Wednesday, January 09, 2008

On Revolutionaries Running For President, Part II

Commentary

In the Spring of 2007, at the height of the French presidential elections, I wrote a commentary concerning my take on the then current ‘controversy’ on the left about whether revolutionaries, and more importantly, revolutionary organizations can, on principle, run candidates for the executive offices of the bourgeois state (president, governor, sheriff, etc.). (See that article reposted below today’s commentary). I noted there that my comments did not represent my final thinking on the matter. One of my premises is that there is a fair amount of propaganda value in running for these high profile offices. Now that we are in the heart of the American presidential nominating process in early 2008 it is time to reconsider the points that I made in that commentary. Again this does not represent my final thinking on the matter.

The main proponent of the argument for opposing running for executive offices on principle has been the International Communist League (ICL), an organization that has for some time been running an internal and now external argument about this issue. Underlying the ICL’s position is their perceived need to clarify the question of the state that, at times, got rather murky in discussions during the first four Congresses of the Communist International which they (and I) stand on. Admirable as that quest may be I still do not believe that the question of running for executive office in the bourgeois state, with the obvious and longstanding proviso that it is clear we refuse to take office if elected, is in need of this clarification.

Central to my premise, as noted in the earlier commentary below, was that it was unprincipled to accept funds (as revolutionaries did in France, also see below) but that the propaganda value of running for executive office outweighed not doing so as a matter of getting attention during an intense political period. I agree that there was a fair amount of confusion brought about in the Zinoviev-led Communist International around the various formulations concerning what types of workers governments could be supported, at what times and and under what conditions by revolutionaries. Moreover, I recognize that part of that confusion spilled over into Communist policy in Germany in 1923 in regard to support or non-support for various Social Democratic party administered bourgeois provinces. That said, this is nevertheless hardly an argument for not running your own candidates under your own banner for executive office.

Here, however, is where my main problem with refusal on principle comes in. There is no question, or at least there should be no question, that revolutionaries can use the united front policy on elections to critically support other worker formations in their campaigns, including their campaigns for executive office. Lenin, in Left-Wing Communism, can be cited authoritatively for that proposition. Part and parcel of that proposition is the premise that those critically supported worker formations would, if successful, administer the bourgeois state . Thus, revolutionaries would be in the position of remaining organizationally and individually ‘chaste’ while supporting, as a rope supports a hanging man, others who are not so squeamish about running and taking executive offices. I fail to see a reason, much less a principled reason, to draw that distinction here.


The ICL, as a democratic centralist organization, can rightly impose discpline on its members, including any dissenters on this question, now that the organization has publically committed itself to this position. Fair enough. The question therefore becomes whether this issue itself is, in Leninist parlance, a ‘split’issue' even if one considers that the ultimate ramifications might lead to differences on the question of the state. I say, hell no. But that brings me to my last comment. It is certainly not clear to me other than in the above-mentioned interest of historical clarification why given the immense tasks that confront the international working class movement in the fight for socialism that in the year 2007 (and now 2008) this question need take up so much of our attention. Running for but not taking executive office seems like a definitive enough policy to not be called into question at this time.

Reposted article from the Archives


On Revolutionaries Running for President(Now Part I)


The main bourgeois electoral political action of 2007 in the Western world has thus far been the French presidential elections. After the just completed first round the Gaullist and Socialist Party candidates are headed into the final round on May 6th. Recently, in a commentary on the workers movement and public campaign funding (see April 2007 archive), I used the example of the French presidential campaign in discussing the erroneous policy of ‘far left’ groups there, like the Revolutionary Communist League (English translation) and Worker’s Struggle (also English translation), of accepting campaign funds from the French state.

My position was that as a matter of integrity, the nature of our tasks and our own security this policy was unprincipled for revolutionaries. That stirred up some controversy; or rather I should say a 'tempest in a teapot', not so much around the question of accepting funds as the question of whether those organizations in France should have even fielded presidential candidates. Thus, the question is starkly posed. Can leftists in principle run for executive office in the bourgeois state and therefore take political responsibility for the administration of its policy? The following comments represent my take on this issue; however, they are by no means my final thinking on the matter.

Those of us who consider themselves Marxists owe two debts of gratitude to Vladimir Lenin. First, for leading the modern fight against parliamentary abstensionism, mainly a fight against anarchist and syndicalist tendencies in the worker’s movement to deny any importance to bourgeois elections as a means of getting out the socialist message. His classic polemic against those tendencies in ‘Left-Wing' Communism-An Infantile Disorder’ gives short shrift to such notions. Secondly, we owe Lenin for his sorely needed updating of the Marxist conception of the state and the need to replace the current bourgeois state with a workers state with its own institutions. His classic statement of the case in State and Revolution gives short shrift to the notion that a victorious worker’s revolution can take over the current state apparatus with just a little ‘fine tuning’.

Why do we need to invoke the tremendous authority of Lenin on what is a seemingly simple question of whether a revolutionary organization should or should not run for an executive office of the bourgeois state? On the basis of State and Revolution to pose the question would appear to give the answer. However, unlike other questions dealt with there this one is not one where to pose the question gives the answer.

Let us set the parameters of the debate. Nobody, or at least I hope nobody, believes in 2007 that running in elections will lead to socialism. I would also hope that nobody believes that we can simply take over the current state apparatus as is and go from there. I would further hope that no one, in some kind of anarchist funk, would fail to draw a distinction between administering the executive power of the capitalist state and using the legislative branch as a forum in order to be ‘ tribunes of the people’. Finally, for now and the foreseeable future no one should assume that this question is much more than a theoretical one. Otherwise something is desperately wrong with one's organizational priorities and one's grasp of political reality.

So now that I have safety guarded all those parameters, What is the big deal? And that is pretty much where I stand on the issue. Historically, revolutionaries have used bourgeois election periods to run on their programs and get a hearing in quarters they might not reach outside of the electoral process. In terms of executive offices, a revolutionary organization, like the Socialist Workers Party in the old days, ran for executive office with the proviso that if elected they would not serve. And that seems to me to continue to be the right policy. Those who want to carry out a policy of total refusal to participate in executive office campaigns, like the presidency, today have got to make a better argument for that decision than they have thus far.

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