Abstentionists

boycottists advocates of boycotting parliamentary elections. The name was attached in 1919–20 to a portion of the leftist elements of the Italian Socialist Party who sharply criticized the parliamentary corruption of the Socialist Party. A. Bordiga was the leader of the abstentionists. They demanded the immediate expulsion of the reformists from the party; this was the positive aspect of their activity. However, their refusal to participate in parliamentary elections and thir failure to understand the importance of other legal forms of the working classes’ struggle reflected their sectarian orientations. The tactics of the abstentionists endangered the workers’ movement and were profoundly criticized by V. I. Lenin in his work Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder (1920).