Abstentionism vs electoralism

[alanjjohnstone]

The topic was about was it worthwhile engaging in elections at this period of the party's development. My first contribution was simply to state the advantages of having an MP. #8There was then a discussion on spoiling ballot papers and i raised an issue of practicability when the process of casting ones vote was changing.I then suggested that the Party will have to equip itself better when we do begin getting members elected. Our current rule is simply too broad a brush. That was a projection into the future of the party.The topic then veered off on to the subject of engaging in the class struggle for whatever scraps that fall off the table.I contributed a few links from the party's history, that our elected delegates would not cut their nose off to spite their face and would support certain reforms that arose in Parliament. To paraphrase James Connolly when the IWW dropped political action, he said "just let them try and stop the workers from taking part in it." Likewise, with reforms…Workers will seek to improve their conditions, no matter how transient the reality might be, regardless of whether we support them or not. .Your statement that "The Socialist Party is not here to “benefit the working class” It’s here to abolish the working class precisely because, so long as the working class—a capitalist category—exists, it can’t be benefitted.  Otherwise, why Socialism?" is in my view mistaken. Without we cannot have socialism, without our fellow workers the socialist party cannot bring about socialism. A truism. 

Quote:

Without an educated and powerful working class as the motor for achieving socialism, we cannot have socialism. Or have I forgotten my Marx? Our Party's role is simply to be educators, agitators and organisers, catalysts not a substitute for our class.

Whatever strengthens the potential power of the working class, what keeps it healthy and virile, is a benefit to it and a benefit to the goal to achieve socialism when we have strong, physically and mentally healthy fellow-workers, in a fit state to heed our message, but more importantly to reach their own socialist conclusions, without necessarily having heard our voice.We cannot bind a future party and its elected members to a policy of abstaining on every issue that comes before it when we don' know what those issues might be. The bigger the threat socialism becomes the bigger the scraps they will throw usAnyways the way i see things is: Firstly, i am a member of the human race, Secondly, i am a member of the working class and thirdly, i am a member of the Socialist Party. A holy trinity  Hard as it is, i try to run my life and apply my politics accordingly.

[twc]

ajj wrote:

Whatever strengthens the potential power of the working class, what keeps it healthy and virile, is a benefit to it and a benefit to the goal to achieve socialism when we have strong, physically and mentally healthy fellow-workers, in a fit state to heed our message, but more importantly to reach their own socialist conclusions, without necessarily having heard our voice.

My challenge remains “by what criterion can you judge what will benefit the working class in a system that operates solely by exploiting it?"There may well be answers, but how do we judge them?Once we know how to evaluate what “benefits the working class” under capitalism, a second question intrudes—Why should the Socialist Party devote precious Socialist time and resources over the form taken by a capitalist issue whose essence remains captive to capitalist controlling conditions? Thus, returning to your provisioning of health-and-education criterion—which dismally supported social provisions we started off with—the obvious upshot is that Socialists should be actively supporting a reform of gym-for-all and after-hours schooling.But comfortably deferring this, apparently pressing, health-and-education reform to the future merely squibs this, apparently pressing, social issue now. And postponing it cannot escape simultaneously binding the Party to future reformism.Sending it off to the never-never, enshrines it in the here-and-now. It slackens the Party’s here-and-now resolve on reformism (as instanced by taking sides on capitalist referenda, etc.)Can you see the problem?Reformism, whisked off into a future time and place, lays us open to the charge of finally succumbing to the pressures of capitalism, and capitalist thought?  Our ultimate capitulation after [an apparently misguided] century of opposing reformism?Why didn’t we realise the “benefits we might have conferred upon the working class” so much earlier?That’s what bothers me.

ajj wrote:

We cannot bind a future party and its elected members to a policy of abstaining on every issue that comes before it when we don' know what those issues might be. The bigger the threat socialism becomes the bigger the scraps they will throw us

It’s you who are unconsciously binding a future Party to act out reformism, on a humanitarian(?) case-by-case basis.  I am merely asking for a rational justification for your ready acceptance. If reformism is essential in the future, why isn’t it now?  A reasonable enough, but ticklish, question.I seek clarity.  Will binders of a future Party to reformism please clarify?

