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Title: None of the Above Author: Wayne Price Date: 2004 Language: en Topics: electoral politics, Elections, Northeastern Anarchist, United States of America, Left Electoralism Source: Retrieved on March 16, 2016 from https://web.archive.org/web/20160316030128/http://nefac.net/node/1209 Notes: Written by Wayne Price, a member of Open City Anarchist Collective (NEFAC-NYC), and also active in the US Labor Against War coalition. Published in The Northeastern Anarchist Issue #9, Summer/Fall 2004.
Historically, anarchists and other anti-authoritarians have rejected
participation in elections. We neither run candidates nor vote for those
who do run. There have been exceptions to this tradition, but the
mainstream of revolutionary anarchism has been against participation in
elections or in elected government bodies.
This position may seem odd to most people on the Left since,
overwhelmingly, U.S. liberals and reformists are in favor of voting for
the Democratic Party against the Republicans. Particularly in this
presidential election year (2004) there is an almost hysterical desire
among liberals to elect some Democrat (any Democrat!) to unseat the
appalling George W. Bush. The AFL-CIO, under the Sweeny administration,
has made a major effort to elect more Democratic politicians. Those Left
activists who reject the Democratic Party are mostly for building a new,
third party, such as the Green Party, or a Labor Party based on the
unions. They reject the Democrats but accept electoralism.
Revolutionary anarchists reject this consensus. Sometimes it feels
uncomfortable to be disagreeing with almost everyone else, from the Left
to the Right, but we have to tell the truth as best as we see it.
Anarchists point out that the Democrats, like the Republicans, are
supporters of big business (they believe in the capitalist economic
system; they cannot run without getting money from businesspeople)--the
Democrats are militarist (they began and carried out World Wars I and
II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the recent Yugoslavian War,
they voted for the current Iraqi War, and are, if anything, more
uncritical in their support for Israel than the Republicans) — and are
supporters of the national state (they have no program for, or interest
in, dismantling national sovereignty.) Meanwhile, the Labour Party of
Britain is the main ally of Bush in the Iraqi War and occupation. The
other Social Democratic and Communist parties of Europe and the world
(such as the Canadian New Democratic party) have abandoned any pretense
of advocating a new and better social system, becoming out and out
supporters of capitalism and its imperialism — as has the once radical
German Green Party. They do not make alternate parties look very useful
for social change in the U.S.
On the other hand, almost every progressive step in U.S. society came
from efforts outside of the electoral process. The last wave of
radicalization — the so-called Sixties — included massive struggles by
African-Americans for their freedom, beginning in the late ‘50s. It
included large nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns in the South,
such as demonstrations, boycotts, and strikes. These were followed in
the Northern ghettoes by violent rebellions. While not ending all
oppression, these extra-electoral struggles destroyed legal segregation
and forced the passing of anti-discrimination and affirmative action
laws.
Meanwhile, there developed a struggle against the Vietnam War, which
included mass demonstrations, student strikes, occupations of colleges,
confrontations with the police and national guard, draft resistance, and
a virtual mutiny in the U.S. army. Together with the military struggle
of the Vietnamese, these non-electoral activities placed limits on the
war and finally led to its abandonment by the U.S. state. On the other
hand, antiwar electoral efforts, in the Democratic Party or third party
efforts (such as the Peace and Freedom Party), were failures.
Other struggles of the period included successful unionization drives in
social service and government sectors as well as a wave of wildcat
strikes. The Queer Liberation movement took off with the Stonewall
Uprising in NYC. The Women’s Liberation movement also began outside the
electoral arena with consciousness-raising groups and demonstrations.
Additionally, one of its greatest legal victories was non-electoral (Roe
v. Wade, making abortion legal) and was a judicial response to the mass
movement. Its main electoral effort, passing an Equal Rights Amendment
to the Constitution, was a failure.
The wave of radicalization before the Sixties was in the Thirties. It
was marked by major unionization drives. These included mass picketing,
occupation of factories (sit-down strikes), and physical fights with
police, the national guard, and vigilantes. Democratic Party/New Deal
politicians only responded to the mass movement in order to control it,
but it was the strikers who led the way. The methods they used are
illegal now and have been abandoned by the unions--a fact directly
connected to the decline in the union movement.
