Socialists and the vote

Elections are an important arena of public debate, and socialists can hardly afford to be indifferent to them. Everyone who has the right to vote takes it very seriously. And when an election is called, masses of working people become animated about politics.

Historically, and in some countries more recently, universal voting rights have had to be wrenched from reluctant capitalist ruling classes.

The vote is a serious advance in democracy for the mass of working people and the poor. For the exploited majority to be recognized as participants, even in a minimal way, in the arena of decision-making in capitalism is not something the elite has welcomed.

Marx and Engels developed their radical critique of the capitalist system in the context of the campaign for electoral democracy in Europe. And it was largely working class action that forced the bourgeois elites to allow the masses to vote. In his excellent study, Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough, August Nimtz writes:

“The ‘self-organization of the working class’ in the second half of the nineteenth century was responsible for the democratic breakthrough, that is, the institution of 'universal suffrage,’ and the acquisition of civil liberties.”

There are also many contemporary examples where workers and the poor have mobilized in the thousands to win the democratic right to vote.

The US south during the civil rights movement, many countries in Latin America – including Venezuela –and South Africa under apartheid tell this story.

Similarly, when the election process is corrupted or subject to interference, masses of working people legitimately feel outraged. This was indicated in the US presidential election of 2000 (and to some extent in 2004), and the period of PRI hegemony in Mexico, for example.

The outcome of elections in bourgeois democracies is important in affecting the confidence of working people.

When the vote for the NDP – the only party linked organizationally to the trade unions – rises, working class confidence increases. And every right wing, reactionary bigot, takes support for the NDP as a slap in the face.

But this is not the whole story. Socialists need to understand not only the gains of electoral politics, but also the limitations.

Election day, January 23, is not the only important date to anticipate. The next international day of action against the war on Iraq, March 18, will be as or more significant in building public confidence to stand up against war, racism and corporate greed.

It is not in Parliament where the real power lies in capitalist society. Corporate bosses who run the corporations, immigration guards who regulate border crossings, and the police, CSIS and RCMP officers who wield vast arbitrary authority, are not subject to electoral control.

The power to hold these forces to account lies beyond the voting booth. It lies in mass action. On the streets and in the workplaces, in united, effective protests, there is a clear record of evidence that shows that such action can alter the course of parliamentary decisions.

Mass action can also determine whether or not elected representatives are held to account, long after the
votes are counted.

Parliament is one arena of public debate, and the decisions made in parliament affect the daily lives of workers and the poor. But for socialists, elections are not the highest form of politics, but the lowest.

For example, during the period leading up to the US-led war on Iraq that began on March 20, 2003, all the signs were that Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government would take Canada to war, and join the coalition of the killing.

It was only on March 18, two days before the war began, that Chrétien announced Canada would not officially join the war. This was a change in the pattern, as Canada had participated in the previous US-led war on Iraq in 1991.

Chrétien maintained the key issue was whether or not the United Nations backed the war. But what tipped the balance in the divided federal Liberal caucus was not the UN, but hundreds of thousands of protesters united in a common movement on the streets in cities and towns across Canada.

The worlds of mass action politics and electoral politics are different and distinct – but they are both important and influence one another.

The outcome of the last federal election in Canada, in June, 2000, indicated the interaction.

During the last federal election, the media featured the stunning collapse of Liberal support for Paul Martin.

But the mainstream press coverage also identified an apparent rise of – as the Globe and Mail referred to it on June 10, 2004 – a “blue storm” of right wing sentiment. This was what, we were told, was apparently fueling the ascendance of Stephen Harper and his refurbished Conservative party.

But this was a statistical fallacy.

There were almost two million voters who moved their support from the Liberals and the Tory/Alliance parties that had run separately in the previous election.

And these votes moved to the left, not the right.

In English Canada, the votes went to the NDP, and to a lesser extent to the Greens. In Quebec, they shifted to the Bloc Québécois, and also, to a lesser but very significant extent, to the federal NDP.

Martin’s Liberals returned a minority last election, not because the Tories were rising, but because masses of people were influenced by a sense of a need for change, a mood expressed most sharply in the anti-war and anti-capitalist movements.

Martin and Harper were on the defensive, as voters demanded a political agenda that was against Canada’s participation in the war on Iraq, in support of public health care, and choice on abortion as a woman’s right.

Before he became leader of the Liberals, Martin was in a gutter-style faction fight with former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. While the build up to the war on Iraq was taking place, Martin made a point of keeping quiet during the debates in Parliament. But as soon as he was crowned Prime Minister, Martin appointed David Pratt – one of the most vociferous MPs to advocate for Canada’s participation in the war on Iraq with or without UN backing – as his Minster of Defence.

Pratt was one of the many Liberal MPs to lose their seat in the last election. The impact of the anti-war movement found its way into the electoral arena.

In the upcoming election, socialists need to remember these lessons, and combine the campaign for mass action with the campaign for change in parliament.