https://redflag.org.au/index.php/node/6775
What do Marxists say about parliamentary elections?
Daniel Taylor
07 May 2019
During the chaos of the 1870-71 war between France and Prussia, French
workers seized control of Paris, running the city in a radically
democratic way. The Paris Commune proved that socialism could be built
through the direct self-organisation of the working class. And it
convinced Karl Marx that workers can???t just take over the existing state
apparatus, but need to take power through their own institutions, which
are far more democratic than ???deciding once in three or six years which
member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in parliament???.
The short-lived Paris Commune also rippled through Europe???s parliaments.
In Prussia, socialists inspired by Marx had been elected. They used
their position to denounce the war, even at the height of nationalist
fervour, and had been briefly imprisoned for it. Now released from
prison and back in the parliament, the German socialist August Bebel
praised the revolutionary French workers, repeating their slogan: ???War
on the palaces, peace for the cottages???.
A little while later, he was convicted of treason, along with his
comrade Wilhelm Liebknecht. From their prison cells, they won
re-election to the parliament on a socialist vote that had more than
doubled. They had used their platform in parliament to condemn the
state, to build international working class solidarity at a time of war
and to raise the banner of the revolutionary French workers across Europe.
It was a heroic socialist use of the parliamentary system. But this
success bred disaster. The German socialists were brilliant
parliamentary advocates. Over the next decades their representation in
parliament grew, and their party became focused on contesting and
winning elections. The socialist movement became entangled and absorbed
into the kingdom it was fighting against.
By the time World War One began in 1914, the German socialist movement
had become so transformed that its parliamentary wing supported it. The
most important socialist party in Western Europe became pro-war and
counter-revolutionary. Many factors led to this betrayal, but the
entanglement in the parliamentary system was an important one.
**********
Yet socialists can???t ignore parliament. It???s where official politics
happens, where bills become law and where social priorities are decided.
By contrast, political and democratic decision-making is excluded from
our working life, and from our apparently private worries. (This is why
the socialist call for political class struggle and the feminist slogan
???the personal is political??? have both been so significant.)
Parliament is meant to be a decision-making body open to everyone on
equal terms: rich and poor, man and woman, black and white and so on.
Each vote is supposedly of equal weight, so the inequalities in society
are washed away during an election: parliament is an equalised model of
society, with all main currents of opinion represented, in which
decisions can be made that represent the will of the people.
Of course, it???s nothing of the sort. Parliamentarians become members of
the upper classes, and most are drawn from the middle classes. They move
in circles of the rich and powerful. Their campaigns are funded by the
rich, and the capitalist media set their preferred boundaries for
electoral debates. Loyal politicians are given handouts and sinecures
after leaving parliament.
This system of peaceful patronage is so well entrenched that we often
struggle to imagine what would happen if a politician rebelled against
it. But most power in society is outside parliament ??? it???s in the hands
of the CEOs and corporate chairs who control most of the economy.
So rebellious governments can be directly disciplined by the ruling
class between elections: capitalists can use their unaccountable
economic power to create economic havoc, and routinely do so when
genuine leftists form government.
Infrequent elections help keep the system this way. We barely see, and
most of us probably couldn???t name, our local parliamentary
???representative???. But big capitalists know them personally, and can
interact with them ??? and in various ways help them form the ???right???
opinions ??? whenever they need to.
If that doesn???t work, the unelected parts of the state can wipe out
difficult governments. Courts can overturn their decisions. Officials
can dismiss them and dissolve parliaments. Bureaucrats can create social
turmoil by sabotaging their directives. And, ultimately, army officers
can, when needed, step in to install military rule.
The elected parts of the state are a relatively tiny part of society,
with little direct power, and they can be curtailed or dissolved when
the system requires. Real power lies outside them.
Parliaments weren???t always seen as democratic. Most were originally
small councils of aristocrats, elected by a tiny minority of the
population, before the right to vote was widely assured. In much of the
world, an important goal of the early socialist and workers??? movements
was to win the right to vote for everyone. Once that was achieved, the
ruling class had to develop new strategies to deal with the new
parliament. Racial discrimination, gerrymandering, and candidate
disqualification helped limit the impact of universal suffrage.
But so did the process of incorporation: allowing workers??? parties into
government, promising the power to govern capitalism and converting them
into a powerful component of the capitalist political system. It???s a
powerful lure when the state seems like the only institution capable of
changing the world, and ???politics??? means what happens in parliament.
This process of incorporation has been ongoing for a century. Now,
countries around the world have political parties called ???Socialist
Party???, ???Labour Party???, ???Workers??? Party??? or something like it, which
have generally perpetrated some of the worst crimes against the working
class, and are discredited and hypocritical parts of the hated political
establishment.
Revolutionary socialists have tried to build a different type of
political party: one that seeks to extend democracy beyond parliament
and turn the streets and workplaces into institutions of collective
political struggle. The ultimate goal is to develop from these struggles
democratic institutions through which the working class can rule directly.
A revolutionary party???s world view, structure and tactics have to differ
totally from those of political parties that just promote the election
of candidates in parliament. But when a revolution isn???t happening, and
parliamentary elections are, what are revolutionaries to do?
The lure of parliament and the dangers of incorporation have led some on
the left to renounce elections entirely. This goes beyond a tactical
boycott of a particular election and becomes a general principle that
revolutionaries must never run for parliament.
It???s a simple solution, but it carries dangers. Even during revolutions,
???official??? elections exert a powerful influence on people???s
consciousness. Up to the point when workers are ready and willing to
seize power, most consider capitalist elections to be the highest form
of politics, and the boundaries of politics are set partly by who
contests elections.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks ran for election
even to the local city councils because it allowed them to explain their
whole world view and how it connected to their struggles in the workplaces.
Two years later, workers??? councils spread throughout Germany. These were
institutions of workers??? democracy and embryos of a new society in which
workers ran everything. The ruling class tried to smother them by
calling elections to a National Assembly. The famously intransigent
revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg argued that her fledgling Communist Party
should stand candidates to advocate for the workers??? councils:
???We have to show the masses that there is no better answer to the
counter-revolutionary motion against the system of councils than to
achieve a massive demonstration of voters, who vote for precisely those
people who are against the National Assembly and for the system of
councils.???
Luxemburg, who spent her life fighting against the betrayals associated
with parliamentary ???socialism???, still saw the need to contest elections
??? precisely to undermine the authority of ruling class institutions.
Luxemburg???s approach has little in common with present-day parliamentary
socialists like Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, who have downgraded
their definition of ???socialism??? to mean ???whatever reforms can be
achieved through parliament???.
The revolutionary approach isn???t about forming government. Those who
believe that it is are compelled to subordinate principles to the need
to form and keep a parliamentary majority, under rules designed to keep
real power in the hands of the ruling class.
Some have advocated trying to wield both strategies at once, to be ???in
and against the state???. But if a parliamentary majority in a capitalist
parliament were a necessary precondition for socialism, then the
strategy for socialism would have to rely on making peace with existing
institutional powers that discipline capitalist governments.
Revolutionaries use elections as a platform to advocate for socialism,
to disrupt the consensus-building process of bourgeois elections and to
build faith in the working class and in the possibility of a world
organised for human need.
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George Carlin
??? Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe,
and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they
have to touch it to be sure. ???
??? George Carlin