Assessing the foundational Marxist canon and the contemporary US landscape, Bluebird argues for strategic participation in Bourgeois elections to advance a revolutionary agenda and the necessity of an independent Proletarian party in pursuit of that agenda. In the 2024 election, protest and exposure of the undemocratic state should be the objective of every Communist.
As election season nears once again in the United States, the same debate resumes: whether or not Marxists and/or Marxist organizations should participate in the elections of the Bourgeois US government. In this work, we intend to analyze what Marx, Engels, and Lenin had to say on the matter; their reasons for believing what they did; and to what, if any, extent their ideas, and some competing ideas, may have application in the United States.
The debate around participation in Bourgeois elections also consists of several smaller debates: should we support candidates from Bourgeois parties when they share our values? Should we build coalitions with Bourgeois parties to achieve a common objective? Is it acceptable to boycott certain elections? If so, when? And how do we know? What advantages and disadvantages are there for different strategies?
When we discuss electoralism in this essay, we are discussing two related phenomena: the first is electoralism as the strategy of fighting for Marxist policies through the “democratic” mechanisms of Bourgeois governments;1 the second being the tailist error of pursuing electoral struggle when the stated goal of such struggle is either impossible through electoral means, or when larger victories can be won through non-electoral means. In the case of the former, as we will see, there is not necessarily any problem so long as the strategy is properly utilized. Marx himself would attest to this. The problems begin when the former turns into the latter, when elections, and everything that comes along with them, become a distraction, and when the Proletarian movement convinces itself that the Capitalist rule can be overthrown by peaceful means despite the fact that Capitalist rule is not and never has been maintained through peaceful means.
Additionally, this latter error, in which electoral struggle ends up reproducing Bourgeois politics rather than disrupting it, has historically been discussed under the umbrella of reformism in Marxist circles. We have opted to refer to both this error, as well as the method of electoral struggle itself, as electoralism, as the errors of electoral struggle cannot really be discussed separately from the method of struggle.
Even when the Proletariat seems unreceptive to non-electoral means of struggle, it is still a tailist error for Communists, i.e., the most advanced members of the Proletarian movement, to capitulate to the idea that “the Proletariat simply isn’t ready yet.” If the Proletariat were capable of spontaneously developing consciousness, Capitalism would’ve gone the way of the dinosaurs a long time ago. True, armed struggle is not always appropriate, but it does not follow that electoral struggle is always appropriate, either. Whenever electoral struggle enters conversation among the Proletariat, it is the duty of Communists to educate the Proletariat on the limitations of such strategies, and prepare the Proletariat to take up its historic mission. In summary, it is the job of Communists to go to the front of the movement for Communism and pull it forward—to act as a vanguard of the Proletariat—and we hope this essay acts as an important step in doing just that.
The Question of Reform or Revolution
We preface this part of our essay by first clarifying that we are not debating the merit of reform as a substitute for revolution, but rather the merit of reform as part of a revolutionary strategy.2 Our reason for doing so is that reform has never proven itself capable of establishing Socialism. It would therefore be counterproductive to debate the merit of reform as a substitute for revolution.
With that in mind, when is it appropriate to fight for reforms, and what kinds of reforms should we fight for? There is no reason to overthink the answers to these questions. Marxists should support any reform which would be beneficial to the working classes. However, these reforms should never come at the expense of the working classes of any other country. While our ultimate goal is the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism, we should not make our job any harder than it needs to be. If any of our goals can be achieved through reform, then we should pursue them first through reformist methods, only resorting to revolutionary methods when legal methods become ineffective.
Simultaneously, we must recognize the limits of reform. Any victory won for the working class under Capitalism is not truly a victory, but rather a concession by the Capitalist class to placate the workers. These concessions can be, and frequently are, retracted when the Capitalist class believes it can manage the consequences of such retractions. Such examples would include the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in 1891, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 2013, or the repeal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Additionally, we must not forget that many of the policy changes we desire are not uniquely Marxist. While the United States has very little in the way of State-owned or operated enterprises, other Capitalist countries such as Norway do. While the United States does not subsidize or guarantee access to education beyond high school, other Capitalist countries do. The fact that these policies are not uniquely Marxist does not mean that we should not support them. On the contrary, as long as a given policy is compatible with Marxism, then we Marxists should support it.
This all prompts the question of how we should pursue reforms when we have deemed reform to be appropriate. The Bourgeois State is a tool that exists to protect the interests of the Bourgeoisie, and Bourgeois Democracy is a tool to resolve contradictions within the Bourgeoisie. In a society which is governed by such a State, the Proletariat has no other option than to advance its interests itself. This requires special organizations to advance the interests of the Proletariat. But such organizations have no social basis, and therefore cannot exist, where the Proletariat is not organized. (We will expand on the idea of Proletarian organizations later.)
For the aforementioned reasons, reform is not even possible without a minimum amount of organization among the Proletariat. The passage of civil rights legislation required a civil rights movement, the same goes for women’s rights, workers’ rights, and so on. If the Proletariat is not organized, then it cannot pressure the Bourgeoisie into making reforms that benefit the Proletariat. And if the Bourgeoisie cannot be forced into enacting reforms, then no reforms will be enacted.
The previous paragraph demonstrates another important limitation of reform: that it presupposes the political primacy of the Bourgeoisie. The Proletariat would not have to pressure the Bourgeoisie into enacting reforms if the Proletariat was capable of enacting such reforms itself. This is precisely why reform can never take the place of revolution. Rather, reform is simply one of many tools we Marxists use to advance our interests within the context of a broader revolutionary struggle.
The Opinions of Foundational Marxist Thinkers and the Necessity of Proletarian Parties and Organizations
We stated in the previous section that the working classes, especially the Proletariat for our purposes, require their own parties and organizations to advance their interests because there are no mechanisms within the Bourgeois State and Bourgeois Democracy to advance their interests. That is a conclusion that we believe can be drawn without necessarily reading what important Marxist thinkers have written about electoralism. That being said, there are valuable insights to be gained from reading the thoughts of those who have already grappled with the questions we are tackling, therefore it would be irresponsible not to engage with them in this work.
