The workers of the world are struggling through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Jobs are disappearing, wages are falling, and millions of people are being thrown out of their homes and into the streets. In the U.S., over half of the federal budget is going to fight imperialist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia and the rest is being funneled into the hands of the capitalist class through bank bailouts and other giveaways.
Naturally, the ruthless greed and relentless attacks provoke anger in workers. This mass anger represents an opportunity for communists, who must strive to transform this unorganized and often misdirected anger into a mass communist movement. To do this, we must expose one of the bosses’ primary ideological weapons: elections.
Elections are a Ruling-Class Charade
The controlling forces in society — government (including elections), cops, military, schools, culture, etc. — comprise what we refer to as “the state” and are funded, organized and led by the ruling class. They function solely to reinforce the existing, racist structure: bosses exploiting, workers exploited. Elections, no matter who is elected, can NEVER change this.
The 2008 election provides a recent glaring example of this general statement: Millions of workers turned out to cast their vote for Barack Obama, the highest voter turnout in decades. Perhaps more than in any recent election, many who turned out were expressing their anger at imperialist war, racism, environmental degradation, bank bailouts and foreclosures.
Yet, immediately after being elected, Obama proved that he serves the bosses: He intensified the war in Afghanistan, he refused to fight racist police attacks while always defending the racist cops, he intensified the racist attacks against workers by militarizing the southern U.S. border and he continued the economic policies of the Bush Administration.
It’s Only a Fair Election if U.S. Bosses Approve
Elections are primarily an ideological weapon to disarm the working class, and do not represent a high ideal of “freedom” or “democracy.” When the “free expression of the people” doesn’t conform to the interests of U.S. imperialists, they freely ignore their own words.
• Patrice Lumumba, the first “democratically elected” Prime Minister of Congo, was assassinated under orders from the U.S. and Belgian governments.
• Salvador Allende, a socialist elected as president of Chile, was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the C.I.A.
• In Guatemala, the C.I.A. organized, funded and equipped the 1954 coup against the elected government of Jacobo Guzmán. The ensuing civil war resulted in more than 200,000 dead.
•uMohammed Mossadegh was the elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953. When he challenged the interests of U.S. and British oil bosses, he was deposed after a C.I.A.-backed coup.
These examples and others make it clear that “democracy” means nothing to the bosses when their imperialist goals are threatened. But when masses of workers view elections as the only route to societal change, the bosses’ power is secure.
Only Workers Fighting Back Can Change Things
Just as the hollowness of the bosses’ “democratic” ideology is plain when we look at the historical record, so is it equally apparent that only when workers have abandoned the electoral circus and collectively struggled against the bosses have they been able to win any real reforms.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 where over 200,000 workers went on strike; the 1886 May 1st strike that included over 350,000 workers, and tens of thousands of other strikes led to the eight-hour workday. The police and the army brutalized and murdered the strikers throughout this entire period.
The Civil Rights Movement and the push to end segregation was the fruit of the multi-racial struggle against racism. Before the 1960s, they were often led by communists. They organized unions in the South, they held rallies against lynchings and attacked the Klan. For leading the fight against racism they were attacked by the FBI, murdered by police and Klan vigilantes.
Reforms Won’t Liberate the Working Class
The reforms that workers fought and died for were granted by the capitalist class as temporary measures designed to pacify the masses so that power ultimately remained with the capitalist class. The decrease in working-class consciousness and militancy has allowed the bosses to roll back these reforms: The unchallenged devastation of the Detroit auto-industry illustrates the corruption of union leadership. The U.S. ruling class is unleashing racist attacks on the border, on the job, in schools and overseas that the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movement fought valiantly against.
If the working class wants true liberation we must recognize the class nature of the state and give up on phony elections and half-hearted reforms.
Workers have to seize state power through violent revolution and establish the dictatorship of the working class. We can’t let our fellow workers be pulled in by the elections charade because no matter who gets elected it will be the capitalist class which is in power. If you are sick of the daily exploitation and degradation, don’t vote, organize the working class; don’t vote, fight racism and sexism; don’t vote, build Progressive Labor Party. Don’t vote, BUILD REVOLUTION!