In response to the call for an election boycott issued by Red
Guards Austin [1], Red Guards Philly stands with our comrades and with
all oppressed & exploited people, within the United States and the
world over, who are only harmed by the elections of mass murderers being
seen as a legitimate measure of democracy.
First, we must look at the world situation. Capitalism-imperialism has only further revealed its hideous face of rampaging terror and economic parasitism with every additional year of its existence. In conjunction with this, the electoral politics which legitimize capitalism are continuously unmasked and shown to be a mechanism of maintaining the exploitative order. Maoists have always taken up the task of discrediting these circuses and instead focusing on building mass support and popular initiatives which actually benefit the people. In Peru, the Communist Party of Peru’s initial action to symbolize the start of the People’s War in 1980 was the burning of the ballot boxes, and they were successful in channeling people’s energy into mass work and other more revolutionary avenues as voting numbers decreased throughout the course of the People’s War. In India, one member of CPI (Maoist) explained their reason for boycotting Chhattisgarh assembly elections, which we quote in full unity:
“As usual, we have appealed to people to boycott the elections because they are a farce. Elections only renew five-year tenures of loot and torture by the elected representative in the present system. Our target is to change this system from the root and establish a people-centric society and that is not possible through elections.” [2]
In Canada, an imperialist country much like our own, the PCR-RCP has conducted election boycotts. In one document spelling out their reasons, they state:
“…the real objective of this election is no different than the ones that came before it: to decide which team will administer the Canadian state — the state of the capitalists, the rich and the powerful, a colonialist, imperialist and reactionary state. This always has been and always will be the nature of the Canadian state until it’s dismantled and replaced by a new people’s power. In this situation, what’s really changing? For almost 150 years, an endless stream of politicians has sat in the House of Commons without ever changing the nature of this country.” [3]
These words ring true for us in the US just as well. This country was founded on genocide and slavery, and it has been maintained on that same basis. How this unfolds is modified by time and place, but today we see that indigenous people are still crushed as a matter of routine, that Black people are shipped to prisons as a substitute for schooling, and that xenophobia is running wild in a country where white people were the actual violent, invading force. And as we do find ourselves within an imperialist power, it’s vital to keep in mind that legitimizing the rule of our capitalist overlords does not just harm the people in this country, but that it facilitates the havoc being wreaked on people all across the globe.
Just like in Peru, India, and Canada, elections in the US have also always been a tool of the ruling elite. This does not at all discredit the hard-fought battles of oppressed and exploited peoples, sick to their stomach with watching land-owning white men cast all the ballots, who fought tooth and nail to force the government to recognize their voices at the threat of hell to pay. We remember these righteous struggles led by working-class, nationally oppressed, and gender oppressed people themselves, and note that these movements had to be led by the people, because the rich and comfortable don’t make changes for the benefit of anyone else until they are forced to grant concessions to save themselves from the wrath of the masses. Every granted right to vote was to quell the growing rebellious nature of the empire’s exploited subjects, and even then there had to be battles fought to bring the ability to vote into practice instead of keeping it as a simple paper decree. The ruling class has had to concede and concede to keep itself alive, but through these concessions they have run into a wall. The limits of voting are now clearer than ever. History has shown that widening the pool of people who may vote for this or that representative does not change the nature of the representatives we are choosing from. More than that, there is no way of accomplishing the oft-repeated goal of “money out of politics” within the context of a society run on a capitalist basis. The history of the people’s struggle has forced the capitalists and their lackeys to reveal the true nature of electoral politics, and it is that they are nothing more than a charade, a very expensive magic show where people are made to feel that they are exercising political power while we choose from a handful of candidates who represent the same class with only minor policy differences.
Turning to the situation specific to Philadelphia, we quote from Red Guards Austin’s Don’t Vote, Revolt!:
“While many will participate in the theatrics by putting forward their best hopeless candidate, exhausting resources and volunteer time to get you to vote for a ‘socialist,’ we call this what it is—a waste of time.”