Our first quotation comes from Karl Marx’s 1850 address to the central committee of the Communist League, where he asserted the following:
At the moment, while the democratic petty Bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach to the Proletariat general unity and reconciliation; they extend the hand of friendship, and seek to found a great opposition party which will embrace all shades of democratic opinion; that is, they seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the Proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the Proletariat. The Proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official Bourgeois Democracy… [quote continues here] (our italics).3
At first glance, Marx seems to be making the same point that we made in the previous section, but there is significantly more nuance to his position. Firstly, Marx cautions against working within parties that do not represent the interests of the Proletariat. The reasoning for such a position is simple: parties that do not represent Proletarian interests are unlikely to advance Proletarian interests. While Marx acknowledges that non-Proletarian parties might put forward slogans that appear to advance Proletarian interests, Marx, correctly, interprets this behavior as opportunism, as non-Proletarian parties must secure the support of the Proletariat in countries where the Proletariat is able to vote. While Marx shows in his other work that he is not principally opposed to the Proletariat working with other classes when they share common interests, the above quotation indicates to us that Marx was principally opposed to the Proletariat trying to advance its interests from within a non-Proletarian party. The reason for this is quite simple: non-Proletarian parties do not exist to advance the interests of the Proletariat. If Proletarians are working within a non-Proletarian party, then they are advancing the interests of classes other than the Proletariat. If the Proletariat does manage to advance its interests within a non-Proletarian party, it will have been because they succeeded in changing the class composition of the party, thus turning it into a Proletarian party.4 This first point by Marx, cautioning against falling for the sloganeering of the Bourgeoisie and Petty-Bourgeoisie, is relevant to the electoral situation in the United States. During every election cycle, members of both parties, especially the Democratic Party, pay lip service to policies that working people generally support, only to abandon their campaign promises once in office.
From this first point follows Marx’s second point: the Proletariat requires its own independent political parties and other organizations, because only in this way can the Proletariat advance its own interests. However we must clarify that the word independent here cannot be used interchangeably with the word separate. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for example, are a separate organization from the Democratic Party, but by frequently endorsing Democratic Party candidates, even when the politics of said candidates do not align with the politics of the DSA, the DSA forfeits all independence, instead making itself a “mere appendage” of the Democratic Party, a Bourgeois party. Similarly, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) did not run its own candidates in the 2020 presidential election, instead endorsing Joe Biden once he secured the Democratic Party’s nomination and encouraging all CPUSA members to vote for the Democrats.
This need for real independence is further clarified in Marx’s third point in the above quotation: the workers’ party must run its own candidates in elections even when there is no possibility of winning in order to preserve its independence. Whether it succeeds or fails, the Proletariat must do so on its own. In this way, the Proletariat builds its awareness of itself. If it does fail at achieving its goals, it has no one to blame but itself and can learn from its failures. This is nearly impossible when working within Bourgeois parties. Statements like “the Democratic Party would be better if it did X, Y, or Z,” or “the Democrats did A when they should’ve done B” completely miss the point that, as a Bourgeois party, the Democratic Party is already the best possible version of itself and is working as intended. When the Democratic Party makes a “mistake,” the Proletariat learns nothing because it sees this “mistake” as someone else’s. But when the Proletarian party makes a mistake, suddenly there is no one else to blame. The Proletarian party must learn from its mistakes or risk degenerating from a revolutionary party to a non-revolutionary or anti-revolutionary party.
Lastly, Marx dispels the common assertion that not supporting Bourgeois candidates “splits the vote.” Whose vote exactly is being split when the Proletariat votes for its own candidates? It certainly doesn’t split the Proletarian vote. On the contrary, only by voting for their own candidates can the Proletariat truly vote as a unified bloc. The Proletariat’s vote is split when it votes for the candidates of different Bourgeois parties. What Bourgeois politicians mean when they accuse third parties of “splitting the vote” is that the third parties are attracting a portion of the Proletarian vote that Bourgeois politicians feel entitled to. From the Proletariat’s perspective, it is Bourgeois politicians who truly split the vote, the Proletarian vote, by suppressing Proletarian parties and leaving the Proletariat with no other option than to choose their preferred Bourgeois candidate. Such complaints of “splitting the vote” by Bourgeois politicians are actually tacit admissions by Bourgeois politicians of the political potential of the Proletariat; that they are terrified at the prospect of running against a Proletarian candidate with a unified Proletarian voter base in an election. Some may counter our points about vote splitting with arguments in favor of harm reduction. We will address such topics later.
It is also possible for the Proletariat to split its own vote without voting for Bourgeois politicians. In the United States for example, there are many parties with aspirations of advancing the interests of the Proletariat: CPUSA, FRSO, PSL, RCPUSA, DSA, etc., etc. We will explain later why it is likely impossible even for a single unified workers’ party to achieve its goals through electoralism in the US. It is worth pointing to the fact that even under ideal circumstances, the Proletariat would probably not be able to achieve its goals if it were to split its vote among this many parties. This does not even touch on some of the more specific problems these individual parties have.
There are some who might praise our interpretation of Marx’s statements in the above quotation, but cast doubt on these being Marx’s “final” thoughts on electoralism since it is from relatively early in Marx’s body of work, since his ideas would famously evolve in the following decades. To these critics, we retort with a later quotation from Engels, who wrote in an 1886 letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge:
The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the [Proletarian] movement is always the organization of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers’ party.
The masses must have time and opportunity to develop and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement—no matter in what form so long as it is only their own movement—in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn wisdom by hurting themselves (our italics).5
In the above quotation, Engels does what he always did so brilliantly: summarizing Marx’s ideas in much fewer words without losing the substance of the idea. What matters here is not so much what Engels says in the above quotation, as it is nothing that Marx and ourselves have not already said in this work. It is the year of this letter’s composition which is of importance to us: 1886. While Marx and Engels’ ideas evolved throughout their lives, interpreters generally use the year 1871 to mark the point by which the duo’s ideas on political organization solidified. Therefore, the above quotation from Engels, which itself only summarizes ideas that were already formed in his and Marx’s minds as early as 1850, can be said to be Marx and Engels’ “final” position on the necessity of an independent Proletarian party.
The necessity for a Proletarian party is also reaffirmed by the experiences of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the early twentieth century. As the Russian Empire began to organize its economy around Capitalist property relations, the material conditions were created for the existence of an organized industrial Proletariat. These early Capitalist class struggles in Russia, predictably, took the form of trade union struggles in the beginning, as has been the case in virtually every country that has experienced a Capitalist stage of development. While revolutionary organizing in opposition to the Tsar was taking place in other spheres of Russian society, there was nothing inherently revolutionary about the labor movement at this point in Russian history. While Lenin was by no means the only Marxist to make the following observations, his articulation of this apparent paradox of a non-revolutionary labor movement is our favorite:
all they (trade unions) achieved was that the sellers of labor power (workers) learned to sell their ‘commodity’ (labor power) on better terms and to fight the purchasers (Capitalists/enterprise owners) over a purely commercial deal.6
In short, trade unions cannot overthrow Capitalist property relations because they are designed to conduct labor struggles mainly within Capitalist property relations. The defining trait of the Proletariat as a class is that it has nothing to sell except its ability to work, hence why the Proletariat sells its labor power to the Bourgeoisie. Likewise, with the transition from Capitalism to the lower phase of Communism, in which the means of production are the common property of all of society, the strategy of withholding labor power from an “owner class” becomes obsolete. All this is to say that the Proletariat cannot withhold its labor power from itself any more than it can purchase its own labor power. The idea of a trade union struggle, of withholding labor to obtain desired concessions from Capitalists, presupposes the existence of Capitalist property relations. Such trade union activity would have no social basis if the workers owned the means of production because in such a case the workers could just give themselves whatever benefits or pay raises they desired. Just as reformism presupposes the political primacy of the Bourgeoisie over the Proletariat, trade unionism, while aiming to conduct labor struggle without challenging the material base of this struggle in the form of private property, presupposes the economic primacy of the Bourgeoisie over the Proletariat. In reference to this incomplete form of Proletarian class consciousness, Lenin coined the term trade union consciousness to communicate that 1) economic consciousness does not immediately translate into political consciousness; 2) that trade unionism, while valuable, will not result in revolution; and 3) a different Proletarian organization is required to bring about revolution: the Proletarian party.
