WORLD WORLDWIDE AUSTRALIA MELBOURNE - news journal UPDATE - (en) Australia, Melbourne MACG: The Election Question: Can we really vote our way out of this mess? (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 As this issue of The Anvil is being prepared for publication, the

political parties are gearing themselves up for another federal
election. According to a recent YouGov projection, Peter Dutton's
Liberals look likely to come out on top, though a hung parliament is
more likely than an outright majority. ---- Meanwhile, Labor's support
continues to decline, with YouGov predicting its worst first-preference
vote since the three-way split in the 1930s. While some former Labor
supporters may shift to the Greens or even One Nation, many will scatter
their votes among minor parties and independents. Some will sincerely
back candidates who seem "outside the system," but for many, it will be
an arbitrary protest forced by mandatory voting.

Regardless of whether Dutton or Albanese lead the next government, the
ruling class will celebrate. Both Labor and the Liberals are eager to
see the CFMEU smashed by the system of administration. Both parties are
complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians. Both have the blood of
refugees, tortured in indefinite offshore detention, on their hands.

In response, the Greens and Victorian Socialists argue for electing
their candidates and building their parties. As anarchists, we don't
tell people how to vote (or not vote). What we oppose is the strategy of
electioneering, which is counterproductive to building class power.

Put a Socialist in Parliament?
Anarchists reject electoral politics for the simple reason that it
disempowers workers and doesn't get results. Over a century of
parliamentary socialism worldwide tells the same story.

First, the platform of a socialist candidate will usually only be as
radical as the political climate allows - itself dependent on the
balance of class forces outside of parliament. Generally, socialist
candidates won't campaign on socialist ideas at all, and so end up
associating socialism with liberal politics. In the rare instance that
they do advocate socialism, and assuming they manage to win, they
quickly become absorbed in the work of being a politician. They attend
committee meetings, vote on legislation proposed by other parties, and
make speeches few workers hear.

Having started from the assumption that getting elected is important,
they then naturally assume the importance of their own reelection.
Inevitably, this increasingly becomes the focus of their work. The party
becomes obsessed with protecting their vulnerable candidate. The answer
to this weakness in parliament is always the same: elect even more
socialists.

Gradually, the time, energy, and resources of a socialist party moves
away from building class power, and toward maintaining and extending the
power of its elected officials. An army of activists is enlisted to
secure votes and protect the candidates. With these activists in the
lead, workers are taught to place their hopes in politicians, not take
action for themselves.

Capital Calls the Shots
Even if a socialist party wins government, it still faces a
capitalist-controlled economy within a global capitalist market. If a
government does not serve capital's interests, the capitalists crack the
whip that control of the economy gives them. A socialist government that
tries to dictate change from above will quickly face disinvestment,
capital flight, capitalist propaganda, and ultimately a military coup.
In other words, it backs down, or it is brought down.

Government policy is ultimately designed to serve the interests of
capitalism as a system. Who wins power, and how they use it, has very
little to do with ideology, and is instead largely determined by the
balance of class forces. Absent any pressure from workers, elections are
essentially contests between different factions of the ruling class. But
when workers are sufficiently organised and consistently striking, the
State has to step in to manage the conflict.

The logic of industrial action is that a strike forces bosses to meet
workers' demands to keep profits flowing. Likewise, when the wider
working class flexes its muscle, capital turns to left-wing parties to
rein things in. This is why, in the 1970s, the militancy and organised
density of the Australian working class made a progressive Labor Party
the natural fit for managing capitalism.

On the flip side, this also means that when strikes are smashed, and
unions give up on direct action, we lose our leverage over the State. By
the 1980s, the international working class had forced capitalism into a
crisis of profitability which could only be resolved through either
revolution or the smashing of workers' power. Socialist and Labour
governments around the world were either thrown out of power, or worked
with their union bureaucrats friends to criminalise strikes and pacify
what remained of the rank and file.

But an independent workers' movement could have taken another path.
Unlike political parties, workers organised on the job are in the unique
position to uproot the power of capital at its source. Only by taking
control of our workplaces can we take the whip out of the capitalists'
hands and transform society.

Reforms without Reformism
None of this means that we ignore the need to fight for reforms. But we
insist that reforms are the product of class struggle, not elections.
Some socialists argue that we can 'do both' - but the two strategies
pull in opposite directions.

When workers are busy door-knocking for candidates, they aren't building
their own power in workplaces, unions, and other campaigns. As a working
class movement, grounded primarily in industrial strength, we can win
reforms like wage increases, an end to Australian support for Israel,
better work conditions, and the extension of civil rights protections.

Under capitalism, these victories are always partial and precarious,
particularly if the movement is isolated in one country. But anarchists
don't just fight for reforms because they improve workers' lives. These
struggles build the power and the confidence of the workers involved. By
confronting the bosses, participating in democratic meetings, and
shaping the conditions of their work, workers develop the specific
skills and forms of power that will be necessary for any successful
revolution. Can the same be said of elections?

https://melbacg.au/the-election-question-can-we-really-vote-our-way-out-of-this-mess/
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