petition signed by 500,000 citizens prior to the beginning of the election campaign. After its first election in the Assembly this method of standing for the Chairmanship may not be used again.
Another part of the Constitution and another controversy. The bans on entry to the People’s Party according to publically accepting religion and discriminating based on sex or race were designed as an attack against Drexler. Much of the National Communist faction had sympathies with the religious whilst there was a strong undercurrent of machoism and nationalism that risked infringing on the discrimination law. Yet Drexler refused to hamper his booming growth in popularity at the expense of creating discontent within his faction. Outside of this issue electoral reform was the other major point of contention. Tactical voting and ‘vote switching’ (where a Party member would cast his vote first according to whom he wanted to win and then change it later according to who he didn’t wanted to prevent winning) were becoming endemic issues in Chairmanship elections. Thoughts of once again giving the Party a say in the makeup of the Assembly were dismissed as that would weaken the role of the people in government, ideas of a return to 2nd preference voting were toyed with but again dismissed. Instead a new system was devised that would allow for divisions within the Assembly to exist but would limit the number of candidates standing for the Chairmanship to 4 at the absolute most, more likely 3 or even 2. This would help allow each major wing of the Party to place a candidate (the Left, Old Right and New Right) up for election whilst at the same time combating the problems of tactical voting.
Both parts of the Constitution would be up for review every ten years. The new Rights of Man were to come into effect immediately whilst the second half of the Constitution would come into effect on January 1st 1910. In 1915, 1925 and every 10 years thereafter the Constitution would be up for review. In order to amend the Constitution each amendment would first require the support of the Central Committee and then 70% of the vote from the Assembly. The main idea behind this was to make it easier for the Constitution to be finally abolished when the time came to begin to dissolve the state entirely.
Aside from the Constitution this period saw the appointment of the Grand Assembly of the Comintern. The Grand Assembly was set up as a sort of international government that would one day become the basis of the Socialist World Republic. As of 1905 the Grand Assembly had few real powers. All constituent Republic maintained sovereignty, although there were plans to begin transferring powers to the Grand Assembly as soon as it proved itself to be workable. For now it would merely act as a forum for the members of the Socialist International.
Each constituent Republic was guaranteed a single seat whilst each 10 million citizens after the first 10 million would mean another seat in the Grand Assembly. Nothing showed how utterly dominant the large nations in the Comintern were better than the makeup of the Assembly by nation. The VSVR, Soviet Union and France provided just over half of all members and together contained in excess of ½ a billion people (the majority being in the VSVR). The Assembly also showed just how dominating Europe was in the Comintern as a whole. Just 10 seats were provided to exclusively Asian Republics, although it must be noted that the Soviet Union gained a seat from its lands in Central Asia and Siberia whilst 2 of the 3 seats of the Netherlands were provided courtesy of the East Indian portion of the Republic.
Observing the makeup of the Assembly by faction made the international dominance of Marxism abundantly clear. 65% of seats were held by the 3 major Marxist blocks: the Leninists (the block supported by the VSVR’s powerful Marxist faction), the Plekhanovites (the largest faction in the Soviet Union) and the Councilists. The international Anarchist movement had been declining since the start of the 1880s and the much publicised failure of the Kropotkin government in the VSVR. However the degree to which it had declined was quite shocking – around half of all seats held by Anarchists were provided by the VSVR. Elsewhere peasant based socialist parties bandied together in the Agrarian League whilst nationalist groups (such as the National Communists – their flag bearer) formed the Regionalist block.