[alanjjohnstone]

Once more, i thought we as a party has distinguished between actual reforms and a political policy of reformism. I thought i had earlier referred to why we oppose reformism in that we do not seek to attract non-socialists wanting half-measures and gradual changes. It is not because reforms give support and succour to the ruling class which is the general anarchist stance.The Prime Directive of members is to maintain the objective of our Party. I see no-one on this thread questioning that.For our class, however, abdicating any struggle whatsoever against the capitalist class is collective political and economic suicide. We would eventually lose the political power necessary for socialism due to gerrymandering of the electorate. I mentioned a concrete example in an earlier post of how workers are being excluded from registering to vote in the USA.I thought i made it clear that i was all for defending laws and reforms that workers had extracted from the ruling class. The fact they can be and are being removed is part of our case against reformism but it does not mean socialist and non-socialist workers don't try to stop any roll-back. ( Imagine if we stopped asking for pay rises because inflation eats it away on the long term.)Another concrete example for your consideration of a reform that is being made null and void.http://www.teenvogue.com/story/bills-18-states-discourage-protests-protestersWill an elected socialist delegate socialist elected delegates vote against these new laws infringing on democracy or are they going to hum the Internationale as public demonstrations are forbidden?Or don't protests really matter in your opinion to advancing the ideas of socialism and protecting what limited liberties we have been granted.Will a Socialist MP let the ruling class pass laws restricting freedom of speech and assembly without even walking into the no lobby but instead head off to the nearest bar and regale everybody with excuses that the capitalist class were going to win anyways and a no vote was an empty gesture.  TWC, what would your key message have been when the party had a stall at the Protect the NHS march last weekend?Would it have been free at the point of delivery medical treatment had no benefit for sick and ill workers?Or that such an egalitarian principle as treatment based on needs should be extended throughout society?  

[alanjjohnstone]

Oh, i am sure that any future delegates of the World Socialist Party in the legislatures of Michigan State or the city of Flint would have a series of demands to make upon those politicians and officials in office concerning the poisoning of the public water supply and the failure to remedy it and a reluctance to compensate. Taking advice from independent public health experts, i am sure remedial actions to fix the problem would have been proposed immediately by those socialist delegates on health and safety grounds. 

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

 

robbo wrote:

By reducing the rate at which it is robbed, pehaps?  Isnt that of some benefit? 

But that flies in the face of “return on investment”, which is the driving force of capitalism, and manifests itself as the driving motive of the capitalist.A capitalist parliament, with or without socialists, has to guarantee social reproduction.  But social reproduction is capitalist reproduction, and remains so, whatever the rate people are robbed at, for they are still robbed.Parliament is there to guarantee this driving force of social reproduction, i.e. to act on behalf of dear old capital expanding itself.The robbing I refer to is the essential mechanism of capital expansion, i.e. Marxian exploitation. Watch the capitalists panic when their precious market rate falls!  It is life or death to those whose motive drives the system—those bearers of the will of capital to expand itself.Reducing the mere rate of robbing is a fantasy solution of liberal humanism in an illiberal inhuman world. It forgets, or fails to comprehend, that we are dealing with a dynamical process that is necessarily insatiable.We dealing with something enormous—an entire social system, or mode of production.  Not fixing its minor unfixable problems.The socialist case is diametrically opposed to liberal humanism—a position that wallows in glorious defeatism.The socialist case abolishes the illiberal inhuman conditions that generate liberal humanism.  Ours is a consciously victorious case. 

 TWC nobody is disputing that while capitalism lasts workers will be exploited.  This is a red herring.  What we are talking about is the hypothetical situation in which there exists a minority of socialists delegates in parliament and how they should respond to leglslation put forward by those in power.  It is NOT being suggested that such delegates should themselves actually propose any such legislation which would indeed be reformist. For instance, one of the ways in whch the rate of exploitation is increased or reduced is by increasing or reducing the length of the working day i.e. absolute surplus value.  Marx himself saw the question of the length of the working day as being one of vital importance to workers.  In 1866 he wrote on behalf of the International Workingmens Association "The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive….The Congress proposes 8 hours as the legal limit of the working day.". Marx himself was a bit of refromist in this respect Now suppose a situation arose in which legislation was proposed which would shorten the working  week.  Are you telling me, TWC that the socialist delegates in parliament would abstain on the vote even if it had a direct bearing on the rate at which the working class was exploited?  I find that hard to believe I repeat again.  Its not a question of trying to fix an unfixable problem.  No one is disagreeing with the contention that problem of exploitation is unfixable in capitalism.  Its a question of what sort of message you are sending out by abstaining on  a peice of leglislation that could mitigate but never eliminate the exploitation  of workers.  Unless of course you think that reducing the working week has had absolutely no benefits whatseover to workers,  Do you?