The Proletarian party is important because, as we have just established, trade unions presuppose Capitalist property relations and are therefore very unlikely to produce theories that are actually revolutionary. As Lenin said, without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.7 Unlike trade unions, a Proletarian party can aggregate all of the Proletariat’s accumulated knowledge and produce new theories to put into practice. Whereas trade unions can only conduct class struggle through economic means, the Proletarian party, as a political organization, recognizes the political foundations of the economic relations which create the social basis for the labor struggle and can therefore carry on the struggle through political means. This is not “giving the economic struggle a political character,” but rather, unifying the economic struggle and the political struggle into a single coherent struggle for the emancipation of labor from Capital.
Lenin, like Marx and Engels, also asserted that the Proletariat can only increase its consciousness through its own experience, i.e. not by making itself an appendage of Bourgeois political organizations.
The Proletarian vanguard has been won over ideologically. That is the main thing. Without this, not even the first step towards victory can be made. But that is still quite a long way from victory. Victory cannot be won with a vanguard alone. To throw only the vanguard into the decisive battle, before the entire class, the broad masses, have taken up a position either of direct support for the vanguard, or at least of sympathetic neutrality towards it and of precluded support for the enemy, would be, not merely foolish but criminal. Propaganda and agitation alone are not enough for an entire class, the broad masses of the working people, those oppressed by Capital, to take up such a stand. For that, the masses must have their own political experience. Such is the fundamental law of all great revolutions, which has been confirmed with compelling force and vividness, not only in Russia but in Germany as well. To turn resolutely towards Communism, it was necessary, not only for the ignorant and often illiterate masses of Russia, but also for the literate and well-educated masses of Germany, to realize from their own bitter experience the absolute impotence and spinelessness, the absolute helplessness and servility to the Bourgeoisie, and the utter vileness of the government of the paladins of the Second International (our italics).8
To reiterate our previous point, the Proletariat can only have its own experience if it has its own independent organizations. We will only concede that if participation in Bourgeois organizations is necessary for building the consciousness of the Proletariat, it is only necessary insofar as the Proletariat needs to become disillusioned with Bourgeois political parties for the Proletarian party to have a social basis. Even then, the Proletarian party needs to be ready to receive these disillusioned members of the Proletariat. Otherwise, it risks the Proletariat’s disillusionment becoming a disillusionment with all politics, as opposed to only a disillusionment with Bourgeois politics. This means not only being disciplined and well-organized, but also being highly visible; being open about being Communists and propagating our ideas as Marx and Engels called for in the Communist Manifesto.9
Especially in the United States, many people have never actually encountered a Communist before, though they hear about Communists semi-regularly from the overtly anti-Communist media. For this reason, much of the Proletariat in the United States has never encountered Proletarian politics.Therefore, it is the duty of Communists to propagate precisely these Proletarian politics.
A Case Study in How Not to be Independent
What follows is an excerpt from an article Rosa Luxemburg wrote for Leipziger Volkseitung in April, 1902, in which Luxemburg recounts the experience of the Belgian Social-Democratic Party and their parliamentary coalition with the Belgian Liberals. Despite being written over a hundred years ago, we find the events recounted by Luxemburg to be all too contemporary.
A few years ago, when the question of alliances with Bourgeois parties became the subject of an especially lively debate with our ranks, the defenders of political alliances were careful to point to the example of the Belgian [Social Democratic] Workers’ Party. Its alliance with the Liberals during the long struggle for universal suffrage10 was supposed to serve as an example of how coalitions between Social Democracy and Bourgeois Democracy were occasionally necessary and politically harmless… [quote continues here]11
Replace “Belgian Liberals” with Democratic Party, replace “women’s suffrage” with universal healthcare or a 20 dollar minimum wage, and replace “Belgian Social-Democratic Party” with the progressive US political organization of your choice. It is as if the above passage were written yesterday to describe the political situation in the United States. While it is certainly tempting to refer to the Belgian Social-Democratic Party as a workers’ party in name only, it is more useful to assume them to be an earnest workers’ party for our purposes.
We should preface all of our remarks here by stating that this section is not a polemic against all compromise. Our point here is that compromise, collaboration, and other behaviors that generally fall under the umbrella of bipartisanship, should not be accepted when they are not necessary, nor should they be pursued as ends unto themselves.
Let us now consider the experience of the Belgian Social-Democrats. As Luxemburg states, the subject of collaboration was not broached by the Belgian Social-Democrats, but rather by “a worn-out liberal Bourgeoisie under pressure from a resolute working class.” Considering Liberals’ usual disdain for working class politics—and we find no shortage of examples of such disdain in in the above quotation from Luxemburg—it is safe to assume that the Belgian Liberals would not have approached the Belgian Social-Democrats at all if the Liberals felt they could advance their political goals by themselves. When someone requests your help, it is presumably because they need your help—or potentially because they are trying to lure you into a trap: both scenarios apply here.
The Belgian Social-Democrats were not necessarily wrong to form a coalition with the Liberals upon being approached by the Liberals to do so, but the Belgian Social-Democrats clearly forgot the first rule of negotiating from a position of power: concede nothing. In forming the coalition, the Belgian Liberals should have been made to accept the tenets of the Belgian Social-Democratic platform. Instead, it was the Belgian Social-Democrats who accepted the tenets of the Liberal platform! In this case, it makes no difference whether the Belgian Social-Democrats did not realize that they had the political leverage in this situation (perhaps they did not want to realize this). The result is the same: the workers’ party became an appendage of the Bourgeois party.