In brief, almost all progress in freedom has been made by mass struggles
outside of elections and against elected politicians. Yet, the Left of
today is mainly focused on the elections as the way forward. Why is
this?
One reason is the weakness of the Left today. Mass movements are
limited, therefore people do not think in terms of mass movements.
People ask, How shall I vote? But I am not particularly interested in
persuading isolated individuals to not vote. Vote or do not vote, it
makes little difference. One vote out of thousands or millions will not
change things, in our over-centralized and massified society.
Liberals deny this, pointing to Florida 2000 as an example of how a few
votes made a difference. (They use this argument to denounce those who
voted for Nader on the Green ticket.) But the shoe is on the other foot.
In that Floridian election many African-Americans were illegally kept
from voting by false records of having been convicts or by police
roadblocks. Many other people voted but were not counted, due to the
voting machines. Others voted but were confused by the ballots and ended
up being counted for candidates they did not intend to vote for. After
much dishonesty and trickery, the election was finally settled by the
vote of five Supreme Court justices! Rather than showing the value of
individual votes, Florida 2000 was a classic demonstration of the
fraudulence of bourgeois electoral democracy.
Consequently, elections serve two purposes. One is to settle disputes
between different sections of the ruling class, without bloodshed. The
other is to give the people the impression that they rule the
government.
The U.S. election of 2000 did decide between two groups of
representatives of the rich, with slightly different programs, but for a
moment it exposed the lie that the people rule.
What I want to ask is: what should large groups do? Although many of
these oppressed forces have been denounced by the Right as special
interests, potentially they represent vast numbers of people: workers,
women, people of color, everyone who wants to breathe clean air, and so
on. They are also the traditional base of the Democratic Party, which
would collapse if the unions, African-Americans, etc., were to withdraw
their support. Potentially these groupings have great power, if they
were willing to use it. This is especially true for the working class
and its unions. By means of a general strike, the workers could stop any
society in its tracks, and start it up again on a different basis. The
potential for mass action outside of electoralism is great and the
limitations of electoral action are also great.
The controversy over electoralism goes way back in the history of the
socialist movement. It was the main programmatic disagreement between
Marx and the anarchists. Marx thought that the road forward for the
working class was to form workers parties independent of the
pro-capitalist parties. (Therefore, unlike many modern Marxists, he
would not have endorsed the Democratic Party nor any capitalist third
party.) He denounced the anarchists for rejecting politics, when
actually what they rejected was voting. There was other socialists, even
Marxists, such as William Morris, who disagreed with Marx on this, but
they were in a minority.
Later, Lenin and his followers tried to revive Marxism after most Social
Democratic (and supposedly Marxist) parties had endorsed their
governments in World War I. After the Russian revolution, many — perhaps
most — of those attracted to the new Marxism were against electoralism.
Lenin was on the Right of the new Communist movement. He denounced the
anti-electoralists as “Infantile Leftists.” No group was allowed to
affiliate with the new Communist International unless it agreed to run
in elections.
Over time, the issue of electoralism became debated in terms of the
supposed Parliamentary Road to Socialism. That is, is it possible for
socialists to legally and peacefully get elected to parliament (Congress
in the U.S.)? Can a socialist society be voted into being? (note: In
this article I am using “socialism” in the broadest sense, including
state socialists and libertarian socialists, Marxist-Leninists, social
democrats, and anarcho-communists.)
Marx had been ambiguous on this. He had speculated that Britain and the
U.S. might legally develop into socialism through elections, while most
of Europe could not. It is unclear from his writings, at least to me,
just how he expected election victories in those European states to lead
to revolution. In his time, Lenin did not believe in any peaceful or
legal evolution toward socialism. He advocated using elections and
parliament as platforms for revolutionary propaganda. Similarly he
advocated support for reformist parties (such as the British Labor
Party) as a tactic for exposing them. Communists will support
reformists, he said, as a rope supports a hanged man.
Yet the Marxist (and other) workers parties did degenerate into
reformist parties everywhere. This is true of even fairly new Left
parties. For example, there is the Workers Party of Brazil, which is led
by Luiz Inacio da Silva (or Lula), a former factory worker and labor
leader. He was elected president in October 2002 with an enormous
majority of the votes, due to his promises of radical change. There was
great popular rejoicing in Brazil and elsewhere (as if a social
Democratic government had never been elected before). A year later, it
is reported, “[...] Mr. da Silva has followed the same economic policies
that he criticized when they were being executed by the previous
government, and he has failed... to carry out the promises he made
during the campaign. Inflation and interest rates have dropped and the
budget surplus has risen, thrilling Wall Street, but the cost has been
more joblessness...” (NY Times, 1/4/04).
Why have these supposedly radical parties so consistently turned to the
right, slowly or quickly as the case may be? Is there something about
the electoral process, which pushes them to adapt to capitalism? I would
say that there are two sets of forces; one from below and another from
above, which pressure them to the right.
From below, there is the pressure of popular consciousness. Election
campaigns are run in order to get elected, if not this time then in the
future. Once elected, a party positions itself to be reelected. (For the
moment I leave out those who just use elections as platforms for
revolutionary propaganda; very few, if any, U.S. supporters of a Green
or Labor party follow this Leninist approach). But popular consciousness
is mixed. Most people are individually decent and often have good
spiritual and moral values. Politically they distrust big corporations;
and are for the right to join unions, the right to a decent job, racial
equality (at least in the abstract), women’s rights (ditto), civil
liberties, free speech, nationalized health care, a clean environment,
and do not want war. At the same time, most people are patriotic, have
religious superstitions, as well as have racist and sexist ideas. People
are often irrational, selfish, and look to leaders to take care of them.
(And in the U.S., right now, people are scared of terrorism and
therefore many support government repression and foreign wars.) People
usually want a better world for their children. But most voters do not
yet accept the goal of a transformation of capitalist society into
socialism. Today only a radical minority sees the need for, or wants, a
revolutionary change in the social system. This is what defines this
period as non-revolutionary.
If a party wants to get elected it must make all sorts of limited
proposals to win votes. Most supporters will be attracted to the party
for its reform proposals, not for its supposedly revolutionary final
ends. Most will vote for its reform program and join it for this
program. There is, of course, nothing wrong with advocating reforms if
they are integrated into a revolutionary program. But with electoralism,
the reforms become the real program and the radical goal becomes just a
pie-in-the-sky vision, which means little in action.
More important is the pressure from above. To try to get elected, in a
non-revolutionary period, is to offer to manage a capitalist state and
capitalist economy. While a socialist party’s long-term goal may be a
socialist change, an electoralist strategy means that its short-term
goal must be to govern a capitalist society. But what if the capitalists
do not want to be governed by a socialist party? They will not give it
money to run its campaigns but will, instead, finance its opponents.
They will use the press (their press, after all) to lie about the
socialist party If the party is elected the capitalists can sabotage the
economy in many ways. They can go on a capital strike and close down
their factories. They can refuse to invest. They can take their money
out of the country and invest elsewhere. These possible actions show the
limitations of electoral reform proposals. Even if elections were
completely honest and money-free (an impossibility), the capitalists
would still own the economy and the politicians would have to cooperate
with them.
Similarly, the socialist politicians must persuade the generals and
police chiefs that they are not antimilitary or antipolice. Also, the
socialists will have to get along with the civil service bureaucrats, or
nothing will get done. This is the price of managing a capitalist state.
So even a socialist party with radical goals would have to make deals
with the bosses. This is why Lula, in his campaign for the Brazilian
presidency, went out of his way to persuade Brazilian and foreign
capitalists that he was not antibusiness. That is why Allende, then
president of Chile, brought General Pinochet into his cabinet (then the
generals overthrew and killed Allende anyway). Whatever its rhetoric,
any socialist party would have to do the same or face artificial
unemployment and the resultant mass discontent. The capitalists could
see to it that the socialists will not be reelected if they do not play
ball. The same is even truer with U.S. Democrats, who have never claimed
to be anything but supporters of capitalism. Even the most liberal
Democrats must be prepared to make deals and moderate their programs if
they want to look effective in governing a capitalist economy.
