Elections

 "I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." - Eugene V. Debs

"Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers' candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled." - Karl Marx

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." - John Quincy Adams

Democracy under capitalism is reduced to people voting for competing groups of professional politicians, to giving the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down to the governing or opposition party (or parties).

Political analysts call this the "elite theory of democracy" since under it all that the people get to choose is which elite should exercise government power.

This contrasts with the original theory of democracy which envisages popular participation in the running of affairs and which political analysts call "participatory democracy".
This is the sort of democracy Socialists favour but we know it's never going to exist under capitalism. The most we will get under capitalism is the right to vote, under more-or-less fair conditions, for who shall control political power—a minimalist form of democracy but not to be dismissed for that since it at least provides a mechanism whereby a socialist majority could vote in socialist delegates instead of capitalist politicians.

The originally Marxist Social Democratic parties had in addition to the “maximum” programme of socialism what they called a “minimum programme” of immediate reforms to capitalism. What happened is that they attracted votes on the basis of their miniumum, not their maximum, programme, i.e. reformist votes, and so became the prisoners of these voters. In parliament, and later in office, they found themselves with no freedom of action other than to compromise with capitalism. Had they been the mandated delegates of those who voted for them (rather than leaders) this could be expressed by saying that they had no mandate for socialism, only to try to reform capitalism. It was not a case of being corrupted by the mere fact of going into national parliaments but was due to the basis on which they went there and how this restricted what they could do. In short, it is not power as such that corrupts. It is power obtained on the basis of followers voting for leaders to implement reforms that, if you want to put it that way, “corrupts”.

We advocate only socialism and nothing but (the so-called “maximum programme”)

We are not advocating that the State be used to create socialism , but that the State is used to abolish capitalism and used to abolish itself. To prevent the use of the State in the suppression of socialism by capturing it and emasculating it .

As for reformism to fight for present existing life , to resist capital's encroachment and to improve our economic condition does not delay the overthrow of the present social system.
When the worker acquires revolutionary consciousness he is still compelled to make the non-revolutionary struggle of every-day life . It is the propagating of the idea that THROUGH a policy or programme of reforms that the workers' situation can somehow be intrinsically improved or that it can progress towards the establishment of a socialist society that the SPGB adamantly refuses to recognise .

The conditions of existence of the wage-workers depends upon their wages. It is not determined by the legal law, but by the economic law of supply and demand.

The condition of existence of the wage-workers is determined by the progress of the development of machinery, the concentration of capital, the proportion of the unemployed industrial reserve army.

Social realities are outside of parliaments.

Although the bettering of the conditions of existence by way of political reform is impossible, it is not the same as regards the conditions of fighting. To distinguish between the conditions of fighting and the conditions of existence is not to split hairs. The difference is real. Some reforms would render the attacks of the proletariat more powerful, those of capitalism weaker- the right to strike , the right to picket , for instance . The class struggle is, therefore, both industrial and political but the SPGB consider the latter as being its ultimate form and its revolutionary form .

 William Morris said:

"The palliatives over which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless because they are but unorganised partial revolts against a vast, wide-spreading, grasping organisation which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the conditions of the people with an attack on a fresh side."

"I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so; in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels, and not as members of the governing body prepared to pass palliative measures to keep Society alive."

 We reject ALL forms of minority action to attempt to establish socialism, which can only be established by the working class when the immense majority have come to want and understand it. Without a socialist working class, there can be no socialism. The establishment of socialism can only be the conscious majority, and therefore democratic, act of a socialist-minded working class.

Whereas you can make people do what they do not wish to do, you cannot make them adopt a set of social relations which require their voluntary co-operation if they do not voluntarily co-operate .

In these circumstances the easiest and surest way for such a socialist majority to gain control of political power in order to establish socialism is to use the existing electoral machinery to send a majority of mandated socialist delegates to the various parliaments of the world. This is why we advocate using Parliament. Not to try to reform capitalism (the only way Parliaments have been used up till now), but for the single revolutionary purpose of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism by converting the means of production and distribution into the common property of the whole of society.

No doubt, at the same time, the working class will also have organised itself, at the various places of work, in order to keep production going, but nothing can be done here until the machinery of coercion which is the state has been taken out of the hands of the capitalist class by political action.

Naive reformism, if you wish to claim that, but who offers alternative strategies that are not flawed.

The vote is not a gift to the masses from the Government out of the beneficence of its heart. We don't advocate de facto disenfranchisement of the worker by promoting political abstention. The right to vote can become a powerful instrument to end our servitude and to achieve genuine democracy and freedom. Working people with an understanding of socialism can utilise their vote to signify that the overwhelming majority demand change and to bring about social revolution.