We have established that the Belgian Liberals needed the Social-Democrats more than the Social-Democrats needed the Liberals, but let’s suppose that the Social-Democrats did not hold enough seats in Parliament to advance their interests without the Liberals. If that were the case, would the Social-Democrats have been correct to enter into a coalition with the Liberals? We think not. Coalitions are often formed out of necessity for groups with common goals to struggle towards those goals more effectively. If we assume the Belgian Social-Democrats to be an earnest workers’ party, then they have little in common with the Liberal. The Social-Democrats want to destroy Capitalism, whereas the Liberals want to maintain it. Since these two goals are diametrically opposed to each other, there is no basis for common ground under normal conditions. If the Liberals had adopted the platform of the Social-Democrats, that would also be something of an exception to the usual rule. In doing so, the Liberals would have effectively abolished themselves as Liberals and become Social-Democrats. Coalition might be appropriate when and where conditions arise that threaten both the Liberals and the Social-Democrats, thus potentially forcing them to unify around the principle of self-preservation. However, this premise is arguably disproved by the experience of the October Revolution in Russia. The Bolsheviks were numerically quite small in relation to other political factions in the Russian Empire, but who eventually won the greatest support among the public by being uncompromising on their politics and their goal of liberating the people from war, poverty, and hunger. Though this is not always the case, it is sometimes better to stick to one’s principles and get nothing than to compromise on one’s principles, because doing so maintains the independence of the workers’ party. If left to their own devices, Bourgeois parties pursuing a Bourgeois agenda will alienate the working class regardless of the lip service paid to working class politics. Words are important, but actions are what count in politics. When Bourgeois parties predictably make policies that hurt the Proletariat, the workers’ party needs to be there to receive the Proletariat. If the workers’ party subordinates itself to a Bourgeois party, then it will be complicit in class warfare against the working class. When that happens, it is no surprise that the working class turns to anarchism and other forms of Petty-Bourgeois revolutionary politics out of disillusionment with traditional politics. If compromise gets you nothing, and sticking to one’s principles also gets you nothing, it is better to stick to one’s principles because it preserves one’s independence.12
Preempting the 2024 Tailist Line
Since we have already addressed arguments about “splitting the vote” in an earlier section, we will not address it here. Instead, we begin this section with the subject of “harm reduction.” The argument generally goes that while the Democratic Party is indeed evil, they are a “lesser evil” when compared to the Republican Party. We must concede that there is sometimes some truth to such statements. But whether such assertions are true or not, it does not follow that Communists should vote for the Democrats. We could take this argument much further than the average Liberal. Assuming that the Democratic Party is a “lesser evil” compared to the Republicans, why should I vote for the Democrats instead of Anarchists, who, while undisciplined and incapable of achieving their goals historically speaking, cannot generally be categorized as evil? “Lesser Evilism” only really works as an argument if the faction you’re arguing in favor of is the least evil of all the available options, which cannot be said of the Democrats.
Some may argue that, unlike Anarchists, the Democrats are actually capable of winning elections. Therefore, Communists should vote for Democrats because this has a greater potential of materially affecting political outcomes. But this is a tailist and thoroughly un-Marxist argument for two reasons: 1) Marx himself was very clear that workers’ parties must run their own candidates in elections even when there is no chance of winning in order to build the experience of the Proletariat; and 2) it once again takes Bourgeois politics and the political primacy of the Bourgeoisie as its premise. To be fair, this will be the case for any analysis of any material or abstract example of a dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, exactly as we have done in our essay. However, we take the political primacy of the Bourgeoisie as our starting point in this essay in order to understand how it works and how to abolish it. The harm reduction argument seeks to place Bourgeois politicians in positions of power within a Bourgeois State, which can only result in the reproduction of Bourgeois rule rather than weakening it. Marxism does not seek to understand systems of exploitation to preserve them, but to abolish them.13 On all these grounds, the harm reduction argument, barring extraordinary circumstances, must be considered tailist at best and opportunist at worst.
Reality is even less kind to the harm reduction argument. Biden has continued the Trump administration’s policies far more than even the most pessimistic political commentators were forecasting during the 2020 election.14 So not only can the Democrats not be said to be the least evil of all available options in most elections, but they cannot even be said to be less evil than the Republicans at the time of this writing.15
Furthermore, the outcomes of voting for different factions of the Bourgeoisie have less to do with the specificities of the ideologies that these Bourgeois factions subscribe to, and more to do with the state of the economy and the strength of the Proletariat. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, the French and Prussian armies united to crush the Paris Commune. While many prominent members of the German Freikorps would go on to found the Nazi Party, they were ordered to crush the Sparticist Uprisings of 1918-1919 by the SPD. To the extent that harm reduction is even possible, it can only ever be a temporary measure. The various factions of the Bourgeoisie have consistently united to resist Proletarian Revolution, even to the point of suspending world wars.
The inverse of the harm reduction argument is the accelerationist argument, which asserts that the more rapid degradation of living conditions that would take place under Republican leadership would yield revolutionary conditions more rapidly than under Democratic leadership (as if it were so simple!). We will critique such thinking in forthcoming projects and have plans to critique it more in relation to the neofascist “conservative Socialist” movement, so we will not say much on the matter here. As it relates to the points we’ve made so far, it should suffice to say that the accelerationist argument makes the same error as the harm reduction argument: that it reproduces the false dichotomy between the Democrats and Republicans which is foundational to the American system of government. All the harm reduction and accelerationist arguments do is legitimize different factions of the American corporate duopoly. On these grounds, both arguments constitute erroneous positions which reproduce Bourgeois politics and must therefore be rejected.
There are yet more subtle tailist arguments that are made in leftist circles around election season in the United States. The generous interpretation of the argument is that it is helpful for the masses to witness the failure of Bourgeois Democracy. Therefore, leftists should support progressive candidates, not because we expect them to be successful, but because their failure gives us the opportunity to present ourselves and our movement as an alternative. Such tailists often find ideological justification in the following quote from Lenin:
At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the Proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of Bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany (our italics).16
We could simply state the facts and say that the tailists who invoke Lenin here have neither the finesse nor the political savviness to do what Lenin is describing. But the why of why these tailists are wrong is more important.
Firstly, some additional context is necessary. Who are these Hendersons, Georges, and Snowdens that Lenin speaks of? Well, in the same chapter the above quotation is drawn from, Lenin calls the British politicians in question “hopelessly reactionary” and compares them to German politicians like Philipp Scheidemann and Gustav Noske. This is important to note because at the time that the above quotation was written, 1920, Noske in particular, along with Friedrich Ebert, had played a leading role in suppressing the Spartacist Uprisings of 1918-1919, in which important Communists like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknicht were slaughtered at the hands of the forces raised by Noske and Ebert.
However, this betrayal of actual Communists by those who are Socialists-in-name-only had yet to take place in countries like Italy and the UK—the countries Lenin talks extensively about in the work quoted above. The British Scheidemanns and Noskes had yet to fully alienate themselves from the labor movement as they had in Germany and Russia. The point that Lenin is making in the above quotation is that it is important for the working class to witness the failure of this phony Socialism—either through its inability to fulfill its promises to the working class, or its direct betrayal of the working class—in order to progress the labor movement towards Proletarian Revolution. To summarize Lenin’s point with a single sentence: we must make sure that the failures of these phony Socialists are also victories for ourselves.
