The question of evaluating the use or importance of elections is conditioned by perspective. Here we contrast the revolutionary socialist and non-revolutionary liberal perspectives.
The tasks of a liberal political party and a socialist political party are different. A liberal party’s task is to win more seats in a legislature so it may advance its agenda. A socialist party’s task is to persuade the working class to take up a revolutionary movement that will replace the rule of the capitalist class by the rule of the working class, similarly, to pursue its class agenda.
Obviously, the undoing of capitalist dictatorship is beyond voting. Armed with a materialist understanding of the state, we know that the vote is only the surface appearance of capitalist society’s political power. The true political power in capitalist society is the same as any historically constituted state: armed bodies set in motion by the propertied classes against the propertyless classes. So self-respecting socialists have understood that the tendency of class dictatorship towards violence makes a revolution by ballot impossible unless by miracles. This does not mean that electoral organising is not useful or not properly socialist. It means we must approach the question with a clear recognition of our socialist perspective.
How does electoral politics relate to mass movements?
At present, elections represent one of the only times where most of the population is politically engaged. During an election, we have the widest access to a working class audience to whom we can offer our critique of capitalism and the liberal republic. But we must keep in mind our socialist perspective on the question. Socialists don’t want to repeat this cycle, we want to graduate beyond it. And while the working class wants to graduate beyond the stalemates and inefficiencies of the liberal republic, they have largely not yet decided it is worth overthrowing or have not yet committed themselves to this conclusion. Having gained access to this audience, what do we do with it? What is the upper limit of the value of that access? How do we steer our audience to a breaking of the existing institutional cycle?
In Marxist terms: there is a contradiction between a radical socialist movement for whom bourgeois elections are irrelevant and a non-radicalised working class for whom bourgeois politics remain immediately relevant.
So let’s restate the boundaries of our perspective:
If we are students of Lenin, we accept that the real goal of any social movement is the seizure of state power (The Dual Power. Vladimir Lenin, Pravda, April, 1917}. We also accept that the institution which is to replace the liberal republic and usher in socialism is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, put simply, a workers’ republic.
If we are students of revolutionism and not reformism, to draw from Rosa Luxemburg, then we understand that on one hand, we stand an incredibly small chance of winning an election at the local, state, or national level. And we also accept that even if we win, we will be surrounded by class enemies conspiring to deprive us of our revolutionary intentions—to reduce elected socialists to bourgeois agents.
"The theory of the gradual introduction of Socialism proposes a progressive reform of capitalist property and the capitalist State in the direction of Socialism. But in consequence of the objective laws of existing society, one and the other develop in a precisely opposite direction. The process of production is increasingly socialized, and State intervention, the control of the State over the process of production, is extended. But at the same time, private property becomes more and more the form of open capitalist exploitation of the labor of others, and State control is penetrated with the exclusive interest of the ruling class. The State, that is to say the political organization of capitalism, and the property relations, that is to say the juridical organization of capitalism become more capitalist and not more Socialist, opposing to the theory of progressive introduction of Socialism two insurmountable difficulties." (Reform or Revolution, p. 30-31. Rosa Luxemburg, Dover Publications)
So all of this taken together we arrive at this conclusion: on one hand, socialists must have their eyes fixed on the goal of seizing state power; on the other hand, we must reckon with a general public, a non-radical working class, that still places great relevance on bourgeois elections. Even those who pass on elections out of apathy are more convinced to do that than to invest themselves in a movement for a workers’ republic seizing state power.
Socialists must engage with bourgeois elections to be in step with where most of the working class’s political attention is focused. At the same time, socialists must not adopt a liberal set of goals hoping to gain legislative leverage and reduce themselves to reformists. We must engage the politically active and frustrated with the argument that the stalemates and inefficiencies are baked into the system and cannot be overcome from within it. We must also engage with the apathetic and retreated to persuade them that their retreat is a reaction and they serve themselves better taking part in a revolutionary movement for socialism.
But the practical question remains: if we know our goal is not to win a socialist majority in a liberal republican legislature, and we know that even to win such an election hardly moves the needle on accomplishing a socialist agenda, what should our electoral energies seek to accomplish? In the simplest terms possible: new organisers and new supporters.
What can we gain from elections?
We cannot gain seats, or legislative leverage as a bloc of legislators. Both theory and lived experience have liquidated the position of accomplishing, or even meaningfully advancing socialism through liberal republican institutions, rules, and processes.
