As for your first question, that's just semantics that makes no sense. An election to a bourgeois institution is a bourgeois election. Period. No ifs or ands or maybes or buts.
"I understand other tendencies define reformism as the use of general elections to contest political power" No. That is one aspect of reformism. As for anarchism, impossibilists want a classless, stateless society too. Even Newell was pretty clear that the SPC included both reformist and impossibilist elements, and the latter opposed electoralism. As I said, and according to libcom and Newell, elections were used for propaganda purposes by those who did approve of doing so (and even that was not universally supported within the SPC), not with the intent of entering bourgeois institutions to enact gradual change. Anyway, I did say I wasn't really looking to debate it (I'd rather read and come to my own conclusions), but whatever.
Yeah it does when, for one thing, the elections are for positions in bourgeois institutions, even assuming "universal suffrage" (which for much of the SPC's existence is a problematic assumption in any case!). I'd think an impossibilist would understand that. I'm not looking to debate that, though. I'm just curious how reformists wormed their way into an officially "impossibilist" party, but hopefully the book will have some answers.
Good to hear, but elections with universal suffrage are elections which favour the working-class not "bourgeois" elections.
Hey. I'm about to borrow a copy of Peter Newell's book on the SPC. I'm hoping it will clear up a few things, such as: Can they really call themselves impossibilists if they ran candidates in bourgeois elections, granted that they apparently did so only for "propaganda purposes"? How was it decided (and by whom) that the SPC would run candidates in bourgeois elections?
I just noticed you've set your tendency as impossibilist. Good to hear it.