Understanding this makes it easier to spot modern tailist distortions of Lenin. Those saying that Lenin would want Marxists to support politicians from the Republican Party are wrong because the Republicans do not even pretend to be Socialists like Ebert and company. The same is very much true of the Democratic Party, who, while undoubtedly more progressive than the Republicans on certain issues, have called Socialism “a failed ideology” and passed bills denouncing the “horrors of Socialism.” While the “patriotic Socialists” appear to best fit Lenin’s description of phony Socialists, the fact that these morons tail the Republican Party and explicitly renounce every tenet of Socialism means that they cannot be supported by actual Socialists. Even though reactionary isn’t exactly the best word to describe him, Cornel West is probably the closest candidate in the current 2024 US presidential election to the phony-Socialists Lenin is talking about insofar as West has hitched his wagon to the labor movement and is doomed to fail in his objectives barring a turn away from reformism and towards revolution.17
All this is to say that yes, there are times when it may be appropriate for a workers’ party to support a Bourgeois candidate in a Bourgeois election where there is not already a Proletarian candidate. But, to equate candidates like Trump or Biden to the kinds of Bourgeois candidates Lenin was talking about is to fundamentally misunderstand the argument Lenin was making.
Ultimately, however, all of this discussion is simply dancing around a more interesting question: whether or not the Proletariat is already disillusioned with Bourgeois politics and is ready to embrace an alternative.
One way we can make an educated guess as to the answer to this question is by looking at voter turnout statistics. The 2020 presidential election had record voter turnout for a US presidential election: roughly 63%.18 Quite frankly, this is abysmally low for what is supposed to be the country’s most important election. Such low turnout for the country’s most important elections would imply that a large plurality, if not a majority, of people in the US are, if not disillusioned, apathetic towards Bourgeois politics in the US. Turnout for midterm and local elections is no better. The 2018 US midterm election had the highest turnout for a midterm since 1914 despite failing to reach 50% turnout.19 When “high turnout” in midterms is still less than majority turnout, it stands to reason that a great many Americans are already disillusioned with politics in the US. If they are not completely disinterested, then enough so to be apathetic towards the idea of voting.
For our purposes, such statistics would imply that a large number of Americans have already witnessed the failure of Bourgeois politics. We have already discussed how this is the case in relation to the Biden presidency, which has only delivered more neoliberalism to the American people despite flirting with Keynesianism and Social Democracy on the campaign trail. The 2016 election had two major “anti-establishment” candidates, with Bernie Sanders on the “left” side of things, and Donald Trump marshaling a more traditional right-wing populism. Despite promising to “drain the swamp” and fight corruption on Capitol Hill, the Trump administration was one of the more openly corrupt administrations in recent memory. Back in 2008, Barack Obama ran on a progressive platform during what was the biggest recession since the Great Depression, only to pursue a neoliberal agenda once in office.
For the Proletariat, all of the above examples constitute failures of Bourgeois politics to address the interests of the Proletariat. To those insisting that we must vote for a Democrat “one more time,” we ask why? What makes this time any different? To these people, we say that they are free to continue doing the same thing and expecting a different result this time, but we will have none of it.
The statistics on voter demographics in the US reveal another important reality. In Marxist theory, one’s income is not a factor in determining what social class they belong to, but income does generally correlate with one’s class, i.e., the higher one’s income, the less likely that they are Proletarian. While the average voter turnout for the 2020 elections was about 63%, turnout among households with a family income of 75 thousand to 99 thousand dollars per year, 100 thousand to 149 thousand dollars per year, and 150+ thousand dollars per year turned out at rates that were well above the average (72%, 77%, and 80% respectively) and in much greater numbers than lower income brackets.20 These upper income brackets should correlate roughly with the Labor Aristocracy,21 the Petty-Bourgeoisie, and Bourgeoisie proper. In other words, participation in Bourgeois politics in the US correlates closely with how Bourgeois one is as an individual. Participation among the Proletariat is low, which calls into question the efficacy of using political campaigns to reach the Proletariat.
Electoralism in the United States: Uniquely Doomed to Fail?
Up to this point, we have merely summarized the debates related to electoralism taking place on the left. Now, we intend to discuss the applicability of the concepts discussed so far. In order to determine whether or not electoralism should be incorporated into a broader revolutionary strategy, we must first answer the question of whether or not electoralism “works” in any capacity.
Luckily for us, at least one study has already answered this question for us. Taking as a given that people in the United States can choose who represents them in government, the study, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, written by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page sets out to answer the question of whether or not the US government represents the interests of the people, comparing the results to four different models of governance to gauge how “democratic” the US is.
The four models of governance discussed in the study are as follows: majoritarian electoral democracy, majoritarian pluralism, biased pluralism, and economic elite domination.
As we understand the description given in the study, majoritarian electoral democracy is essentially a different term for direct democracy, wherein people vote on things directly, rather than electing representatives to do the work of governing. It is considered to be the gold standard of democracy by most, but many also recognize the challenges of practicing such a model on a large scale.
The next model of governance the study uses is majoritarian pluralism. Wherein, rather than people voting on things directly, the interests of different groups are represented in government. This is essentially how a democratic republic is ideally supposed to work. While it is considered less democratic than direct democracy, it is considered an acceptable compromise to govern very large groups of people. The study contends that lawmaking would be dominated by what it calls “mass-based interest groups” in this model of government.
The third model of governance used in the study is biased pluralism, in which different groups are represented, but the interests of a minority routinely prevail over a majority or a plurality. In this model of governance, the authors of the study contend that policymaking will be dominated by what they call business interest groups. As Marxists, we fully expect most western Capitalist governments to fall into this category.
The last model of governance used in the study is economic elite domination, in which policymaking is dominated by “individuals who have substantial economic resources, i.e. high levels of income or wealth—including, but not limited to, ownership of business firms” (what we Marxists would refer to as the Bourgeoisie).22 As Marxists, we expect there to be a lot of overlap between these last two models of governance and we would expect evaluations of US democracy to correlate closely with them.
If the findings of the Princeton study are to be taken seriously—and we believe they should be—then the chances of even a partially successful electoral struggle are quite bleak. According to Table 4 of the study, “average citizens” and mass-based interest groups—the groups we, as Communists, represent—only have a 5% and 24% impact on what becomes government policy in the United States, whereas “economic elites” and business interest groups have a 78% and 43% impact respectively.23 In other words, regular people, let alone Communists, would have better odds on a coin flip than on an electoral struggle in the United States. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise is deceiving themselves. The authors of the study even note that as a result of how they’ve defined “average citizens” relative to “economic elites”, the numbers presented in the study may overestimate the impact of average citizens and underestimate the impact of economic elites on government policy.
