|
Note:
This is a continuation of the essay ‘Behind
the politics of lesser evilism’.
That essay elicited a response from Walter Daum. I am reprinting Daum’s comments here
followed by my response to those comments. |
Comment by Walter Daum
WD, October 31, 2020
Reply to Alex Steiner on
Voting
In notifying me of his post
“Behind the politics of lesser evilism,” Alex Steiner commented, “I think this
is an important discussion that should be taking place within the revolutionary
left as a whole. It goes beyond the positions taken by various people and
groups.” I agree and would add that the debate should continue beyond the 2020
election, since it is as much methodological as practical.
To summarize my position,
there are basically two questions at issue. 1) Is there a Marxist or socialist
principle that rejects voting for bourgeois parties or candidates under all
circumstances? 2) Since I think there is no such absolute principle, is it
tactically correct to vote for Biden in this election in order to defeat Trump?
I and my comrades in the LRP say yes; we recently issued a statement explaining
our reasons at http://lrp-cofi.org/statements/election2020.html.
On the first of these
questions, Alex re-states the principle: “that it is not possible within the
Marxist tradition to ever under any circumstances, support a vote for a
bourgeois party.” In the post that began
this debate, Frank Brenner invoked ths Marxist tradition, and in my reply I
claimed that there was no such principle; I challenged anyone who thinks there
is “to find any statement by our Marxist teachers that it is unprincipled to
vote for bourgeois candidates under any circumstance.”
As it happens, I and others
in the LRP have made such a challenge in other venues during this election
season, and we have received no response with actual evidence. We have,
however, been told more than once that there is a Marxist principle that the
working class should organize independently of all representatives of the
ruling class for political action – and we agree. But that principle,
regularly invoked by our Marxist teachers, did not prevent them from advocating
tactical voting for specific bourgeois parties on specific occasions, namely
when the working class had no viable candidate of its own and when the democratic
rights that enable our class to organize and struggle were at stake.
Alex dismisses the challenge
as “delv(ing) into ... hypotheticals,” but adds that “this is a general
principle that is more relevant than ever in the period of the decline of capitalism
on the world stage, not an abstract moral imperative.” This is explained by his
claim that the occasions when Marx, Engels and Lenin called for voting for
liberal bourgeois parties have no parallel today: “The corporate Democrats
represented by Biden in no way constitute a wing of the liberal bourgeoisie
opposed to authoritarianism.” Of course the Democrats are not congenitally
opposed to authoritarianism; they, like the Republicans, support all kinds of
authoritarian regimes around the world when doing so fits U.S. imperial
interests; and they have often enough acted in authoritarian fashion at home.
(That was also true of the liberal bourgeois parties who our predecessors had
backed.)
But that is not the point. I
and my comrades are calling for voting for Biden not because he is more liberal
in general but because he is less dangerous than Trump on a specific matter,
the Republicans’ drive to entrench their minority-party rule by destroying
democratic rights – the right of Black people to vote and be counted, and the
right of workers to organize trade unions and their struggles. This drive
precedes Trump, and he is serving as its useful tool. Indeed, his campaign
itself rests on denying voting rights, since he is constantly threatening not
to accept the result if he loses the vote and to invoke the powers of his
presidency and his Supreme Court appointees to overturn it. In this concrete
situation the Democrats are opposed to Trump’s authoritarianism for their own
reasons; they want to get elected. So this is just the sort of situation when
there is no viable working-class candidate and when the rights that enable our
class to organize and struggle are at stake.
Returning for a moment to
Brenner’s original post, he says that
calling for a vote for Biden “would promote the dangerous illusion that
the only credible resistance to Trump is from the Democratic Party.” That is a
real concern, and more generally there is the danger that any kind of bloc with
bourgeois forces helps strengthen illusions that they can be relied on to be on
the side of the working class. That danger has to be weighed and countered,
which means that socialists who electorally support Biden must forthrightly
illuminate rather than obscure the true history and role of the Democratic
Party.
It would certainly create
illusions if all we said is that Trump is terrible and Biden is not so bad
although not ideal. Many Biden supporters rely on such arguments. Revolutionary
socialists, on the contrary, should make every effort to explain, even as we
argue for voting for Democrats, that they are a party that promotes capitalism
and imperialism, opposes working-class struggles and accommodates to racism (as
various Democratic governors and mayors did in calling out their cops against
the recent Black Lives Matter protests).
It is noteworthy that in the
early voting period of recent days, millions of people have flocked to the
polls, waiting patiently for hours to cast their votes, confounding the efforts
in many states to make it as difficult as possible for people to vote,
especially in minority communities. Surely the main reason for this amazing
phenomenon is that people are so fed up with Trump that they are willing to
take extraordinary steps to get rid of him. And, yes, many of them have
illusions that Biden and the Democrats are dedicated not just to reversing
Trump’s most sociopathic policies but also to carrying out the reforms that
working-class people need.
