Why do some many people think Marx was against being part of bourgeois elections...

He's 100% right. The tools and mechanisms of class rule and class cohesion in any given society are historically developed, and therefore the starting point for any contending class. Our moral judgement of them is immaterial.

Im angry because of your smug attitude.

Fuck off. Just because you are pedantic and purposefully interpret my ONE SENTENCE in a twisted manner that supports your retarded "haha gotcha" doesnt make you right, it just makes you an ass.

Parlementairy democracy doesnt achieve shit. It doesnt create socialism, it doesnt create communism, it cannot even achieve reforms. All gains made are made by grassroots and workers direct power, not meaningless votes in a bought out parlement.

No he isn't. I dont like killing people but its a tool to overthrow the bourgoisie. I dont like nukes but its a tool to keep the imperialists out. You can dislike a tool but still use it, unless you are a retarded pascifist who says "to change the world we must first change ourselves".

You were wrong, user, and I told you that. I'm sorry you don't have enough maturity to deal with this.

Topic of this thread: "Why do some many people think Marx was against being part of bourgeois elections?" - Marx was a real person that lived and wrote down his opinions, so this is a matter of historical record. If you think elections are worthless and don't achieve anything that's fine - we were all 19 once - but that's topic for a different debate. The point is what were Marx's conclusions, our opinions don't matter. You can say he was wrong, but we can't project our views into him.

Sure keep pulling out the retarded troll comments that the right also uses

Show me a quote of marx that said "I love elections" or "elections can achieve communism".

When we say tools we mean historical tools of class development, superstructural tools. And yes, we may find them unpleasant on a subjective level, but Marxist analysis leads us to take sociological categorizations before our personal impressions. That's what we're trying to say here. We don't let a gut feeling of "ugh, elections are boring" stop us from achieving our historical tasks.

I assume you encounter this type of commentary a lot.

Again, Marx didn't love elections and didn't think they were enough to achieve social transformation. He understood the power elections had and considered participation *essential* for transforming essencial, combined with other mechanisms. And yes, there are plenty of quotes articulating that.

You keep repeating the thing about "loving" elections because your childlike brain is basically trying to protect you from new information.

Yes if you twist both the definition of "tool" and "like" to something completely different you can pretend you made an argument that is valid. Verysmart

No, luckily encountering people like you is very rare, because generally when people are that far up their own ass they cannot operate keyboard anymore.

whatever m8

Marx thought that proletarian interests should be represented within the electoral process, but he didn't think it would amount to anything revolutionary. His position is nuanced and you should read a fucking book lad.

Two things to keep in mind here: one is that in Marx's time, the incipient workers' movement defended universal suffrage as a demand of their own since they did indeed see it as a way to put forward their class positions. The other is that this support for electoral activity was not unconditional and in fact had two very specific purposes: 1) as a means to count the number of leftist workers, and 2) as a means of propaganda since the deputies of bourgeois parties were forced to defend their views. As you can see there is nothing to be said about power, or building socialism through gradual reforms as the Second International's thesis propose. Engels talks about the experience of the German SPD here:

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm

Think of today's bourgeois democracy. Given the massive absenteeism (most countries have a 50% voter turnout or less), the extreme division of legal leftist parties and the fact most of the proletariat really doesn't give a shit about what goes on in the Parliament (and what little they care is what mass media shows them), I doubt there is any use for an electoral tactic on the left right now. Not even for the sole two purposes explained by Engels.

Can I get a quote?

The fact he thought bourgeois elections are useless - a stance communists share - does not mean he denounced elections as a way to achieve communist goals.

Communists are fine with every other type of direct action, but elections have to be boycotted cause of dogmatism? That's infantile.

This. The only sensible approach is a two pronged attack. At the very least sympathetic legislators can hinder government attempts to crack down on revolutionary activity. Best case scenario they can actively help them by passing legislation that makes it easier for revolutionaries to organize and operate.

Because they didn't read Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder… and you probably haven't either.

That book barely quoted Marx and was mainly an argument by Lenin without relying on "well Marx thought…"

This guy made a good post

Everything you posted is just terrible. Wow, how do you post worse than a literal Nazi? The world may never know.

The three problems with participating in bourgeois elections is that 1) it transforms parties to its image by aiming at getting state funding (where applicable), thus dependent on the status quo; fills up the ranks with opportunists and politico-types (who want to create a marketable brand out of the party – seeking, ultimately, the benefit of the party as a bourgeois party); makes the party latch onto (non-)events and (non-)issues as thematized by the bourgeois press, thus losing its ultimate focus and dissolves it into the "political market"; 2) it burns our energies on a front that we can not win: running election campaigns for a type of political power we do not want; writing partial political programs that are against our main and overall principles; creating a kind of double-think (what we want vs. what we do) and recruiting membership based on it who will eventually lose interest and disappear; 3) historically, parliamentary democracy's authenticity is long gone: we are no longer in the 19th - early 20th century where liberalism's and socialism's interests aligned in broadening these institutions; with globalized capitalism and globalized democracy we already see the limits of the latter and we can not but look idiotic if we aim at bringing back "freedoms" of a system that already reached its apex and moved on.

bump4dis

I don't understand how leftists can be against elections when individual leftist policies poll very well. Hypothetically, a party that advocated for better public services and anti-interventionism should do very well.

Why do some many people think what Marx thought means jack shit when we have our own brains?

CORBYN IS A FUCKING IMPERIALIST, YOU FUCKING RETARDS.

Tankies believe Stalin was the reincarnation of Marx.

I can say with almost complete certainty that the theories articulated by Marx are of more value than anything any leftypoler can articulate.

Outside of America we actually have those kinds of parties, but they really poll well.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from, but using existing bourgeois institutions to develop our own proletarian counter-hegemony is essential. It is in and through capital that it is abolished, because after all, labor is a form of capital - variable capital.

Every country has its own electoral process whose conditions of which should define how we work politically. We establish principles based around the existing conditions, not on abstract principles. Whether or not we should participate in elections should be defined by the events surrounding us at the time. While broader, more abstract, but nonetheless based on real historical movement (like your analysis), are not only useful but authentically Marxist, we should realize that the fight against capital requires understanding and confronting the concrete conditions directly in front of us.

I'm reminded of the boycotting of elections by the Bolsheviks prior to the October Revolution. The boycott signaled the beginning of the upcoming insurrection, but prior to that the Bolsheviks willingly participated in Provisional Government politics, but at a certain critical distance. There was a case in the Philippines where the (Maoist) Communist Party had the opportunity to have an active role in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship, but because the ensuing assembly convened by the liberals was fundamentally reactionary, they boycotted the election, which prevented them from potentially creating the conditions to overthrow capital and stunted the political growth of the PH Left for years to come. My fear about parliamentarism is that that critical distance would become lost and we become no different than the liberals, but my fear is also of simply refusing to participate creating a separation of party organs from the everyday people,

All of that said, I completely agree with you in that electoral tactics shouldn't dominate our strategy in the fight against capitalism.

This. Marx wasn't wrong, it was the right thing to do in his time but the way bourgeois democracy is structured now it doesn't work anymore.