The above statement could not resonate more with us in Philly. At a time when many Democrats are recruiting for Hillary on the basis of “well, she’s not Trump,” it is worth pointing out that Philadelphia has been a blue city for going on 60 years, and the Democrats have not yet managed to really solve any of the problems which continue to plague our communities. During the primaries, huge campaign drives were made around Bernie Sanders and his center-left platform that culminated in massive marches and a final desperate mobilization to morally petition him into the Democratic nomination, only for the people inspired by this movement to have their dreams cruelly betrayed by his formal capitulation at the Democratic National Convention in July. The perennial third-party candidates like Jill Stein will remain what they always are, toothless loyal opposition to the ruling class. “Socialist” organizations have responded in several ways, all of them despicable. Some tailed behind the Sanders campaign, openly adopting its rhetoric while knowing damn well that he never had a chance, hoping that they could snipe a few recruits into their ranks in the process. Others are pouring all their resources into running their own insignificant candidates, shaking down all their members & supporters for cash and sending them all across the country to get their own party charlatans on ballots by pushing what they believe are more “radical” platforms. Lastly there are the more honest ones, who meekly suggest support for a few paltry ballot measures. From here we can see they are unanimously united around the need for some participation in bourgeois electoralism, and all rest on a thoroughly pessimistic pragmatic basis (despite any degree of posturing that suggests otherwise.) Ultimately the truth is that none of these organizations have any sort of capacity to defend any of the reforms or demands that they are putting forth. The rank-and-file may very well believe that some vague “people’s power” will do the trick, but we must assure them that the ruling class is in no way afraid of marches armed only with signs & megaphones. These organizations’ leadership on the other hand are playing a dangerous game; they rest on a house of cards and rather than truly uniting with the masses, are instead going all out for big-tent left unity. Unfortunately for them, none of these schemes can withstand the wind and rain that is sure to come.
The only thing that is capable of weathering any storm is the unity of the working class and the revolutionary movement. Red Guards Philadelphia recognizes this as the heart of our project – to turn the masses themselves into communists, because only the people are capable of achieving people’s liberation. This electoral boycott is an early action in the life of our organization, and therefore we cannot yet speak of our concrete unity with the people of Philadelphia, but we do believe that we will have no future without this unity. To achieve this, it is not enough to boycott elections, communists must offer an alternative. For this reason we are announcing our Serve the People initiative, which we hope to build hand-in-hand and brick-by-brick with those who see the need for something other than the endless waiting for politicians to finally get around to fulfilling their promises.
A Serve the People program is not a charity. It is providing for the needs of the people along with building class consciousness, and any effort to simply provide goods without the political component will fall flat. For this reason, an election boycott and the initiation of a Serve the People program are two sides of the same coin. We must destroy the old order and create the new. We must discredit electoralism, and create programs which actually benefit people – both in the short-term interests of the masses of Philadelphia today, and in the long-term interests of the working class the world over, and every generation that is yet to come. And to the point of this boycott: imperialist elections achieve neither.
This boycott will culminate with a day of action on November the 8th. Whatever the size of the demonstration, what matters is that it will show there are those who see the necessity of traveling along a different road: the revolutionary road.
Boycott the elections!
Burn your registration cards!
Blaze the revolutionary road!