[T]he implications of these limitations in our data is that interest groups and elites actually wield more policy influence than our estimates indicate. (Gilens and Pages italics).23
There is still a question prompted by the study, but which the study does not answer. If the United States is a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, why don’t business interest groups have a greater impact on government policy? To us, as Marxists, the answer is quite simple. As a result of competition between members of the Bourgeoisie and their cliques, there exist contradictions among the Bourgeoisie and their cliques which prevent them from always getting what they want. For example, since the prison industrial complex has profited greatly from the War on Drugs and the resulting mass incarceration, this sector of the economy is at direct odds with the still-emerging recreational drugs market, despite both markets operating according to the Capitalist mode of production and exchange. Yet another example would be the antagonism between business on the one hand, who want lower property values to keep the cost of living low, as well as lower wages and other business expenses, and the real estate sector on the other hand, who needs to continually increase property values to maximize its profits. It is actually more complex, however, as someone who is already a Capitalist in one sector of the economy can hypothetically become a Capitalist in any other sector of the economy by simply moving their Capital. This is especially the case in the stock market, where Capitalists spread their investments over many sectors of the economy in an effort to minimize losses. Therefore, these competitive contradictions are not truly among factions of the Bourgeoisie, but, rather, among the markets themselves. These contradictions merely appear to us as contradictions among the Bourgeoise because the members of this class are nothing more than the personifications of Capital. Hence, no individual subgroup of the Bourgeoisie can succeed in getting what they want 100% of the time, regardless of what form of Bourgeois government is in place, but we can still conclude that the US is a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie because the Bourgeoisie’s impact on government policy is always greater than the impact of the Proletariat.
We would like to remind the reader that the Princeton study takes as a given that the American people already choose their representatives. When the authors state that average citizens only have a 5% impact on what becomes government policy, they aren’t stating that average citizens only get the representative of their choice 5% of the time. They are stating that the representatives chosen by the American people only listen to the American people about 5% of the time. This seems to prove the Marxist critique of Bourgeois Democracy. When allowed to participate in government affairs, the working class does not choose who represents them, but, rather, who oppresses them. The findings of the Princeton study also seem to confirm Lenin’s stance on electoralism as expressed in “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Electoral struggle should only be a tool for platforming our politics. Since it appears that it would take nothing short of a full takeover of the government to enact change with the frequency and scale that we desire, we should only engage in electoral struggle for the purpose of exposing its total inefficacy and its class character to the Proletariat.
For example, voters here in Maine fought hard to oppose the deceivingly named “Clean Energy Corridor,” a 145 mile transmission line intended to send hydropower from Quebec to electricity customers in Massachusetts. The construction of the corridor required massive clearing of trees through the transmission path and will cause permanent damage to the environment around the corridor. Mainers petitioned to get a question onto the 2020 ballot, raised money to run political advertisements countering pro-corridor ads being run by Central Maine Power, the company with a monopoly on power transmission in Maine, and voted to halt construction of the corridor in November of 2020. However, the companies that stood to profit from the construction of the corridor, immediately challenged the results of the referendum in Maine’s courts. While the case was being heard, construction of the corridor was allowed to continue. In April, 2023, the courts overturned the results of the 2020 referendum, thus denying the democratic will of the people of Maine.24 These events should’ve been used by the left in Maine to expose how when the will of the people is in contradiction with the will of Capital, the government will side with Capital, but the story has largely been forgotten.
Even if the findings of the Princeton study were more favorable to a popular electoral struggle—suppose the study found that average citizens have a 50% impact on what becomes government policy—those who have forsaken the revolutionary path would still have to justify reformism, but since even the authors of the Princeton study believe that the general public has a negligible impact on government policy, the debate seems settled. Electoralism in the United States is uniquely doomed to fail. It is a political dead-end. Those who discourage revolutionary activity while insisting that electoralism is the only way forward need to be informed that their position is an erroneous one, and those who refuse to confront facts should probably be purged from Communist circles entirely.
Conclusions: What is to be Done?
We began this essay by outlining the debates taking place in Marxist circles on the subject of electoralism. We referenced the works of the most famous theoreticians in the Marxist canon to see if a coherent Marxist position on electoralism exists. In doing so, we determined that while Marxism stands opposed to Bourgeois reformism, Marxism recognizes the importance of strategic participation in Bourgeois elections to advance a revolutionary agenda.
We then turned our attention to the place of the Proletarian party in the electoral struggle and sought historical examples of Proletarian electoral struggles to draw lessons from their successes and failures. In doing so, we rediscovered the absolute necessity of the Proletarian party, as well as the importance of preserving the independence of said party.
Then we critiqued the various arguments made against independent Proletarian participation in elections, as well as arguments made in favor of non-strategic Proletarian support for Bourgeois politicians, to expose the deep-seeded Bourgeois thinking represented in such arguments.
Lastly, we interrogated the actual prospects of waging an electoral struggle in the United States, our country of residence. We looked at the kinds of people who are likely to turn out for elections and who wield the most influence in American politics.
With all of that out of the way, we can now draw some conclusions:
Firstly, the kinds of people who are likely to turn out for elections in the US are unlikely to support Communism barring a massive decrease in the living standards of most of these people. As stated earlier in this essay, most likely voters in the US come from the American Labor Aristocracy, Petty-Bourgeoisie, and Bourgeoisie. These groups do not have any natural inclinations to support Communism. They have either carved out a precarious yet comfortable place for themselves within the Capitalist system, as in the case of the Labor Aristocracy, benefit directly from the Capitalist system, as in the case of the Bourgeoisie or Capitalist Class, or fall somewhere between these two poles, as in the case of the Petty-Bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the most exploited, and therefore more inclined to support Communism, segments of American society turn out not only in lower percentages than the more Bourgeois classes, but also in lower overall numbers. This is especially telling since the more exploited classes represent a far larger segment of American society. Whether or not the Proletariat actively chooses to ignore Bourgeois politics in the US, or is actively prevented from participating by the Bourgeoisie, makes no difference as it concerns our conclusions. The bottom line is that if you go looking for the Proletariat in American politics, you will not find it at the ballot box, but in the streets. And if we are to bring about Proletarian Revolution in the US, then we must go to where the Proletariat is. And where is the Proletariat? The Proletariat, generally speaking, is on the shop floor. They are your neighbors, they bag your groceries, deliver your mail, and produce all the commodities you consume. The Proletariat is that social class that has nothing to sell but its ability to work, and so the Proletariat survives by selling its labor power. While not perfect, a relatively reliable way to assess the size of the Proletariat in any given country is to look for statistics on what percentage of the workforce survives through wage labor.25 According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of the workforce employed in wage labor was 93.1% in 2022.26 When taken with the fact that the social classes of Capitalist society tend to be segregated into separate communities, making concrete efforts at targeted community outreach, going to the Proletariat and trying to meet its needs while also educating and organizing it, is a far more concrete strategy than running a political campaign and hoping that you catch the attention of some portion of the Proletariat. In this regard, the “survival programs” of the Black Panthers should be taken as a model for any political group organizing towards Proletarian Revolution in the US.
