Participation in Parliaments/Elections

[Epictetus]

Do you think Communist parties should take part in elections or even parliaments? Can participation in this bourgeois practice be helpful to the movement or is it just exacerbating the problems caused by the bourgeois institutions?

[The Idler]

Elections yes, parliaments not really.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

No, no and yes. Electoral participation is the death of radicalism and the deformed birth of reformism; the beginning of pandering to popular winds and/or falling into utter internal cynicism and eventual even greater irrelevancy and participation in the attack on the working class. ("Hey, we were not in favour of arseterity! No, we said no while we were in government!" Oh, my! What edges you have! Swords sharp as rocks eroded into pillows.)

[ComradeOm]

It's a tactical choice. So long as the ambition isn't to win power via parliament itself then it depends entirely on local circumstances. There's been times when participating in elections has been productive, times when boycotting them has been counter-productive and times when participating has been corrosive.

[Jemdet Nasr]

Electoral participation is the death of radicalism and the deformed birth of reformism....

But what about the use of elections to radicalize the nonradical? Elections are some of the most visible political events. Couldn't people campaigning in this manner draw quite a bit of attention and interest to our movement? After all, it's easy for people to ignore agitators passing out pamphlets in the streets, but it is much harder to ignore elections. Elections could be one of the best ways to make our cause visible, with the added benefit of giving the curious easy and obvious access to more information and inroads.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

But what about the use of elections to radicalize the nonradical? Elections are some of the most visible political events. Couldn't people campaigning in this manner draw quite a bit of attention and interest to our movement? After all, it's easy for people to ignore agitators passing out pamphlets in the streets, but it is much harder to ignore elections. Elections could be one of the best ways to make our cause visible, with the added benefit of giving the curious easy and obvious access to more information and inroads.

No, to participate elections is to give credibility to the relevancy of elections and to play into the foul and mistaken idea that elections are desirable and that they are the legitimate reflection of the, as they see it, one true rule and organisation. Who pays attention to the elections anyway? Silly trivia. I only care for the statistical aftermath out of numerical interest on a sociological plane, and nothing else.

They will never give one inch of space to a movement that is not utterly conciliatory. Thus it is best to keep out of that mess. Refuse all elections on the principle that elections are wrong, and any government thereby elected is illegitimate and criminal.

[RedWorker]

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.


In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

(source) (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm)

[Thirsty Crow]

It's a tactical choice. So long as the ambition isn't to win power via parliament itself then it depends entirely on local circumstances. There's been times when participating in elections has been productive, times when boycotting them has been counter-productive and times when participating has been corrosive.
What would you say were some of the decisive factors for each kind of effect?

[Loony Le Fist]

Do you think Communist parties should take part in elections or even parliaments? Can participation in this bourgeois practice be helpful to the movement or is it just exacerbating the problems caused by the bourgeois institutions?

Only if it's part of a coordinated effort of infiltration to bring about revolution.

[ComradeOm]

What would you say were some of the decisive factors for each kind of effect?Where to start? It just comes down so much to local conditions. I'm not going to pretend to have a coherently worked out set of guidelines but below are a few thoughts.

The big factor is probably momentum. The Bolsheviks campaigned energetically in various municipal elections in 1917, despite their commitment to soviet government. But these campaigns helped mobilise the grassroots and provided the party with a platform (particularly after successes, like winning the Moscow Duma). Conversely the KPD, in not dissimilar circumstances, shot themselves in the foot by boycotting the 1919 National Assembly elections - thus effectively removing themselves from the one topic that was monopolising conversation throughout the country.

(Incidentally, both of the above were in revolutionary scenarios when the state was under extreme pressure. Surely the last moment in which a revolutionary party would want to 'legitimise' a state via the ballot box?)

If an election campaign is speculative (ie doesn't come when a party is naturally on the rise) then there's probably no point. Running a socialist in the next US election would of course be silly but campaigning for a local county council seat (or whatever they're called in America) might be of use in that locality. Depends on the party apparatus there. Winning isn't even necessary (or arguably desirable) but a platform is a platform.

The one thing that absolutely has to be avoided is tailoring policy to polls. But I believe that jettisoning revolutionary ideals (ie embracing reformism) is only a risk if winning elections is in fact your end goal. That is, if you become like the SPD and are content with carving out a small socialist space. That's silly: elections for revolutionaries are a platform for our policies and nothing else. If it's not going to significantly support the latter then why bother?