Suppose, on the other hand, that a socialist party is really
revolutionary and has the popularity to get elected? Or, what if the
party is reformist but the capitalists feel that they cannot afford to
let it be elected, since even the mildest reforms threaten them in a
situation of economic crisis? In such situations, the capitalists would
see to it that the socialists do not get elected or stay elected. Laws
would be passed limiting the socialists rights. Fascist gangs would be
subsidized to terrorize the socialists and drive them from the streets.
The police and courts would be inspired to persecute them. Socialist
militants would be fired from their jobs. If necessary, elections would
be canceled and a dictatorship installed. If the socialists had gotten
so far as to be elected (as with Allende or Spain in the 1930s), they
would be overthrown by a military coup. The Left would be drowned in
blood. This is the history of fascism in Europe in the twenties and
thirties, of dictatorships in Latin America, and of dictatorships and
repression everywhere in the world. Eventually, after years of vicious
repression, a limited capitalist democracy might be restored, once the
Left had been thoroughly defeated.
The United States is one of the most difficult governments to make a
sweeping transformation by elections. It has a complicated system of
checks and balances, with election of different parts of the national
government taking place at different times for different lengths of
service (including six years for Senators and lifetime appointment of
judges). It has obviously undemocratic features, such as the electoral
college or the Senate with its two seats per state, regardless of the
size of the population of each state. The whole system was deliberately
designed by the “founders” to prevent either one-man dictatorship or
too-much democratic control.
Think of U.S. history in the 1850s,when slavery became an explosive
issue. The old political parties were fractured and one dissolved (the
Whigs). A new party was formed which was antislavery, at least in a
moderate way (the Republicans). They did not threaten to abolish slavery
where it existed, only to prevent its expansion. (Advocates of forming a
new party today should notice that it took a total crisis leading to the
tearing apart of the country to produce a new party. This was the only
successful formation of a third party in U.S. history.) The Republicans
were elected in 1860. Lincoln got the most votes — a plurality — and won
fairly by the rules. However, the slave owners did not accept the
election results. They rebelled against it, seeking to break up the
country and defeat its elected government.
They took most of the leading U.S. military officers with them. There
followed the Civil War, as bloody a conflict as any revolution. This is
in spite of the fact that Lincoln’s program threatened the slaveocracy
far less than a socialist program would threaten the capitalist rulers
of the U.S. today.
It is absurd to imagine that the capitalists of the U.S. or any other
country would permit themselves peacefully to lose their power, their
wealth, and their positions, merely because they lost an election. The
U.S. ruling class has supported dictatorships and repression around the
world and does so to this day. It has supported regimes, which murdered
millions of their citizens. To maintain its wealth it would do the same
at home. Anyone who imagines that there can be a peaceful and legal
overturn of capitalism is living in a fool’s paradise. I wish it were
otherwise but the U.S. capitalists will not leave the stage of history
unless forced to. A revolution will be democratic, the self-organization
of the exploited majority. But it must be prepared to defend itself
against the expected violence of the capitalists and their agents, or it
will be destroyed.
Liberals are furiously against the administration of George W. Bush, but
rarely ask how the country got into this mess. A gang of conscienceless
adventurers has been elected and then proceeds to loot the treasury in
the interests of the very rich and to start a foreign war. How did this
happen?
The turning point was the election of 1964. From World War II to then
there had been little difference between the two major parties. The
Republicans had accepted the New Deal and the Democrats did not intend
to expand it. Both parties were enthusiastic about the Cold War and
domestic anti-Communism. The unions were shackled but were locked into
the Democratic Party anyway. Social philosophers regarded this national
consensus as proof of the virtues of U.S. democracy.
In 1964, however, the extreme Right won control of the Republicans and
ran Barry Goldwater for president. In the election Johnson swamped
Goldwater and almost everyone thought that things would now return to
normal. But the Right kept on organizing until it was able to take over
the Republicans lock, stock, and barrel.
