Should we heed the advice of four-time presidential candidate from over a hundred years ago when Eugene Debs explained “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.”
He would justify his position on the grounds that “The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.”
Can we state that the political situation has fundamentally changed what Debs said is no longer valid?
Challenging capitalism demands a political struggle that starts with the realization that the Democratic Party is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The future of humanity depends on building a class movement that once and for all ends the rule of a tiny elite and replaces it with the rule of the majority. The task of socialists is to break illusions in the capitalist system and its politicians – not to strengthen those illusions. It follows that the first task of socialists today should be to reject any support for the capitalist party candidates, no matter how “left” their rhetoric sounds.
It’s all very well having a vote – but are you normally given any real options? When it comes to elections, the choice is governed by information and knowledge and like Henry Ford’s Model T, which was available in any color providing it was black, current “democratic” practice is to allow us the widest possible choice as long as it is for one of capitalism’s representatives. At every election, we are told that if we don’t vote for Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dumber will be elected so we should vote for Tweedle Dum.
We tend to forget that the lesser evil is still evil. Supporting the lesser evil has rarely been an effective strategy. This politics of fear in the end has delivered everything that we were originally afraid of.
What is voting? It’s a chance to tell the country and the world what your vision of government and society really is. If you can’t vote for what you believe in or don’t believe in what you vote for, then, voting means nothing. An unprincipled vote is a wasted vote. You aren’t standing up for what you believe in by voting for “the lesser of two evils.” You have sold out your personal beliefs. We vote to tell everyone else which choice we think best represents the direction in which we want the country to go. When you vote, you gain a certain power that a non-voter doesn’t have; the power to change the status quo. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. In other words, if you want change, then create change. So rather than waste your vote on what you consider the lesser evil, Democrat or Republican, cast a meaningful ballot that clearly says what you believe.
Each election cycle, the left-wing liberals and progressives counsel us that despite any misgivings, working people should cast aside their reluctance and vote for the Democratic Party politicians. A mistake that voters often make is to compare what the Republicans say and do with what the Democrats say. The relevant comparison is with what the Democrats do. The Biden administration left many of Trump’s policies intact and what was changed was often cosmetic change. Voting for the lesser evil breeds illusions which ultimately leads to disillusionment.
For revolutionary socialists, the issue in capitalist elections is not campaign promises or the individual personality of candidates or the character of the candidates they run against. There is but one issue that concerns us when it comes to electoral politics and that is working-class independence. Change from below is the only change we can believe in.
Elections aren’t necessarily the be-all and end-all, but they do matter. Political parties are individuals and groups organized to defend specific class interests. They seek political power to best defend and advance these interests. Elections pose the question as to which class will run the system. The aim is to convince the electorate that the result would be “change”, a relief from the present misery and a path to a better future. Socialists counter that the better life offered by the ruling class’s standard-bearers cannot be achieved in the framework of capitalism. And, in fact, all the injustices that so many recognize as a reality in today’s world – racism, poverty, endless war, climate change, sexism, cuts in health care, education, pensions and jobs – are inherent in the capitalist system itself. For all its democratic claims, this election campaign serves mainly to obscure the truths about our unequal society. Its important feature is the absence of real choice.
Things can change but it’s not going to be through conventional politics, only through a quite different kind of politics. A politics that rejects and aims to change the status quo. A politics that involves people participating and not leaving things up to others to do something for them. When more and more people understand this they will begin organizing for it, in the places where they work, in the neighborhoods where they live, in the various clubs and associations they are members of, but, above all, they will need to organize politically.
If you want a better world, you are going to have to bring it about yourselves. That’s our basic message. It’s no good following leaders, the professional party politicians. In fact, following anybody (not even us) won’t get you anywhere. The only way is to carry out a do-it-yourself revolution on a completely democratic basis. Democratic in the sense that that’s what the majority want. And democratic in the sense that the majority, rather than following leaders, organizes itself on the basis of mandated and recallable delegates carrying out decisions reached after a full and free discussion and vote.
We are advocates of real majority rule, rule by the people themselves in their own name and in their own interests, for a socialist society free from oppression and exploitation.
