What Are We Voting For? : Catgirls Book Club

What Are We Voting For?

juillet 23, 2024

Zine :
Lien original : par Marie Louise Berneri
En français :

From ‘War Commentary: For Anarchism’, Supplement, Dec.1941-Jan.1942, London, UK

All left wing parties use parliamentary methods. Some of them like the Labour Party see in parliamentary activity the only means of changing society. Others, more to the left, see in elections and parliamentary action a means of putting forward their propaganda while recognising that more effective methods must be used if a change of regime is to be brought about. The Communists have till recently put up candidates at elections, the ILP [Independent Labour Party] has recently fought several by-elections, Pacifists have done the same and the American Trotskyists put up a candidate to the presidency, the SPGB [Socialist Party of Great Britain] found their propaganda on belief in parliamentary action. The Anarchists (and the Anti-parliamentarian Communist Federation in Glasgow) alone declare that no progress can be achieved by using parliamentary methods.

Let us leave aside those reformists who believe that socialism can be achieved with a socialist majority in Parliament. Thirty years of social democratic failure all over the world should have shattered the illusions of the most obstinate. Let us consider the great number of well-meaning revolutionaries who believe that by taking part in elections, by having a few M.P.’s [Members of Parliament] in Parliament their propaganda will be making more rapid progress This is the attitude adopted by the I.L.P. for example, who seem well satisfied with the results obtained at the recent by-elections they have fought. It is considered a great success that in a place like Lancaster where the I.L.P. had 14 readers the I.L.P. candidate should have obtained 5,418 votes. It is undeniable that these elections give the I.L.P. a good opportunity to put forward its point of view (even if it is in a very attenuated form; Fenner Brockway‘s Charter was so vague and general as to be almost meaningless). But that the fighting of elections advance revolutionary propaganda is another matter altogether. The very fact of fighting an election is on the contrary a counter-revolutionary activity.

A party may fight an election while thinking that nothing short of direct action will bring about the revolution but it cannot say so to the people it is asking the vote from. The socialist candidate in order to obtain the vote of his future electors must ask them to believe that he will look after them when he is in Parliament. He perpetuates in them the belief that through Parliament and governments they can obtain a better way of life. Instead of taking the opportunity of the elections to educate the people, Socialists take part in the general doping.

The fact of putting up candidates does not help socialist propaganda but on the contrary, definitely harms it. The task of a socialist or revolutionary party should be to teach people to rely on themselves, to take their own initiative and see that it is carried out by their own strength. To ask for people’s votes is to ask them to resign their own initiative, to put their trust in somebody who very often they do not even know and whom they will not be able to recall if he proves unworthy of the faith they have put in him. And who anyway is quite powerless when he does get into Parliament.

Revolutionaries should take part in the elections not in order to put up candidates but to educate the people. In France anarchists always took an active part in Parliamentary and municipal elections. Anarchist militants and speakers during the electoral period addressed as many meetings as the most anxious candidate for election. But they did not say to the people “Vote for us and we shall bring you better wages, greater freedom, new roads, railways or a Post Office” as candidates always promise at every election and in every country ever since the parliamentary system was established. Anarchists took the opportunity given to them by the elections to put forward the most active anti-parliamentarian propaganda. They showed the people how politicians had always promised the people to defend their interests, but once in Parliament had been merely concerned with feathering their nest or with rising to government’s posts. They showed how sincere militants had been corrupted by their access to power and after having been elected by the workers become their worst oppressors. They asked the workers to rely only on themselves and or their organizations instead of becoming the tools of the bourgeoise by trying to use its institutions.

Our Task Now

By-elections give a good opportunity to revolutionaries to expose the whole parliamentary system, the farce of democratic regime. Anarchists should destroy what faith people have left in parliaments and governments for when that faith no longer exists people will seek an alternative in the social revolution.

Our means for such work are small; conservative and labour candidates have plenty of money to spend on propaganda and on self-advertisement; but we can carry on our propaganda all the same. With handbills, with open-air meetings, by asking questions at electoral meetings we can put forward these fundamental revolutionary principles.

We refuse to take sides in the electoral struggle, all governments, conservative or socialist, exist to defend the interests of a minority. Socialist governments have been the tools of the capitalist class like the others and have often voted more reactionary measures than the tory governments themselves. Now we see labour M.P.s and ministers following Churchill and his reactionary friends like faithful dogs.

Higher wages and better conditions will not be obtained by M.P.s as a concession from the capitalist class, they will be the result of workers action and discontent. If the workers rely on their own strength and in that of their fellow workers and are prepared to fight with their own means of struggle they will very soon succeed in bringing the exploiting classes to their knees.

The aim of the workers should not be to elect new M.P.s but to get rid of the whole lot and build a society based on a free association of syndicates and communes.

The most conscious members of the working class must realise that unless they give the people an alternative to the “democratic” system, the masses, disgusted with conservative and labour politicians alike will turn to a dictator as they did in Italy and Germany.

M.L.B.