Some may counter our arguments by asserting that the Proletariat might turn out in US elections if there was a genuine Proletarian candidate on the ballot, but history just doesn’t support this assertion. Various parties—CPUSA, PSL, Peace and Freedom Party, etc.—have repeatedly tried to run their own candidates in US elections. Even in the most important and highest turnout elections in the US—the presidential election—these progressive parties consistently fail to get even 1% of the vote.27 Some may rebut us by invoking the famous campaigns of Eugene Debs, whose presidential campaigns consistently won more than 1% of the popular vote. There are many ways to counter such invocations. Most importantly, much time has passed and much has changed since Debs’ campaigns. The combination of the Red Scares and the New Deal served to scare many people away from overt Socialist politics, let alone Communist politics, while also allowing the Democratic Party to position itself as the “real” workers’ party for decades in the US. Add on top of this a series of changes made to the US electoral system via constitutional amendment, as well as the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, and you end up with an electoral landscape that differs so qualitatively from Debs’ time that it’s hard to even make comparisons to our current moment. When confronted with this bitter truth, the sneakier supporters of electoralism may invoke Marx and Lenin to say that winning elections is not what’s important; that running candidates in Bourgeois elections is about platforming our politics while also trying to disrupt Bourgeois politics. To these people, we say that they should stop talking about such things and put it into practice already! It’s been decades and we’re still waiting! True, the popularity of radical left-wing politics has been growing rapidly in recent years. But, this has not been because of, but, rather, in spite of repeated failures by the American left to mount any kind of electoral struggle. The growth of left-wing politics in the US has been through grassroots/street-level organizing like the Occupy Movement or the George Floyd Protests. The impact of Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns can also not be discounted when talking about the growth of left wing politics in the United States. However, the Sanders campaigns are more likely an exception in this regard. He is pretty much the only person to do this in recent memory. Taken in its historical context, a campaign like Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign probably would not have been possible prior to something like the 2008 recession. Staying on the topic of electoralism, the American Left has also yet to successfully use electoral politics to disrupt American politics in any way, let alone any way that resembles the ideas of Marx and Lenin. Instead, the current divisions that exist among the American Bourgeoisie are very much of their own making, and we watch exactly these internal divisions among the Bourgeoisie play themselves out during every election cycle. It is quite telling that the most disruptive political campaign in recent years was not headed by a Communist of any kind, but the Social-Democrat Bernie Sanders. Even if we tried, we could not overstate how poorly this reflects on American Communists and their organizations. To those who still remain steadfast in their belief that the American Proletariat will turn out for a Proletarian candidate, we have been, and will continue to watch the campaign of Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Sanchez of the PSL, but we do not currently see any reason to believe that their campaign will fare much, if any, better than that of Gloria La Riva.
Secondly, even if Communist parties were able to accumulate more votes or win more government positions, there’s still the question of how effective Communists would be once they hold positions of power within the current Bourgeois American government. Getting into office may prove useful in exposing that the problems of Bourgeois government are larger than the “wrong people” occupying said positions, but that is likely all it’s good for. The findings of the study published in 2014 by Princeton University certainly suggest that even if Communists were able to work their way into the American government, Capital’s grip on the American government is far too tight for Communists to be able to enact any real change, prompting the question of why we should even spend our time and resources on electoral struggle? We may as well toss coins into a wishing well. If people are going to continue to insist on electoral struggle, they should prove that electoral struggle is just as effective as non-electoral forms of struggle. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s for example could not make use of electoral struggle because, despite having a constitutional right to vote, African-Americans were actively prevented from voting in the south. The Voting Rights Act, one of the biggest reforms in the history of the US, was not won through electoral struggle because such means of struggle were literally unavailable to the majority of those taking part in the movement. And to add insult to injury, even that victory has since been rolled back since the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder.
Thirdly, we should clarify that while we see little utility in Communists participating in elections in the US, we do believe that electoral struggle still has utility in parliamentary democracies, where Communist parties have fared far better in electoral struggle than their American counterparts. Trying to apply the strategies advocated by Marx and Lenin about electoral struggle when we’ve all but proven that such strategies have never been, and will probably never be successful in the US can only constitute a dogmatic application of Marxism; one of the most serious errors a Marxist can commit. The fact that the established theories of Marxism on electoralism have little application in the US does not mean that we can not draw insights from the summits of Marxist thought—as we have consistently tried to do in this essay—but unique circumstances call for theories, plans, and strategies which are tailored to said conditions. As far as we are aware, nothing of the sort exists yet for the US, and the data presented in this essay does not give any reason to believe that we should give any more thought to electoralism in the US.
So if electoralism won’t accomplish anything, what should Communists do instead? The idea of “exposures” that Lenin articulates in What is to be Done? could be applicable by using electoral struggle to expose its sheer inefficacy. As for what else Communists should do, that is beyond the scope of this work. In regards to the 2024 presidential election, the correct response from Communists is to do literally anything other than vote for the candidates of the Democratic or Republican Parties—which are likely to be Biden and Trump again. As we’ve already established, both major parties in the US serve the interests of the Bourgeoisie. If either of them wins, then the Proletariat loses. There’s little reason to believe that a Proletarian candidate is even capable of running a successful political campaign as a result of how the American system of “democracy” is organized. Therefore, a Proletarian victory, as it relates to the 2024 presidential election, is likely out of the question. Instead, we hold that protest should be the objective of every Communist in relation to the 2024 US presidential election. This could mean voting for Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Sanchez. It could mean voting for one of your online acquaintances. It could mean voting “uncommitted.” It could even mean voting for someone who’s been dead for decades, such as Karl Leibknicht. Boycotting elections is also a perfectly legitimate mode of protest that has been deployed in other countries. Our job as political dissidents should be to make it clear that the current American government, and whoever leads it, has no popular mandate from the general population; a task which currently seems very achievable, as the 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be a lower-than-usual turnout election.
Outside of the electoral question, we must be realistic about the fact that the American Communist movement is currently its own worst enemy. While we understand that the various disagreements that exist between different factions within the movement are not small ones—we hold that many of these disagreements are, in fact, irreconcilable—it is also true that the biggest sub-tendencies of the Communist movement have enough in common that strategic unity can and must be pursued. We are currently witnessing what appears to be the beginning of the Third World War. With widespread open conflict erupting in Eastern Europe and West Asia, and conditions for open conflict taking shape in other parts of the world, humanity may very well be facing a more immediate extinction than that posed by climate change. We believe that strategic unity of Marxists is possible among Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, Left-Communists, and Trotskyists, because all of these tendencies and their offshoots have a common lineage: the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, the Bolsheviks, and the Comintern. We do not expect these Communist groups to share a new party—the absolute last thing the US needs is yet another Communist party. What is needed is for these groups to cooperate, maybe even federate under a single banner, but in a way that preserves and respects the various constituent groups.28 But all this is beyond the scope of this work, and we have already begun an outline for a dedicated work on our imagined “Federation of Communists.” For now, it will suffice to say that disunity will only produce more disunity. Without strategic unity of Marxists—by which we mean organizing towards the common goal of Proletarian Revolution—we do not believe that the class consciousness of the American Proletariat will ever mature into a revolutionary consciousness.
