But the action of revolutionary minorities only has sense when it is linked to mass working class organisation. If they are isolated from the organised working class, revolutionaries are condemned to failure. Socialism . . Political action, at the time, meant parliamentary action. As the marxists at this moment in time could not conceive of any other political action for the proletariat than parliamentary action, the denial of the electoral mystification was understood as opposition to every form of political action.
Abstention is a radical questioning of the political rules of the bourgeoisie's game.
The International does not reject politics generally. It will certainly be forced to involve itself insofar as it will be forced to struggle against the bourgeois class. It only rejects bourgeois politics. Bakunin condemned suffrage as an instrument of proletarian emancipation. He denies the use of putting up candidates.