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Title: Anarchism and Elections Subtitle: A Workers Solidarity Movement Position Paper Date: July 2017 Source: Retrieved on 15<sup>th</sup> October 2021 from [[http://www.wsm.ie/c/anarchism-and-elections-0][www.wsm.ie]] Notes: <em>Passed by National Conference, July 2017. This paper sits under the State & Democracy paper. Have a look at that to understand contexts that are not repeated here.</em> Authors: Workers Solidarity Movement Topics: democracy, Elections, position paper Published: 2021-10-15 12:04:06Z
1. When we talk of electoralism we mean those methods that seek change through putting forward individuals for representative forms of government under class rule, i.e. parliaments and town or regional councils.
2. We have two fundamental issues with these institutions:
3. For these reasons we do not run candidates for election, and in almost every circumstance we do not advocate people vote. The only exceptions being the rare occasions where an election is in effect a referendum in a hyper-polarised society, one example being the 1994 election in South Africa that was deeply connected to the movement to end apartheid.
4. Referendums are different in that the people get to directly vote on an issue, thus making the decision themselves. While fundamentally different this is not to say referendums do not have their own problems including:
1. We generally won’t run high profile ‘spoil your vote’ campaigns as while these can have an educational aspect they also tend to create unnecessary hostility with other groups and individuals on the left who engage in electoralism. For that reason we are unlikely to engage in active mass outreach around the anarchist criticism of electoralism while campaigning is in progress, holding off until polls close or before such campaigns are really underway.
2. Our focus is generally on: