'Electoral Principles and Our Tactics': a three-part series by Mike Macnair

 

Alexei Tkechev and Sergei Tkechev Between Battle (1958-60)

Mike Macnair is a member of the CPGB-PCC and a frequent contributor to the Weekly Worker. In the three-part series written in 2011, he discusses the necessary electoral tactics for socialists maneuvering through bourgeois political bodies. The primary question he asks, is: What should be the principled boundaries and acceptable tactics of communists in relation to calls for electoral support to coalitions, alliances, other parties or individual candidates? The following is a summary of his series. 

Part 1: The policies of the contemporary Trotskyist, Communist, and Maoist groups. Also, the policy of the RSDLP during the Duma elections.

• The CPGB desires left unity; that is, a United Communist Party formed from the merger of the existing Marxist tendencies. Here in the United States, the Marxist Unity Group in the DSA works to do the same. To this end, CPGB and MUG may find themselves working with less principled parties. The goal is unity, not purity and the resulting abstentionism. 
• But electoral issues cannot be reduced entirely to tactical questions. The result of this approach can be seen in the CPUSA's consistent calls for members to vote for the "lesser of two evils" candidate in the name of defeating the "extreme right." This policy reneges on the task of organizing independent political representation for the working class and, furthermore, rarely achieves its desired outcome. 
• Unity with suspect elements is often done in the name of protecting democracy. But the bourgeoisie is not a democratic class. "Bourgeois democracy" is an oxymoronic misnomer for what is actually constitutionalism. 
• Contemporary Trotskyist organizations are essentially abstentionists for all the conditions they impose regarding electoral support. They cannot abandon electoral support altogether because of Lenin's 'Left-Wing Communism' and other agreements in the first four sessions of the Comintern. It's important to consider that all of these tactics were considered of secondary importance because the global revolution seemed close at hand. Tactics were considered short-term and not part of a long slog through the swamp, so to speak.  After the establishment of the United States as the world's hegemonic power and the entrenchment of "Communism" in the Soviet Union, it became necessary to work on long-term tactics. This long-term strategy is still needed. 
• Prior to the Russian Revolution, the RSDLP was prepared to make agreements with the liberal Cadet party against the monarchist "governmental parties." The Bolsheviks thought that electoral agreements were a matter of tactics and principles. Behind this strategy lay that of the SPD. 

Part 2: The RSDLP modeled themselves off of the SPD, who did the best they could in difficult circumstances. 

• The constitutional framework of the German Second Empire (1871-1918) was a federation of four kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg), six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three Free Hanse cities, and one imperial territory (Alsace-Lorraine) - the Länder. 
• The German parliament has some legislative power and limited power over the budget. The government in power needed a parliamentary majority, but it ultimately answered to the Kaiser and not parliament. 
• The two-round system of voting (if no candidate got an overall majority in the first round) meant that the SPD had to consider supporting candidates other than its own if that candidate lost in the first round. The party congresses in 1897, 1902, and 1911 gave conditional support tactics toward individual candidates of bourgeois parties (the candidate had to meet a set of minimum political conditions or the SPD would call for an abstention in the second round). The electoral system in Germany made it almost impossible not to engage in electoral agreements with other parties. There were very few instances in which elections could be a space where "the independent political self-organization and self-representation of the proletariat as a ‘class for itself’" could take place. 
• Marx and Engels wrote more about the principles of electoral engagement than the tactics because it wasn't until the rise of mass parties in the 1870s that tactics became a possibility. 
• The Manifesto was not explicitly a document about political tactics but did have a few things to say. It condemned tendencies hostile to working class political action. It identified the Communist League as a part of the Chartists and the Agrarian Reformers in the U.S. (the Chartist counterpart). The communists should join the bourgeoisie against the monarchy but also keep class distinctions in mind. In 1850, M and E acknowledged that the bourgeoisie had not acted in a revolutionary way against the monarchy. There remains opposition to minority participation in government (Blanc). 
• The First International included Proudhonists who opposed working class political action, so there was no mention of political action in those documents. The 1872 Hague Congress did acknowledge the necessity of political engagement and kicked out the anarchists. 
• M and E looked at the goings on in Germany as something not quite right. They had committed themselves to an independent working class action, while the Germans were either entering government as individuals (Liebknecht) or making alliances with other parties (the ADAV win half-alliance with Bismarck via Lassallian influence). 
• In the 1840-50s M and E thought that the six points of the Charter would create the dictatorship of the proletariat. Seeing France (manhood suffrage without political liberties) in the 1860s changed their minds. Parliamentary regimes as such were up for critique; even with political liberties, they remained tools of oppression through the rule of corrupt professional politicians. The remedy for this would be the state form of the Commune, i.e. direct elections, ending the separation of powers, the right to recall, etc.

Part 3: Electoral tactics are needed because socialist parties must participate in elections in order to engage in a dialogue with the masses. 

• Intervention in elections cannot be for the purpose of propaganda; it has to be for agitation. The masses are interested in (some) elections because they see them (to some extent) as deciding the great issues that affect their lives. A propagandistic electoral intervention, therefore, functions as a form of abstentionism. 
• The aim of the electoral intervention is to promote the independent class-political self-organization of the self-representation of the class. 
• The aim must be to maximize the vote. This is not the same thing as claiming the working class can come to power legally by winning elections. 
• The capitalists are a minority, so there must be mechanisms in place that makes the state answerable to the minority. These must be reckoned with. 
• It's incorrect that the capitalist class is democratic. In order to overthrow European feudal regimes, the bourgeoise latched on to the revolutions against the landlords and feudal institutions. Universal suffrage is something extorted from the capitalist class by the rise of the workers' movement. It is not something introduced.
• The goal is an independent workers' party standing candidates in every constituency possible. The goal is to maximize the vote for the party and maximize the number of its representatives in the elected body. Tactics must be used to overcome the obstacles put in the way. The tactics must not compromise arguing for independent working class political organization and representation. To quote the RSDLP in 1912:  “No electoral agreements may involve putting forward a common platform, and they may neither impose any sort of political obligations on ... candidates [of the workers’ party] nor may they impede the [workers’ party] in their resolute criticism of the counterrevolutionary nature of [the bourgeois parties].” The broad left or people's front idea muddles this distinction and does not maintain independence.