First, we must look at the world situation. Capitalism-imperialism has only further revealed its hideous face of rampaging terror and economic parasitism with every additional year of its existence. In conjunction with this, the electoral politics which legitimize capitalism are continuously unmasked and shown to be a mechanism of maintaining the exploitative order. Maoists have always taken up the task of discrediting these circuses and instead focusing on building mass support and popular initiatives which actually benefit the people. In Peru, the Communist Party of Peru’s initial action to symbolize the start of the People’s War in 1980 was the burning of the ballot boxes, and they were successful in channeling people’s energy into mass work and other more revolutionary avenues as voting numbers decreased throughout the course of the People’s War. In India, one member of CPI (Maoist) explained their reason for boycotting Chhattisgarh assembly elections, which we quote in full unity:
“As usual, we have appealed to people to boycott the elections because they are a farce. Elections only renew five-year tenures of loot and torture by the elected representative in the present system. Our target is to change this system from the root and establish a people-centric society and that is not possible through elections.” [2]
In Canada, an imperialist country much like our own, the PCR-RCP has conducted election boycotts. In one document spelling out their reasons, they state:
“…the real objective of this election is no different than the ones that came before it: to decide which team will administer the Canadian state — the state of the capitalists, the rich and the powerful, a colonialist, imperialist and reactionary state. This always has been and always will be the nature of the Canadian state until it’s dismantled and replaced by a new people’s power. In this situation, what’s really changing? For almost 150 years, an endless stream of politicians has sat in the House of Commons without ever changing the nature of this country.” [3]
These words ring true for us in the US just as well. This country was founded on genocide and slavery, and it has been maintained on that same basis. How this unfolds is modified by time and place, but today we see that indigenous people are still crushed as a matter of routine, that Black people are shipped to prisons as a substitute for schooling, and that xenophobia is running wild in a country where white people were the actual violent, invading force. And as we do find ourselves within an imperialist power, it’s vital to keep in mind that legitimizing the rule of our capitalist overlords does not just harm the people in this country, but that it facilitates the havoc being wreaked on people all across the globe.
Just like in Peru, India, and Canada, elections in the US have also always been a tool of the ruling elite. This does not at all discredit the hard-fought battles of oppressed and exploited peoples, sick to their stomach with watching land-owning white men cast all the ballots, who fought tooth and nail to force the government to recognize their voices at the threat of hell to pay. We remember these righteous struggles led by working-class, nationally oppressed, and gender oppressed people themselves, and note that these movements had to be led by the people, because the rich and comfortable don’t make changes for the benefit of anyone else until they are forced to grant concessions to save themselves from the wrath of the masses. Every granted right to vote was to quell the growing rebellious nature of the empire’s exploited subjects, and even then there had to be battles fought to bring the ability to vote into practice instead of keeping it as a simple paper decree. The ruling class has had to concede and concede to keep itself alive, but through these concessions they have run into a wall. The limits of voting are now clearer than ever. History has shown that widening the pool of people who may vote for this or that representative does not change the nature of the representatives we are choosing from. More than that, there is no way of accomplishing the oft-repeated goal of “money out of politics” within the context of a society run on a capitalist basis. The history of the people’s struggle has forced the capitalists and their lackeys to reveal the true nature of electoral politics, and it is that they are nothing more than a charade, a very expensive magic show where people are made to feel that they are exercising political power while we choose from a handful of candidates who represent the same class with only minor policy differences.
Turning to the situation specific to Philadelphia, we quote from Red Guards Austin’s Don’t Vote, Revolt!:
“While many will participate in the theatrics by putting forward their best hopeless candidate, exhausting resources and volunteer time to get you to vote for a ‘socialist,’ we call this what it is—a waste of time.”
The above statement could not resonate more with us in Philly. At a time when many Democrats are recruiting for Hillary on the basis of “well, she’s not Trump,” it is worth pointing out that Philadelphia has been a blue city for going on 60 years, and the Democrats have not yet managed to really solve any of the problems which continue to plague our communities. During the primaries, huge campaign drives were made around Bernie Sanders and his center-left platform that culminated in massive marches and a final desperate mobilization to morally petition him into the Democratic nomination, only for the people inspired by this movement to have their dreams cruelly betrayed by his formal capitulation at the Democratic National Convention in July. The perennial third-party candidates like Jill Stein will remain what they always are, toothless loyal opposition to the ruling class. “Socialist” organizations have responded in several ways, all of them despicable. Some tailed behind the Sanders campaign, openly adopting its rhetoric while knowing damn well that he never had a chance, hoping that they could snipe a few recruits into their ranks in the process. Others are pouring all their resources into running their own insignificant candidates, shaking down all their members & supporters for cash and sending them all across the country to get their own party charlatans on ballots by pushing what they believe are more “radical” platforms. Lastly there are the more honest ones, who meekly suggest support for a few paltry ballot measures. From here we can see they are unanimously united around the need for some participation in bourgeois electoralism, and all rest on a thoroughly pessimistic pragmatic basis (despite any degree of posturing that suggests otherwise.) Ultimately the truth is that none of these organizations have any sort of capacity to defend any of the reforms or demands that they are putting forth. The rank-and-file may very well believe that some vague “people’s power” will do the trick, but we must assure them that the ruling class is in no way afraid of marches armed only with signs & megaphones. These organizations’ leadership on the other hand are playing a dangerous game; they rest on a house of cards and rather than truly uniting with the masses, are instead going all out for big-tent left unity. Unfortunately for them, none of these schemes can withstand the wind and rain that is sure to come.