I was too young to vote in 1964 but I followed the election process
closely. I read the debate on the Left between those who were against
voting for either candidate and those, such as Michael Harrington, who
were for voting for Johnson. At the time I was persuaded by the
pro-Democratic position. Goldwater had to be stopped or he would expand
the war in Vietnam and do other dangerous things. Enough people agreed
with this view to elect Johnson in a landslide. Then Johnson went on to
vastly expand the war in Vietnam and to invade the Dominican Republic to
overthrow an elected government. I had been duped. I concluded that the
radical Leftists had been right after all and swore off voting for the
Democrats.
Harrington and many others argued for a strategy called Political
Realignment. The idea was to drive right wing forces (Southern racists
and the big-city political machines in the North) out of the Democrats
and into the Republicans. Then the Democrats would become the party of
the unions, African-Americans, and the Left. It is almost embarrassing
to cite this strategy today. The Southern racists did move from the
Democrats to the Republicans. Big-city machines, which once controlled
the Northern Democrats, have generally collapsed. Fanatical
right-wingers have taken over the Republicans, with views that go all
the way to fascist advocates of theocratic dictatorship and the
restoration of racial segregation. However, the result has not been a
move to the Left by the Democrats but their shift to the Right. Since
the Republicans have done so well appealing to the Right, the Democrats
have also swung to the Right, in an effort to catch up with them.
Meanwhile, liberals, rather than becoming disgusted with the Democrats,
have stuck with them. In election after election, liberals have voted
for the Democrats, since the Republicans have so obviously been worse.
And in election after election, the Republicans have consistently gotten
worse and the Democrats have followed behind, moving more and more to
the Right. The liberal support of the Democrats is no longer advocated
as part of a grand strategy of Realignment but merely as Lesser
Evil-ism. Taken seriously this means admitting that the Democrats are,
indeed, evil, even if lesser, but by the time the election rolls around
liberals usually persuade themselves that the Democratic candidate is
really good.
Even though they both accept the same framework, the point is that there
are differences between the Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats
are, if not Left, at least less to the Right. The point is that we
cannot beat the far Right with the Democrats. The lesser evil cannot
defeat the greater evil. To repeat, supporting the Democrats has
resulted in a growth of the Right, the domination of the Republicans by
the far Right, the domination of the national government by the
Republicans, and the moving of the Democrats further to their Right.
Recognizing this, some on the Left have sought to break out of the
Democratic Party trap by creating new, third, parties. They remain
caught in the electoralist trap. They do not propose that the new party
have an anti-capitalist program. In fact, none of the third party
efforts has a socialist program. Ralph Nadar’s campaign has criticized
big business, but he has always advocated a better-regulated capitalism.
These are all efforts to create a third capitalist party. In practice,
it is extremely difficult to create a third party in the U.S., given its
winner-takes-all election system, the need for big bucks to run a
campaign, and the widespread lesser-evilism which keeps on drawing
independent voters back into the Democratic swamp. Whether or not a new
party is a good idea, we have to ask whether the movement should be
spending its limited money and human resources in such a difficult
effort.
Suppose a major crisis were to shake the U.S., such as a collapse of the
economy. There would be mass discontent. In that case, a new party might
form, precisely to get in front of the mass rebelliousness and to lead
it back into the established order. That is, the new party would be an
obstacle to change, not a means of achieving it. The party would be
based on the Left of the Democrats (such as it is) tearing itself away
from the Democrats in order to maintain its base. It would include the
union bureaucrats, more-or-less liberal party hacks, popular preachers,
and various demagogues. It might call itself a Labor party, due to the
participation of the union officials, or it might not, but the
middle-class composition of the organizers would be the same. It might
use democratic socialist rhetoric, but its program would really be the
stabilization of capitalism. In fact it would be a new capitalist party
and not a challenge to the system. Due to the very capitalist crisis
that created it, it would be unable to make real improvements; but it
might be able to derail a popular rebellion. Such a formation should not
be welcomed but opposed.