The first object of a socialist organisation is the development of the desire for socialism among the working class and the preparation of the political party to give expression to that desire. What our capitalist opponents consequently do when the majority wish to prevail will determine our subsequent actions. If they accept defeat, well and good. If they choose not to accept the verdict of the majority which is given through the medium of their own institutions and contest that verdict by physical force, then the workers will respond in kind , with the legitimacy and the authority of a democratic mandate.

The important thing is for the workers to gain control of the political machinery, because the political machine is the real centre of social control - not made so by capitalist rulers but developed and evolved over centuries and through struggles .

The power over the means of life which the capitalist class has, is vested in its control of the political machinery. Ownership of the world's economic resources is certainly an economic factor, but that ownership, if challenged, will find its means of enforcement by and through the State political machine, which, as everybody should know, includes the armed forces.

Of course, an elaborate legal machinery exists whereby claims on private property are settled among the capitalists themselves, but behind the Judicature and the Legislature stands the means of enforcing the decrees. The political arm of capitalism rules the economic body of the system in the final analysis: which reveals the chief reason why the capitalist class concern themselves so much about political action; they realise that in this field their economic interest finds its ultimate, if not immediate, protection. Thus, the political organisation of the workers for Socialist purposes is thrust upon us as a primary and imperative necessity. The SPGB, in aiming for the control of the State, is a political party in the immediate sense.

The workers' political organisation must precede the economic, since, apart from the essential need of the conquest of the powers of government, it is on the political field that the widest and most comprehensive propaganda can be deliberately maintained. It is here that the workers can be deliberately and independently organised on the basis of Socialist thought and action. In other words, Socialist organisation can proceed untrammelled by ideas other than those connected with its revolutionary objective.

The SPGB claims to be Marxist .

"The irony of history turns everything topsy-turvy. We, the ‘revolutionists’, thrive better by the use of constitutional means than by unconstitutional and revolutionary methods. The parties of law and order, as they term themselves, are being destroyed by the constitutional implements which they themselves have fashioned.” - Engels.

To paraphrase, our "reformist" parliamentarianism transforms elections from a means of deceit into a means of emancipation

"...the more the proletariat matures towards its self-emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It can and never will be that in the modern State. But that is sufficient. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point among the labourers, they as well as the capitalists will know what to do.” - Engels.

The SPGB position is consistent with Marx's presuppositions to recognise parliament as an institution geared to the needs of capitalism, and therefore inappropriate as the vehicle for a fundamental transformation of society, but yet to regard its connected electoral practices as coinciding with the principles involved in that transformation that adds the possibility of a peaceful transition to a new society.

Having agreed that the socialist revolution requires the endorsement of the majority, the most obvious riposte is that anarchists present no way of how, without counting individuals’ preferences as in a ballot, a majority is determined .

Firstly, we would take issue with some historic examples that the general will of the majority are always thwarted by the capitalist class.

There has been much analysis of the Nazi’s and the one thing that is clear is that Hitler rejected putschism after 1923 and concentrated on the constitutional methods of achieving political power and became the largest party within the Reichstag, albeit not a party with a overall majority, although he did achieve the necessary two-thirds majority vote required to suspend the German constitution and pass the “Enabling Act “ ...that supposedly was meant to delegate just temporary power to him. It was through the capture of political power by the vote that the Nazi’s could impose and exercise their dictatorship and regardless of any attempt to re-write history , …The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away…The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans…On the contrary , they supported it with genuine enthusiasm…” [The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer]. 

Many other citations can be offered to demonstrate that the Nazis held power because that did have the support (granted perhaps in cases passive support) of the majority.

Spain and Franco is often offered up as a evidence of the might of the military in the pay of the capitalist class but the first blood spilled was the summary execution of 200 senior officers who would not go against the Republic. ( as an aside ,  just how many of Franco’s Moorish troops would have obeyed Franco’s orders if the Spanish Republic had promised Moroccan independence).

Also contrary to what many now think that Spain was a hot bed of anarchists.

"Not only did the CNT lack the support of a majority of the Spanish people, they argued, but it lacked the support of the majority of the Spanish working class. Anarchosyndicalists were a minority within a minority. Even within the CNT membership, a large number of workers and peasants shared only a nominal allegiance to libertarian ideals. They were members of the CNT because the union was strong in their localities and work places. If these people, and the Spaniards generally, were not educated in Anarchist principles, warned the moderates, the revolution would simply degenerate into an abhorrent dictatorship of ideologues" [The Spanish Anarchists. The Heroic years - Murray Bookchin ]

Not the big majority of support which is a pre -requisite for socialism.