The only thing that is capable of weathering any storm is the unity of the working class and the revolutionary movement. Red Guards Philadelphia recognizes this as the heart of our project – to turn the masses themselves into communists, because only the people are capable of achieving people’s liberation. This electoral boycott is an early action in the life of our organization, and therefore we cannot yet speak of our concrete unity with the people of Philadelphia, but we do believe that we will have no future without this unity. To achieve this, it is not enough to boycott elections, communists must offer an alternative. For this reason we are announcing our Serve the People initiative, which we hope to build hand-in-hand and brick-by-brick with those who see the need for something other than the endless waiting for politicians to finally get around to fulfilling their promises.
A Serve the People program is not a charity. It is providing for the needs of the people along with building class consciousness, and any effort to simply provide goods without the political component will fall flat. For this reason, an election boycott and the initiation of a Serve the People program are two sides of the same coin. We must destroy the old order and create the new. We must discredit electoralism, and create programs which actually benefit people – both in the short-term interests of the masses of Philadelphia today, and in the long-term interests of the working class the world over, and every generation that is yet to come. And to the point of this boycott: imperialist elections achieve neither.
This boycott will culminate with a day of action on November the 8th. Whatever the size of the demonstration, what matters is that it will show there are those who see the necessity of traveling along a different road: the revolutionary road.
Boycott the elections!
Burn your registration cards!
Blaze the revolutionary road!
Don’t vote : Revolt !
This year we call on all genuine
revolutionaries, the masses, and all allied or supportive mass
organizations to boycott the November presidential elections. We
encourage all progressive community organizers and revolutionary
collectives to take part in opposing this election and educating those
around them on the true nature of US politics. We encourage all our
comrades to promote revolution as the only viable path to freedom from
the oppression and exploitation of this capitalist imperialist system,
and to no longer sign off on these representatives of the ruling class
either by endorsing them or lending them credibility through the vote.
This year’s election and every other US presidential election is a sham,
a spectacle that is designed only to offer the illusion of political
agency. Talk to people at your work, at school, at the bus stop, and in
the streets about the hard reality that we workers have no real
representation in this system. Talk about how democracy does not mean
checking a box once every four years; it means unified action by the
people to express their real concerns and assert their power in the form
of rebellion and revolution. Organize educational or cultural events
around the boycott and promote it in the form of posters in your area.
For those working class people who still feel compelled to take part in
voting, we challenge you to not stop there, to take to the streets with
us and use every possible means to enact and assert change that goes far
beyond the polling stations. Real power is in revolt, not the ballot
box.
