The Marxist Defense of Lesser-Evil Voting in Capitalist Democracies

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“Has not the Communist Manifesto taught us that it is our duty to support any progressive movement that benefits the workers’ cause, even if this movement is not our own?” — Eleanor Marx

Humans like simple answers, and I completely include myself in that, but I’ve slowly learned it’s better to live in a world of color than one of black and white. So when anti-voting Marxists repeat the often-misattributed aphorism, “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it,” I answer, “Sometimes voting makes a difference, and when it doesn’t, it’s the only way to register your protest.”

Marx believed in true democracy, a democracy in which everyone has the right to vote and the process is not under the control of the rich as it is in capitalist democracies. (Americans rarely mention that the Democratic and Republican parties are private organizations created by the rich to choose candidates who will serve them.) But despite the obstacles in capitalist democracies, Marx recommended participating:

“…the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” — Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Marx did say in the Manifesto, “If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution…” That was not a call for revolution. He was saying that if the ruling class prevents the working class from winning power democratically, the rich will make a people’s revolution necessary.

Marx never lost faith in the possibility of winning democratically:

“there are countries — such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland — where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.” — Karl Marx, 1872 speech in Amsterdam

Note that those countries were less democratic in Marx’s day than many countries are today. He and Engels thought the best way to participate in bourgeois democracy was with a working class party:

“Thinking men of all classes begin to see that a new line must be struck out, and that this line can only be in the direction of democracy. But in England, where the industrial and agricultural working class forms the immense majority of the people, democracy means the dominion of the working class, neither more nor less. Let, then, that working class prepare itself for the task in store for it, — the ruling of this great empire; let them understand the responsibilities which inevitably will fall to their share. And the best way to do this is to use the power already in their hands, the actual majority they possess in every large town in the kingdom, to send to Parliament men of their own order. […] Moreover, in England a real democratic party is impossible unless it be a working men’s party.” — Frederick Engels’ 1881 article in The Labour Standard

We see the truth of that when the candidates who would do the most to help the working class are regularly rejected by capitalist parties, even when, like Sanders in 2016, the polls make it clear that they have the best chance of winning because working class issues like health care and a high minimum wage draw support across the political spectrum.

To say that voting in capitalist democracies never makes a difference is to say that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid made no difference in the lives of working people. Some socialists say socialists should not be helping to make life better under capitalism, but they fail to realize the implication of that. People who do not constantly try to make life better for the working class are the enemies of the working class.

“Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.” — Rosa Luxemburg