According to Wiki, “… Mussolini thus legally reached power, in accordance with the Statuto Albertino , the Italian Constitution. The March on Rome was not the conquest of power which Fascism celebrated but rather a transfer of power within the framework of the constitution…”

But, of course, it is argued that it was a “ …a transfer made possible by the surrender of public authorities in the face of fascist intimidation and the complicity of the bourgeoisie, who thought it would be possible to manipulate Mussolini…”

In Chile’s case and Allende, if you deny Hitler the right as the majority party with minority vote then Allende must be denied his right to power too since his was 36.2 percent of the vote to 34.9 percent for Alessandri and with 27.8 percent going to a Tomic.

For every coup , we can easily counter tenfold where the military stood passive or even actually provided support to the popular will .

The  alternate strategies general strikes and massed actions and “ARMING “ of the masses are naive tactics

 James Connolly believed that street-fighting was the best tactic because the capitalist class would not destroy its own buildings being private property, their own bricks and mortar, and was then confronted by the British State which subsequently subjected him to artillery and cannon fire.

 Bookchin also wrote along the lines that you can only stay on the barricades for so long, after all, even revolutionaries need to eat. 

There is an underlying assumption that those in the military are more immune to socialist propaganda, that they are divorced from civilian society, that they do not possess family and friends outside the military and therefore will be suffering from some type of ideological uneven development and that the social ideas of the general population will not be adopted by those in the armed forces. Surely, that is all up for debate .

But to repeat once more the SPGB case, the institution of parliament is not at fault . It is just that people's ideas have not yet developed beyond belief in leaders and dependence on a political elite.

Control of parliament by representatives of a conscious revolutionary movement will enable the bureaucratic-military apparatus to be dismantled and the oppressive forces of the state to be neutralised, so that socialism may be introduced with the least possible violence and disruption. Parliament and local councils , to the extent that their functions are administrative and not governmental, can and will be used to co-ordinate the emergency immediate measures to transform society when socialism is established .

If Bookchin can favour a political a party, operating at local level, organising itself on democratic, non-hierarchical lines to participate in local elections why can't a party contesting national elections do so? Why can’t local "libertarian municipalist" parties form a federation based on the principles of delegated democracy to win control of central state power without becoming a statist party?

And if they could, why not do it? 

Surely this would be a better strategy than working to win control of local councils in the hope that when a majority of them had been won the nation-state's power would be sufficiently diminished that people would withdraw their support from it, and it would collapse like a house of cards?

Far better, is it not, if only to minimise the risk of violence, to also organise to win a majority in parliament too, not to form a government, but to end capitalism and dismantle the state. 

Political democracy is not just, a trick whereby the capitalist class get the working class to endorse their rule; it is a potential instrument that the working class can turn into a weapon to use in ending capitalism and class rule. Bookchin’s mistake was in being inconsistent in not realising that the principles of democratic organisation he recommends for his local municipalist organisations could equally applied on the broader political field, to the workers self-organised politically for socialism, i. e. to a workers' socialist party in the fullest sense.

Socialists qualify their endorsement of parliamentarianism , criticising bourgeois democacy as the best we can hope for under capitalism but not the ideal model possible for the revolutionary. Capitalist democracy is not a participatory democracy, which a genuine democracy has to be. In practice the people generally elect to central legislative assemblies and local councils professional politicians who they merely vote for and then let them get on with the job. In other words, the electors abdicate their responsibility to keep any eye on their representatives, giving them a free hand to do what the operation of capitalism demands. But that’s as much the fault of the electors as of their representatives, or rather it is a reflection of their low level of democratic consciousness.
It can’t be blamed on the principle of representation as such. 

There is no reason in principle why, with a heightened democratic consciousness (such as would accompany the spread of socialist ideas), even representatives sent to state bodies could not be subject – while the state lasts – to democratic control by those who sent them there. The argument that anarchists usually put against this is that “power corrupts”. But if power inevitability corrupts why does this not apply also in non-parliamentary elected bodies such as syndicalist union committees or workers councils?

Certainly alternate strategies such as the General Strike are ones we also could employ in certain specific particular scenarios and therefore do not necessarily exclude them as tactics. What we do not do is to raise them to a point of political principle.

Having earlier criticised James Connolly we'd agree  with this:
"...I am inclined to ask all and sundry amongst our comrades if there is any necessity for this presumption of antagonism between the industrialist and the political advocate of socialism. I cannot see any. I believe that such supposed necessity only exists in the minds of the mere theorists or doctrinaires. The practical fighter in the work-a-day world makes no such distinction. He fights, and he votes; he votes and he fights. He may not always, he does not always, vote right; nor yet does he always fight when and as he should. But I do not see that his failure to vote right is to be construed into a reason for advising him not to vote at all; nor yet why a failure to strike properly should be used as a gibe at the strike weapon, and a reason for advising him to place his whole reliance upon votes..."