[twc]

Quote:

we do not seek to attract non-socialists wanting half-measures and gradual changes. 

Then there is no pressing need to pander to half-measures and gradual changes.  Socialists understand.Poisoning the water supply is not regional, it’s global. Like poisoning the atmosphere, and the land. What capitalist solution can fix it?What about drying up the water supply?  Pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Removing nutrient from the land?  Denuding the rain forests.  They are not regional.  They are global!They are also systemic. The system urgently needs to be addressed over, apparently pressing, regional issues, no matter how disgusting and enraging.Think World.  Think World Socialism

[alanjjohnstone]

TWC, have you read about the Flint water supply scandal? I am sure you have but this link is to remind youhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisisThis is not related to any worldwide phenomenon of water shortage or climate change in general but a mere cost cutting exercise by the city authorities that seriously back-fired and their reaction to the crisis was also based on cost implications. Once again, would future elected socialist delegates, acting at the behest of the local socialist party with a membership made up by local socialists who along with their families were drinking this water and therefore being poisoned by the lead content, stand idly by and do nothing?And yes there are capitalist solutions to the Flint water supply and many actions have taken place, some very reluctantly by the city council…But, TWC, are you saying our socialist delegates so directly victims would not vote for those remedial repairs because it meant reformism I think not.  

[twc]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

But, TWC, are you saying our socialist delegates … would not vote for those remedial repairs because it meant reformism I think not.  

On the contrary, I do think so, for the following reasons..Your confident claim is predicated upon the ignorantly naive assumption that the bill for remedial repairs will be drafted to satisfactory “socialist” standards.In the actual world of capitalism, any rational capitalist remediation bill will be drafted to meet, not “socialist” but, capitalist expectations, which necessarily conform to the capitalist conditions under which it must operate.Just look at world-wide mining remediation practices, if you seek evidence!Capitalist remediation is at best an economic compromise solution; at worst something altogether disgusting.  In either case, it will necessarily fall short of “socialist” standards and satisfaction.What is our “socialist ”reformer then to do when faced with a capitalist remediation bill:Endorse the capitalist cost-cutting remediation bill, as is.Negotiate—horse trade—with the capitalist bill-framers to seek to reframe their bill to the “benefit of the working class” (and “detriment to the capitalist class”).Draft his own bill that he imagines can meet compromise “socialist” standards under prevailing capitalist constraints.Back off.If our socialist reformer drinks from any of these poisoned cups, he kills his “socialism” by:Supporting a shonky remediation process, i.e. shafting his socialist supporters.Horse-trading with [alleged labour, avowedly capitalist] political opponents, though he entered parliament expressly to oppose them.Actual reformism—the very treachery he repudiated when he stood for parliament.Enough said!Engels, who was far more prescient, wrote…

Quote:

 What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved.In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class…Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.

Or, as Marx said, he will soon discover that capitalism is full of irreconcilable contradictions.So much for your breezy future “socialist” reformer, whom you unconditionally invite me to admire.To quote your own confident words back at you: “I think not.”

[twc]

Robbo wrote:

It is NOT being suggested that such delegates should themselves actually propose any such legislation which would indeed be reformist.Its a question of what sort of message you are sending out by abstaining on  a peice of leglislation that could mitigate but never eliminate the exploitation  of workers. 

