On Fri, 3 May 2002 13:43:26 +0100, Davies, Daniel wrote: >Two questions: > >1) How does one use one's vote to "promote >socialism" in a two-candidate race between a >conservative and a fascist?
In a sense, your question reveals a different understanding of the role of elections. I agree with Lenin's approach. They are opportunities to raise socialist ideas. If a revolutionary party ever came close to winning a national election, the bourgeoisie would resort to a coup or fascism. "Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags." http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/lwc/ch07.htm But Lenin never urged a vote for a bourgeois party. That was Stalin's innovation who simply appropriated the disastrous "lesser evil" electoral policy of the German Socialist Party. >2) Given (1), how is the decision to vote >Chirac incompatible with the promotion of >socialism? Of course. Our primary task is to educate working people that they have different class interests from the owners of the means of production. >It is not as if the French socialists are >actually supporting Chirac, or making common >cause; they continue to promote their own party >as being a better choice for the parliamentary >elections and as Chris Burford pointed out, >"Vote for the crook, not the fascist" is hardly >a ringing endorsement. The American SDS said something like this in 1964, "Part of the Way with LBJ" (as opposed to the official slogan "All the Way with LBJ". The Communist Party had a hysterical campaign about the need "to stop the war-mongering Goldwater". Look what it got the left, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. >It seems to me that the current French election >is a reductio ad absurdum of the proposition >that to advocate a vote for a bourgeois party is >always and everywhere a mockery of socialist >principles. Well, look. There are all kinds of socialists. Albert Shanker was a leader of the SDUSA, while his teachers union included Trotskyists. Part of our job is to draw clear lines of demarcation between genuine socialism and pro-capitalist ideologues who call themselves socialists, if you gather my drift. This has been a problem since the days when the Lasalleists in the German Social Democracy backed the Kaiser because of his "enlightened" social policies. Marx answered them with Critique of the Gotha Program. This is an unending job because of the ability of the ruling class to exert enormous pressure on our ranks. -- Louis Proyect, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 05/03/2002 Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