How should we as
revolutionary socialists counter such illusions? By telling people not to vote
for Biden & Co. because of their rotten record and hostile class character?
If we do that we will not get much of an audience. But if we say, yes, vote for
Biden to oust Trump, we can then also help people understand that Biden too is
an enemy of the working class and the oppressed, and that only mass action can
wring vital reforms out of a Democratic Party government. We can also explain
that the working class needs its own party, independent of the capitalist
parties and dedicated to the overthrow of capitalist rule.
Alex claims that once you
advocate for voting for a Democrat in this election you are on a slippery slope
that means never building an independent socialist party. Even a tactical
“lesser evil” vote, he says, leads to lesser evil-ism, the strategy of
always voting for a lesser bourgeois evil:
“... once one acknowledges a
different outcome between a Trump or a Biden Administration, that there are no
grounds for opposing a vote for a ‘lesser evil’ candidate. But one cay say that
in every single election since the American Republic was founded there is
always the possibility of a different outcome. It has never been the case and
never will be the case that the outcome of an election ‘makes no difference’.”
This assumes that rejecting
the mythical “socialist principle” of never voting for a bourgeois party
necessarily means always doing so. That is false both in history and in
logic. Our Marxist predecessors who advocated choosing certain bourgeois
parties when there was no alternative never stopped working for socialist
working-class parties. Moreover, there is a lot of room between never and
always, and that’s where this year’s election fits. According to polls, among
the millions of early voters are many who chose not to vote in 2016. They are
not lesser-evilists; they are coming out in droves because they see that in
2020, perhaps for the first time in their adult lives, the greater evil is a
qualitative threat that he must be defeated.
Finally, I’ll note that
Brenner and Steiner are both aware of the danger of Trumpism:
Brenner: If Trump wins,
“Polarization will spike, Bill Barr will have a green light for ever more
police state measures, the fascist gangs will feel emboldened. Voter
suppression, scapegoating of immigrants, lethal police violence, dismantling of
Obamacare and probably Medicare too, maybe a Covid death toll of a million.”
Steiner: “One can expect a
very sharp turn to authoritarian forms of rule in a second Trump Administration
... Trump’s open encouragement of fascist plots to assassinate the governors of
Michigan and Virginia and the state murder of an anti-fascist activist in
Oregon indicate a qualitative transformation of class relations away from even
the vestiges of bourgeois democracy.”
Those are strong and
accurate forewarnings. The working class, the oppressed, and all those who
defend democratic rights have to act. Mass mobilizations have to be prepared. A
few trade union officials are even talking of a general strike if Trump tries
to steal the election. Brenner agrees that “socialists would try to promote
mass political resistance within the working class” – but he asks, “How would
that goal be served by having called for a vote for Biden?” The answer is that
no matter who wins, mass action by the working class and oppressed people will
be necessary to defend their rights and promote their interests. And such
action would take place under far more favorable conditions if Trump and the
fascistic gangs he encourages were to suffer a massive rejection at the polls.
Only voting for Biden, class enemy though he is, can accomplish that.
Why not do all we can to
prevent Trump from wielding the authority that could be used to justify a coup?
As Marx and Lenin pointed out, every few years the working class and the
oppressed are asked to choose which leaders of the oppressing class will lead
the repression against them. That is bourgeois democracy. When that choice is
significant, when it indeed means “a qualitative transformation of class relations
away from even the vestiges of bourgeois democracy,” why not take it? A
Democratic Party government will be no loyal friend of the working class, but
against it we will be in a better position to wage the class struggle, fight
for democratic rights and organize for the socialist and revolutionary party
our class needs.
Steiner responds to Walter Daum
Before addressing what Daum
wrote I want to say a few things about what he did not write. Specifically
there is no mention at all of something that was a key element of my critique,
namely the philosophical examination of the type of cost-benefit arguments that
are characteristic of the politics of lesser evilism. I placed that analysis at
the core of my argument because I think it exposes the fundamental incoherence
of lesser evil politics. To reiterate what I wrote, the problem with
cost-benefit type analysis when applied to human affairs is that it reduces
living human activity to a thing that can be weighed and measured. In the arena
of economics such methodology has been championed by the school of “rational
choice” theorists. I have no doubt Daum,
who has written extensively on economics from a Marxist perspective, would
recognize the fallacies of rational choice theory. Why does he not recognize
the fallacies of this exact same methodology when applied to the political
arena?
In his opening remarks, Daum
correctly says that
…”the
debate should continue beyond the 2020 election, since it is as much
methodological as practical.”