Bluebird,
April 2024
- We specify Bourgeois governments here because we believe such electoral strategies to be obsolete in countries which have a dictatorship of the Proletariat, in the Marxist sense, as such a Proletarian government is naturally inclined to make Marxist policy, democratically or not.
- We feel the following quotation from Lenin supports the point we are making in this section: that Marxists are not principally opposed to reform, only that reform is no substitute for revolution: “At the beginning of the period mentioned, we did not call for the overthrow of the government but explained that it was impossible to overthrow it without first changing the composition and the temper of the Soviets. We did not proclaim a boycott of the Bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, but said—and following the April (1917) Conference of our Party began to state officially in the name of the Party—that a Bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly would be better than a Bourgeois republic without a Constituent Assembly, but that a “workers’ and peasants’ ” republic, a Soviet republic, would be better than any Bourgeois-democratic, parliamentary republic. Without such thorough, circumspect and long preparations, we could not have achieved victory in October 1917, or have consolidated that victory” (our italics). V. I. Lenin, “Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder,” The Principal Stages in the History of Bolshevism, Marxists Internet Archive, 1920, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch03.htm.
- Karl Marx, “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League by Marx and Engels,” Marxists Internet Archive, 1850, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/Communist-league/1850-ad1.htm.
- A possible example of this could be the early British Labor Party of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Despite the fact that the leadership of the Party has always been bourgeois, it used to have a much more proletarian rank-and-file. The Party was also much more radical than it is today, leading Engels and Lenin to discuss the British Labor Party as a workers’ party rather than a Bourgeois party. Make no mistake however, this is very much not the case of the modern Labor Party, which now competes with the Tories to see who can make life harder for the working classes.
- Frederick Engels, “Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1886,” Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_11_29.htm.
- V. I. Lenin, What is to be Done?, Marxists Internet Archive, 1902, Chapter 3, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm.
- Ibid., Chapter 1, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm
- Lenin, “Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder,” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch10.htm.
- This is relatively easy at the moment in the US because of the first amendment, but history has shown how such rights can be eroded over time, if not outright repealed in some cases. Communists inside and outside the US cannot allow themselves to become reliant on such legal protections to provide cover for organizing work. There is no universally applicable strategy for how to be a visible Communist. It must be worked out on a case-by-case basis.
- As will become clear later in the article, universal suffrage here refers to suffrage for men only.
- Rosa Luxemburg, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 232-236.
- In short, we must draw a clear line between ourselves and our enemies.
- “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.” — Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm
- This video from JT Chapman of Second Thought (https://youtu.be/lb8bBWnHflk) does a good job of illustrating that the dichotomy between Trump and Biden is a false one. You can read his sources here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UrJJqM5AqaYSHndGP3E8Koj2OUpluWtu8R9YEoRkuSs/edit
- Make no mistake, we are not arguing that people should vote for the Republicans here. When given the choice between a fascist party that pretends to be a progressive force and a fascist party that doesn’t pretend to be a progressive force, the repression of both parties is the only acceptable outcome.
- Lenin, “Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder,” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm.
- West positions himself as roughly as far left as Bernie Sanders, if not slightly to the left of Sanders. However, if Sanders was too far left for the likings of the ruling establishment of the US on not one, but two occasions, then there is no reason to believe that West will fare any better with his presidential campaign. West’s decision to run as a third party candidate could be an adaptation made from drawing lessons from Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 campaigns, where the Independent Sanders ran on the Democratic Party ticket and failed to secure the Party’s nomination on both occasions. West’s logic probably is something like, “since Sanders has already failed twice, perhaps I should try something different.” The decision to run on a third party ticket has come with its own drawbacks.. Running as a Democrat gave Sanders much more media attention, which probably enabled him to fundraise more effectively despite failing to win over the usual big donors and PACs. On the other hand, West’s decision to run third party has not only cut him off from the sort of media coverage Sanders received, but also seems to have made West more dependent on the kinds of donors that despised Sanders, as might be indicated by West’s initial acceptance of money from Harlan Crow, a right-wing billionaire who is known to collect Nazi memorabilia and display it at his properties. We should probably note, however, that West did return Crow’s donation after news broke that Crow was one of West’s donors.
The similarities between Sanders and West do not end here, however. West not only positions himself as a progressive like Sanders, but as a decidedly anti-Marxist progressive. This is not up for debate as it regards West, as he’s made statements on numerous occasions clarifying that he not only doesn’t see himself as a Marxist, but sees Marxism as being at odds with his politics. Like Sanders, West has described himself as a Socialist, but like Sanders, his politics, when taken in its totality, much more closely resembles that of the Bourgeois Socialists Marx and Engels criticized in section III of the Communist Manifesto. Those Socialists who correctly identify many key problems with Capitalism, such as its exploitative nature, but who fail to fully grasp the material basis of this exploitation in private property and commodity production, thus leaving these Bourgeois Socialists unable to transcend the Capitalist mode of production. Therefore, even if West or Sanders did win the presidency, they would only reproduce the problems inherent in Capitalism, but perhaps in a different form than we have seen them in the US thus far.
- Drew DeSilver, “US voter turnout recently soared but lags behind many peer countries.” Pew Research Center, 1 November 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/.
- “Voter turnout in US elections, 2018-2022.” Pew Research Center, 12 July 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/.
- “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2020.” Census Bureau, April 2021, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-585.html.
- An upper strata of the Proletariat that has secured a cozy existence for itself within the Capitalist system. It is also the group of which I am part.
- Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (2014), 564-581.
- Ibid.
- Todd Towle, “CMP Corridor Proposal: A Bad Deal for Maine,” Natural Resources Council of Maine, https://www.nrcm.org/programs/climate/proposed-cmp-transmission-line-bad-deal-maine/
- It is worth noting that the Proletariat is actually larger than would be indicated by the statistics we cite, as someone does not necessarily cease to be a Proletarian when they retire for example. But because social class, in the Marxist sense, is defined by how one relates to the process of production, the most concrete way of telling who belongs to what class can only be done by looking at that portion of the population that is actively involved in the process of production, i.e., the workforce.
- This figure actually excludes the percentage of the workforce employed in agricultural wage labor which was 1.3% of the workforce in 2022, bringing the total percentage of those employed in wage labor up to 94.4%. (“Employment by major industry sector : U.S.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6 September 2023, https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-sector.htm)
- This is all the more significant because of just how large the Proletariat is as a class in any developed Capitalist country, let alone the US. Even with the already low Proletarian participation in US elections, a Proletarian party which succeeds in winning the support of the Proletariat should expect to get more than 1% of the vote. While there is no doubt that the American ruling class colludes against Proletarian candidates in the US, failure of these candidates to even secure 1% of the vote speaks to a deeply flawed campaign strategy. They routinely fail to do with a traditional campaign what Eugene Debs was able to do from a fucking jail cell.
- What we essentially envision is something akin to the AFL-CIO, but for Communist parties instead of trade unions.