The congress at The Hague has brought to maturity three important points:

It has proclaimed the necessity for the working class to fight the old, disintegrating society on political as well as social grounds; and we congratulate ourselves that this resolution of the London Conference will henceforth be in our Statutes.

In our midst there has been formed a group advocating the workers' abstention from political action. We have considered it our duty to declare how dangerous and fatal for our cause such principles appear to be.

Someday the worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics.

But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same.

You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that 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.

-marx

We would put up our candidates in a very few but absolutely safe constituencies, namely, where our candidate would not let in the Liberal instead of the Labour candidate. We would take part in the election campaign, distribute pamphlets advocating communism, and in all constituencies where we have no candidates we would urge the electors to vote for the Labour candidate and against the bourgeois candidates. Comrades Sylvia Pankurst and Gallacher are mistaken in thinking this is a betrayal of Communism, or a renunciatation of the struggle agaisnt the social-traitors. On the contrary, the Communist Revolution undoubtedly stands to gain by it

-lenin

  • buh [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Actually on the subject of voting, Marx had this to say:

    anyone but a dang cheeto!

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    "Even when there is no prospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces, and to bring before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and making it possible for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is indefinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body" -Marx

    "No blocs with the Cadets! No conciliation with those who are becoming reconciled." -Lenin