Robbo, my reply to you is more or less the same as that to Alan.Then you are restricting socialist delegates to voting for a capitalist framed bill, with all the baggage that entails.  Not a very bright strategy for a “socialist” reformer to cripple his “socialist” drafting hands, and meekly vote on capitalist designed legislation.  He’s already crossed the boundary to reformism, why not go the whole hog?Socialist delegates are in parliament to propagate the socialist case and to expose capitalist legislation for exactly what it is; not to endorse it.  Endorsing (shonky) capitalist legislation just as surely “sends a message” of abject admission of socialist defeat.  You seem eager to be “doing something” that “sends a message”, however capitalist at the core, instead of crafting a message that exposes the rotten core of capitalism to the light of day.Why on earth waste precious socialist time and effort in supporting the damn social system we seek to eradicate?

[alanjjohnstone]

In late April 2014, in an effort to save about $5 million over fewer than two years, the city switched from purchasing treated Lake Huron water from Detroit, as it had done for 50 years, to treating water from the Flint River.Yeah, i'm being utterly naive in thinking that elected socialist delegates would actually endeavour to do whatever possible to end an immediate threat of brain damage to their own kids, their friend's kids, their neighbour's kids, their co-workers kids…"March 23, 2015 – Flint City Council members vote to reconnect with Detroit water."Our Flint WSP branch does not instruct its elected socialist delegates to vote for this attempt to mitigate the health risk to themselves and their families and fellow-workers. Yes, this is definitely a way of gaining the support and persuading them that socialism is a cure for their social ills, definitely the perfect way of demonstrating class solidarity…

[twc]

No it demonstrates that capitalism can cure social ills, which you claim it is doing after its fashion.  That’s all that can be expected under capitalism.It’s come to a sorry pass when capitalist exploitation is not seen as the culprit.How many horrifying scenarios—and there are equally horrendous ones everywhere—do you want to attend to, after a capitalist fashion, before you get round to Socialism?And, yes, naive in not realising that your free-willed “socialist” reformer is caught in the cleft stick that Engels pops him in.Which of items 1, 2, 3 or 4 should he adopt, and watch how his action damns him.Which one, please?

[alanjjohnstone]

Since you appeal to the authority of Engels, TWC,  i reply to you likewise.This Council, in the name of the working-class interests which it is its duty to protect, calls upon the sub-prefect of the district.To recall at once the troops whose presence, entirely uncalled for, is a mere provocation; andTo intervene with the manager of the company and induce him to revoke the measure which has caused the strike.Carried unanimously.In a third resolution, also carried unanimously, the Council, fearing that the poverty of the commune will frustrate the loan voted above, opens a public subscription in aid of the strikers, and appeals to all the other municipal councils of France to send subsidies for the same object.Here, then, we have a striking proof of the presence of working men, not only in Parliament, but also in municipal and all other local bodies.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/06/25.htm

[Bijou Drains]

twc wrote:

Tim, I don’t think the Socialist Party has to “solve” all the world’s problems in a capitalist parliament—no matter how dire the capitalist predicament.A capitalist parliament supposedly acts in the interests of its electors.If Socialists hold steadfast to their conviction that they can’t solve capitalism’s problems in capitalism, it’s downright dishonest—as well as political poison—for them to curry favour with an electorate in order to solve a problem that they advocate can’t be solved.That’s what will kill a Socialist Party stone cold motherless dead, just as it did every other party that allowed itself to succumb to reformist tactics on the urgent grounds of:just as an exception—a special case because of [pop in your exceptional circumstances here].just this time—even though we are about to establish a reformist precedent.A Socialist Party can survive the ignorant wrath of liberal humanist voters who see our stance as their betrayal.But a Socialist Party can’t hope to survive its tactical capitulation to liberal humanist fantasies. Remember, they are our, avowedly labour, political enemies.  We only defeat them by opposing them.As you rightly fear, we may be kicked out of parliament on such perceived urgent (exceptional) special issues.  So what?  We pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off to fight another day. Like love, the path to socialism won’t run smoothly, but it must run true to its Socialist cause, or not at all.In parliamentary confrontation over Socialism, he who bends loses.  It is the electorate that must bend before Socialism.It’s no counter argument for anyone to fret that we may [shock!] be rebuffed by that humiliated product of capitalist exploitation, the electorate!  What, by the prescient electorate that gave us xxx, yyy, zzz, [who shall remain nameless]!The unconscious cowardice expressed by all advocates of exceptional future reformism—apparently on case-by-case merit—is timidity over being rebuffed by the electorate.For crying out loud, of course we may be rebuffed along the way. One has every reason to think that a century of constant rebuf might have steeled us somewhat.Steadfast holding to Socialism is the only reliable, theoretically justifiable, Socialist course.  And that implies:  No compromise to reformism — Socialism before reformism.