There are some who advocate the original Leninist approach of using
elections only as platforms for revolutionary propaganda. One problem
with this is that it makes it look like even the revolutionary
socialists believe in the value of elections and Congress. Whatever we
say in words would seem to be contradicted by our actions. More
importantly, such an approach cannot be maintained indefinitely. In
non-revolutionary periods there will be enormous pressure to really try
to get elected by promising reforms and then trying to get these reforms
enacted in parliament (Congress). This is the history of the Communist
Parties in Western Europe. They adapted to the electoral system far more
than they influenced the system. Over time they became reformists in
practice, and when there were revolutionary upheavals (such as in France
in 1968), counterrevolutionaries in action.
To repeat, the question is not what you or I should do but what we
should all be doing on election day. I am not trying to dissuade anyone
from voting for a Democrat against George Bush, if that is what he or
she wants to do. (I myself will not vote for any Democrat due to
personal revulsion.) What I am opposed to is the AFL-CIO endorsing
Democrats, giving them the workers money, using its members as
foot-soldiers for Democratic candidates, manning phone banks for the
Democrats on election day — and then acting surprised when the Democrats
vote for anti-labor legislation together with the Republicans.
Instead, the unions could be spending their money and using their people
to organize the 91% of private business workers who are not in unions. A
big expansion in the size of unions would do a lot to make their demands
more influential. Unions should support union organizing in poor and
oppressed nations, to raise the standard of living there for workers.
The unions need to be much more militant. This includes striking despite
judicial injunctions or anti-strike laws (for public employee unions).
It includes mass pickets, occupation of work places, secondary boycotts
of suppliers, and general hell-raising.
Most important of all is the idea of the general strike, where all the
unions go out, in a city, region, or nationwide. A successful major
strike or, even better, a general strike, would cause the workers to
feel their power in a way in which no election could. It would lead to a
breakthrough in consciousness for many workers.
Oppressed communities need to be democratically self-organized and to be
able to use militant mass actions against repression, in coalition with
each other and the labor movement. This applies to all oppressed groups
with their own needs and issues, but who overlap with all others. They
too need as much self-organization as possible and militant mass action,
in coalition with all the overlapping groupings, especially labor.
Anarchists do not say, wait until the revolution. We advocate militant
mass action right now to win even partial gains. We support the struggle
for reforms, but do not think that this system can consistently and
permanently provide a decent life for everyone. A revolution is needed
(the complete transformation of capitalism into libertarian socialism).
Within anarchism, there have been exceptions to this view. The first
self-labeled anarchist, Proudhon, was elected to the French parliament.
Murray Bookchin, a well-known anarchist of today, advocates running in
local elections and taking over city and town councils, as part of his
Libertarian Municipalism strategy. The arguments against electoralism
apply to this strategy too.
City governments are merely local parts of the national state. Any
attempt to make radical changes locally would be overruled by the state
government and the national government (the way judges forbade city
councils from passing resolutions against South Africa and refusing to
do business with SA businesses — this was creating their own foreign
policy, the judges said, and was not permitted). City governments
preside over local capitalist economies. An anti-business program would
cause local businesses to pull out of town and invest elsewhere. The
town would go broke and the radicals would be voted out.
There is nothing wrong with community organizing, in fact, it is vitally
important, but only if illusions in the local state are opposed. Also,
by his indifference to unions and the working class, Bookchin rules out
mobilizing one of the potentially most important forces for shaking up
local communities.
In any case, most of the revolutionary wing of anarchism has
historically opposed using elections (locally or nationally). From the
beginning, the anarchist movement has rejected the possibility of an
electoral road to socialism (meaning, not state socialism but
libertarian socialism or anarcho-communism). They have opposed both
revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, which aims to overthrow the existing
state and replace it with a new state (the so-called dictatorship of the
proletariat, really a dictatorship of a bureaucratic party), and the
social democracy (reformism), which advocates electing their
bureaucratic party to run the existing state. Both programs require the
people to chose a few leaders who will supposedly represent them in the
national capital. These leaders will be political FOR the workers. The
workers can go back to their jobs, doing what they are told by their
bosses.
Instead, we as anarchists say that working people should organize
themselves, should create institutions of direct, face-to-face
democracy, such as factory councils or community committees, and
federate these together. Stop relying on others and take your fate into
your own hands!