There has never been such a clear
indication of the sham politics of bourgeois democracy as this year’s
presidential election, where we get to choose either a proven war
criminal or a crooked slum lord who relies on fascist and reactionary
populism. In between them is a sea of liberalism which would shame the
average worker for not taking part in such a spectacle. The US
presidential election has shaped up to be as dramatic and shallow as a
televised wrestling match between two representatives of the ruling
class, only far less entertaining. While many will participate in the
theatrics by putting forward their best hopeless candidate, exhausting
resources and volunteer time to get you to vote for a “socialist,” we
call this what it is—a waste of time. We have zero interest in
offering even the most marginal amount of legitimacy to something as
illegitimate as US elections, a circus where the bourgeois ruling class
capitalists pretend to let us choose which of their representatives gets
to head up the criminal empire that exploits workers domestically and
kills them in drone strikes overseas, all in our name. The joke is on us
and we will never take part in such a bullshit system. Why choose “the
lesser of two evils” when the only decent choice is to fight for a
better world?
During the 2012 elections, about 240
million Americans were of voting age, while about 146 million were
actually registered. Of those registered, 17 million people did not go
to the polls. 39% of people know that registering to vote is a waste of
time, and only 53% of people actually vote. We are constantly told that
we live in the greatest democracy in the world, and that voting is the
pinnacle of this democratic achievement, yet the numbers show that it’s
nearly a 50/50 split among the population between seeing through the
sham of US bourgeois politics on the one hand, and dragging oneself out
to the polls to exercise this “historic opportunity” before heading back
to work and the unchanging grind of exploitation on the other. Even
considering the massive propaganda machine that the state deploys to
shame, guilt and motivate people to vote, 111 million voting age people
do not, and people making less than $20,000 a year have the lowest
voting rates of anyone.
Some people will tell us that if we do
not vote then we cannot complain. We say the opposite—since we have no
one to vote for who actually represents the people, all we can do is
rebel against this system. By not voting, we are protesting and refusing
to be complicit in the crimes that both of these two candidates would
be certain to commit as president, and we denounce the crimes they have
already committed so far. Even the most “radical” president would still
be confined to the limitations and activity approved by the ruling
elite. Without totally smashing the existing ruling class and its state
we will not see thorough revolutionary change, and it is high time we
stopped buying the snake oil hocked by these criminal politicians. We
must cast aside all illusions and prepare for struggle.
Many workers already see through the
sham of US elections. When we speak to them, they tell us the many
reasons why they see no point in voting. Others from both the left and
right would misidentify and criticize this stance as lazy or apathetic.
In reality, the working class knows in its heart that these cosmetic
questions of who will be the next president do not address the real
issues they face as a class. This is a correct idea and it must be seen
as an advanced form of class awareness.
The purpose of this boycott is to
highlight the limitations of participating in this bogus system, while
agitating for revolution as the only solution. We must utilize
everything at our disposal make information pamphlets, posters, and
fliers which can be spread widely both in the streets and online,
uniting all who can be united around the spreading of revolutionary
ideas in opposition to the reformist and defeatist ideas, mobilizing the
masses in the interest of ending capitalism. We must build in the
interest of revolution!
Revolution requires a full ideological
break with capitalist “democracy” and their bourgeois elections. When
revisionists call on the masses to vote for a bourgeois candidate or one
of their hopeless “socialists,” they are actually refusing to break
with the ideology of bourgeois “democracy,” which can only perpetuate
it. This amounts to pathetic and cynical distrust for revolution, a lack
of faith in the ability of the masses to resist such a system, and
confusion on who actually constitutes the advanced within our society.
They attempt to drag the masses of workers and oppressed nations people
back into the bourgeois system—a system we already see as pointless to
participate in, and one the masses have largely abandoned. Organizing
people to boycott the elections allows real revolutionaries to
consolidate those who can already identify the toxic nature of the US
electoral machine, instead of pulling them backward into a system we can
all see as undemocratic. We must draw firm lines between those who are
part of the system and those who organize to dismantle and destroy
capitalism.
Time and time again we are fed promises
from these ruling class puppets it is high time we stopped listening and
started acting! We call for a day of action on November 8th as soon as the polls open; a day where we can make our voices heard and let others know why it is that we will not be voting!
Down with the elections
Fuck voting for a ruling class vulture
Build for revolution in 2016!
Fuck voting for a ruling class vulture
Build for revolution in 2016!
-Red Guards Austin
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