The point I am making, twc is that in a situation such as the one I outlined, if we decide to abstain where we have the deciding vote, we are in effect actually making a choice of one over the other.It is not as much a case of supporting a reform if we vote for it, as supporting a reform if we abstain, in this case a reform that would hurt, even in the short term, the working class and, in the example I gave, the prospects of a Socialist revolution, by in effect, supporting the supression of free speech.

[ALB]

The famous 1911 reply to W.B. of Upton Park was largely of symbolic significance since what a minority of Socialist MPs should or should not do was not an immediate issue (and still isn't) and, when the situation arises, they will do as democratically instructed and we can't anticipate or dictate now what this will be. The reply wanted to leave open the option of them being instructed to vote under certain circumstances for some measure proposed by others. In this sense it was a declaration that the Socialist Party was not opposed to all reform measures on principle even though it was against proposing any itself. How could we be, however insubstantial or temporary the improvement might be? Otherwise we'd just be a party of the idea of socialism and not that of the material interest of the working class.

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

  Robbo, my reply to you is more or less the same as that to Alan.Then you are restricting socialist delegates to voting for a capitalist framed bill, with all the baggage that entails.  Not a very bright strategy for a “socialist” reformer to cripple his “socialist” drafting hands, and meekly vote on capitalist designed legislation.  He’s already crossed the boundary to reformism, why not go the whole hog? 

 No this is not the case TWC, Endorsing refromism is very clearly not at all the same as endorsing a particular reform,  Reformism is the pro–active advocacy of a package of reforms as part of an electoral strategy. That is to say you are putting forward this package in the hope of attracting electoral  support on the promise of implementing these reforms if elected.  This is obviously not somethimg a socialist party can do and as a socialist I would oppose such reformism. A socialist party can only stand for socialism and nothing else.  But there is absolutely no contradiction between that and socialist delegates voting on refroms put forward by others on the basis of their merits or otherwise from the standpoint of working class interests.  For example, if a bill came before parliament re-introducing national conscription or makiing it a criminal offcnse to criticise the monarchy,  would you still urge  that socialist delegates abstain from voting?  That would be madness frankly

twc wrote:

 Socialist delegates are in parliament to propagate the socialist case and to expose capitalist legislation for exactly what it is; not to endorse it.  Endorsing (shonky) capitalist legislation just as surely “sends a message” of abject admission of socialist defeat.  You seem eager to be “doing something” that “sends a message”, however capitalist at the core, instead of crafting a message that exposes the rotten core of capitalism to the light of day.Why on earth waste precious socialist time and effort in supporting the damn social system we seek to eradicate?

I am not suggesting socialist delegates should not take every opportunity in parliament to propagate the socialist case.  Of course they should and all  the more so when they are voting for or against particular peices of legislation. As always they need to point out the limitations of such legislation.   But also they must take up a position as decided by the movement in gneral as to what is in the best interests of the workers = however fleeting or ephemeral – under the circumstances prevailing. I made the point earlier about Marx's attitude to promoting the 8 hours working day.  You wouldnt dispute – would you? – that a reduction in the working day would benefit workers and mitigate the rate of exploitation.  Juliet Schor in her book, The Overworked Americanm notes that American workers worked an average of nearly one month more per year in 1990 than in 1970.  One reason for this – apart from the rising costs of fringe benefits vis-a vis-overtime rates which made it profitable for employers to get their workers to work longer hours – was the decline in trade union power in America.  And here's my point.  Can you not see the sheer cognitive dissonance between saying socialist delegates should not vote in favour of (but simply abstain on)  measures that reduce the rate of exploitation such as restricting the length of the working day and yet urging workers in their trade unions to militantly resist the attempts of employers to increase the rate of exploitation by extending the working day. That would send out a very mixed message indeed to the detriment of the socialist movement itself.

[Author]

Posts