In our extensive interactions with this politically attuned audience, we stand to gain new organisers and supporters. Keeping a socialist perspective, that is the most realistic and healthiest expectation to have.
New organisers can become trained revolutionaries and new generations of leadership in socialist parties. Their addition grows and strengthens the party’s capabilities to expand the scope of its activity and better tune its internal organisation. New supporters can be mobilised at other points in the present campaign and in future efforts. They can also help to amplify the reach of the party’s message beyond its true size. This accumulation of people makes a gravitational centre of a political party whose growing size is bound to catch others in its orbit. New faces, growing bodies of organisers and supporters—these are the true marks of electoral campaign success for a socialist party.
In other terms, greater organisational capacity and expanded reach should be the campaign’s goal. To strive for more risks the descent into reformism on one hand, or spectacle and self-sabotage on the other. We need to participate in elections, but we do not need to rely on them. They are useful, and even important, but not vital. To be sure of this, let’s ground ourselves in the reality that an election season is only every four years. It would be absurd of us to think that the bulk of what socialists can accomplish can only be done during the election years of the liberal republic.
After the elections, between the elections, and beyond the elections, what do we do?
Most years are not election years. Most of the time we do not have this readily available, politically attuned audience. During election years, we get to focus on the agitational and educational aspects of our work. But between those years, we must reemphasize the importance of organisation. That is why it is so important to treat new organisers and supporters as the highest reward for our electoral efforts.
Between elections, where most of our organising happens, we need to be able to rely on greater numbers to create more connections between our parties and working people. We need growing pools of supporters who can carry a party’s message further than its own direct reach.
Parties must put primary importance on the act of organising, but that is not to say they must be activist organisations. Many of the organisations involved in day-to-day work are just grassroots level activist groups being sure to not be parties, and not to be seen as parties. They seek to influence liberal parties’ policies often not realizing that socialists will be friendlier to their positions and more faithful allies fighting for them.
Between elections we have to grapple with the fact that so many active political forces that should be friendly to socialist parties and supportive of them are not deeply connected to them or under any level of influence from them.
The answer to this is not entirely the negative action of critique. Criticism of their tactics is certainly valid, but without gaining credibility with those we would seek to help through criticism, we would be a force making no impact. We need our parties and non-party organisations to be working more closely together. Parties need to understand the importance of non-party organisations and the need to gain credibility with them and win them over as supporters. Most importantly, parties need to understand their role in building the mass movement for socialism—the role of the Great Orientator. If we are students of Lenin, we will recall that Lenin pointed out that a party is the highest form of political organisation, but it is not the only one.
“The Party is the organised detachment of the working class. But it is not the only organisation of the working class. The proletariat has also a number of other organisations, without which, it cannot wage a successful struggle against capital…” (Foundations of Leninism, p. 101. Josef Stalin, Red Star Publishers, U.S.}
Many single-issue, grassroots campaigns are engaged in work that is friendly, or even foundational, to the socialist mission—higher minimum wage, union organising, climate activism, racial equality activism, anti-war activism, student and campus groups, and more. All of these groups are doing work that is part of the socialist mission. Groups are organising in these fields, but for their own sakes. Climate activism for the sake of the climate. Union activism for the sake of stronger, growing unions. The flaw in their thinking is not what they support, but how they appraise the political forces surrounding them, how they evaluate allies versus opponents, and how they evaluate institutional obstacles obstructing their goals.
Socialist parties do not need to remake these groups and do what they do, but more socialist-ly. Socialist parties need to have connections to these wider fields of struggle, gain credibility there, and persuade these organisations to conduct their work in the wider context of a struggle for socialism. Only a socialist party can make socialism a relevant political question. Only a socialist party can orient a torrent of roughly aligned political forces and set them in a single direction—the fight for socialism, and the struggle to win state power in the form of a workers’ republic.
The task of liberal political parties is to win elections. The task of socialist political parties is to make socialist revolution possible. Bonding socialist parties and socialist-friendly non-party organisations in cooperative relationships is the first step towards developing working class institutions which can acquire state-like character. Succeeding in that, socialists need to convince the working class that a new republic must take the place of the old and win the consent of the working class for an emergent network of institutions, a state-in-waiting, to exist as a legitimate government.
This year is an election. Socialists will not win. But we may grow our cadres and our bodies of supporters such that we can build the institutions which can effectuate a revolutionary displacement of power into the working class’s hands.
A liberal republic today, a workers’ republic tomorrow! Build the workers’ republic!