But Daum never gets beyond
the “practical” to the methodological questions in his reply.
As to the “practical”
considerations, Daum’s case against me appears to be based on a misreading of
what I said. He presents a straw-man argument based on this misreading.
Daum says that I ,
“…re-state[s]
the principle: ‘that it is not possible within the Marxist tradition to ever
under any circumstances, support a vote for a bourgeois party.’ “
But that is not what I
wrote. I did not “restate” any such “absolute” principle as Daum also writes.
Rather I posed this as a question,
“Does this mean that it is not possible within
the Marxist tradition, to ever under any circumstances, support a vote for a
bourgeois party?”
The reason I posed this as a question was
precisely to highlight the difference between a mythological “absolute”
principle allowing of no exceptions, something which has never existed except
as a thought experiment, and a general principle that has guided Marxists for
generations. Daum and the LRP rely for much of their
argument on conflating this idealized “absolute” principle with the very real
practical principle that Marxists should not be calling for a vote for a
bourgeois candidate. I don’t think it is
very difficult to demonstrate that Marxists have traditionally opposed voting
for a bourgeois candidate, certainly not
in an advanced industrial country where the question of national independence is
not relevant and where the right to vote for a socialist candidate still
exists. To cite just one example, take a
look at Trotsky’s writings on Germany in the period leading up to the victory
of fascism. Did Trotsky advise his followers to support the “lesser evil”
bourgeois politician in the hope that this would buy time to defeat the Nazis?
Not at all. Here is what he wrote:
“The social democracy supports Bruening, votes
for him, assumes the responsibility for him before the masses – on the basis
that the Bruening Government is the “lesser evil… But have the German Left
Opposition and myself in particular demanded that the Communists vote for and
support Bruening? We Marxists regard Bruening and Hitler, together with Braun,
as component parts of one and the same system. The question, which one of them
is the “lesser evil”, has no sense, for the system against which we are
fighting needs all these elements.” [1]
And Trotsky’s was not alone
within the Marxist tradition in opposing the politics of lesser evilism. Daum relies on another straw-man argument in
order to blur over this general (not ‘Absolute’) principle. He sees a huge
difference between supporting a “lesser evil” and “lesser evilism”. He writes,
“Alex
claims that once you advocate for voting for a Democrat in this election you
are on a slippery slope that means never building an independent socialist
party. Even a tactical “lesser evil” vote, he says, leads to lesser evil-ism,
the strategy of always voting for a lesser bourgeois evil”.
Of course I never equated
the politics of “lesser evilism” with the requirement that one has to always
vote for a lesser evil candidate. But by
“lesser evilism” I am referring to a method of approaching political questions
that is fundamentally at odds with Marxism. It may or may not always lead one
to supporting a bourgeois candidate in a specific election but what it does is
replace a strategic orientation toward the independent political activity of
the working class for their emancipation with the small change of opportunist
tactical considerations characteristic of bourgeois politics. It is precisely this methodological approach
that Trotsky criticized in the support the Social Democrats in Germany gave to
Chancellor Bruening.
Does the rejection of a vote
for the “lesser evil” in the 2020 election mean that we are blind and
contemptuous of those workers and youth who think that voting for Biden is the
best way to defeat Trump? Not at all! Revolutionary socialists should be
engaging in a dialogue with those workers and youth, especially those who were
ardent Bernie Sanders supporters and now feel that they have been
disenfranchised. But what should we say
to them? Shouldn’t we encourage in every possible way a break of the
left-leaning forces that were active in the Sanders movement from the
Democratic Party? How is that accomplished if we tell them, no matter how many
caveats one adds, that they should vote for Biden?
Finally Daum claims that I
am presenting a “slippery slope” type argument and he goes on to deny the
existence of a slippery slope. You can
call for a vote for Biden in the 2020 election he says, and it has no relation
to anything else in your political trajectory and is of no significance for
anything you may do in the future. But I
raised the question of how the about-face of Daum’s group, the LRP, on this
question, is part of a wider phenomenon that has seen many long-time radicals
who have previously resisted the siren song of support for the Democrats suddenly
give way to a broad-based collapse of opposition to the American duopoly. I
mentioned the sudden dissolution of the International Socialist Organization
last year. One can add the pathetic turn of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist
Party - who were well known for their fiery rhetoric about the need for a
“communist revolution” - to support for Biden. Daum has nothing to say about
these developments, apparently believing that the turn of the LRP has no
relationship to them. I think the fact they are unaware of the broader social
and class forces driving them is good evidence that Daum and the LRP are indeed
embarked on a slippery slope.
[1] The
Impending Danger of Fascism in Germany: A Letter to a German Communist Worker on
the United Front Against Hitler
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/12/danger.htm
