16.04.2026

Agreeing the best model

To stand or not to stand in elections has long divided the left. Marx argued for standing. But on what programme, around what issues? On April 11 the Netherlands Communistisch Platform held a day-school to discuss ‘Marxism and electoralism’. Mike Macnair and Rogier Specht provided introductions

In the first session of last weekend’s Communist Platform school at Utrecht, I spoke on the history and theory of Marxism and electoral activity. In the second, comrade Rogier Specht of the Communistisch Platform spoke on issues more specific to the electoral work of the Revolutionair Socialistische Partij, of which the CP is part, and specifically on RSP campaigns in the recent local elections in the Netherlands. This second session was conducted in Dutch, but comrade Jules helpfully provided me with simultaneous translation, which allowed me to follow things. That said, the report of this session below is based on comrade Specht’s notes.

The meeting was well-attended (though it started late because of technical problems at the venue), and the discussions were lively. It was followed by an enjoyable informal social in a local bar - one of the benefits of physical, as opposed to online, meetings.

In my own opening, I began with Marx’s arguments for electoral intervention against the Bakuninists and (surviving) Proudhonists in 1871, which I have cited before and quoted in my March 19 article replying to Vincent David.¹

Marx makes two arguments in these passages. The first is that the road to the abolition of classes lies through working class rule, the “political domination of the proletariat” (“la domination politique du proletariat” in the original French report²). Hence the proletariat as a class has to learn to lead, or govern the society as a whole - which requires electoral (and, as far as possible, parliamentary) activity. The second is that in the absence of an independent political project of the proletariat, the working class inevitably becomes a political tail of one or other of the two great wings of capitalist politics: the nationalist-patriarchalist ‘party of order’ or the free-market liberal ‘party of liberty’.

There are two further arguments which can be added to these. The first is that the strike weapon is, in fact, dependent on wider solidarity: sectional strength is not enough. This was an idea already familiar to Marx and Engels, following strike movements in the 1830s-40s. The mere ability to disrupt production, without wider solidarity, can be ‘taken down’ and, indeed, made into a ground of public opposition to strikers by the capitalist class’s control of the judiciary, government, as well as the media and public platforms. Political solidarity can thus massively strengthen strike action.

Cooperatives

The second is that cooperatives under capitalism are driven towards functioning as capitalist firms. This is obvious enough. But as part of a movement tied together by a political party which seeks the outright replacement of capitalism, that tendency is weakened and, on the contrary, cooperatives may, as Marx put it, “practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers”.³

We must not take Marx (or any of the other classics of our movement) as dogma to be accepted unquestioningly. But in this case, Marx’s arguments for electoral action of a workers’ party, which aims for the replacement of capitalism through working class political rule, are corroborated by subsequent experience. It is not only a matter of the experience of the Second International. Powerful electoral parties of socialist opposition have also reinforced and promoted the growth of trade union, cooperative, mutual aid, workers’ education and cultural institutions. Examples can be seen in Europe in the Communist Parties of France and Italy in the cold war period. More recently, the Brazilian Workers Party before its entry into government, and Rifondazione Comunista before its collapse, displayed the same dynamic.

This corroboration poses a further theoretical point. This is that the proletariat is the whole social class which is dependent on the wage share of production - including indirect dependence of home-makers and children on wage-earners, and dependence on state benefits as an aspect of the ‘social wage’. The consequence is that Marx’s ‘political action’ - electoral activity and campaigns for general laws in the interests of the working class as a class - more fully express the interests of the working class than the necessarily sectional activities of strikes, trade unions and cooperatives. It is for this reason that a movement with a political party which aims to replace capitalism at its core will create stronger trade unions, co-ops, and so on.

The next step is the debate between the Marxists, on the one hand, and the Possibilists and the British TUC, on the other, at the time of the foundation of the Second International in 1889 and down to the exclusion of the anarchists at the London Congress of 1896 - a debate which has resurfaced in a variety of different forms ever since. The Possibilists argued, as much of the modern far left does, that adopting a minimum programme - and especially demands for political democracy - separated the Parti Ouvrier Français from the masses. What was needed was, then, a broad movement for immediate demands. In 1889 they allied with the British TUC against the Marxists. Then and in 1896, advocating broad unity including opponents of socialist electoral activity served the British trade union leaders as a political alibi for their actual intimate relations with the Liberal Party (like US trade union leaders’ relations to the Democrats in the USA since the 1950s).

The essence of the Possibilist idea is to limit political proposals to ones agreeable to everyone: a politics of consensus or veto. This implies commitment not to speak of socialism as an alternative to capitalist rule as such, of the necessary antagonism of the exploiting to the exploited classes, or of the possibility of working class rule.

Possibilism allows organisational existence - at the price of political silencing. This, again, poses a matter of theory: that the point of a party and of electoral interventions is an independent working class political voice. Marx and Engels ‘assumed’, because it was ‘just there’, another aspect of the problem of political voice: the workers’ oppositional press whose growth in the 19th century Stanley Harrison chronicled.⁴ In Germany, the development of a working class press needed the support of the party, though only Vorwärts was directly party-controlled (and that only from 1904).

Electoral coalitions

The issue of silencing leads to that of electoral coalitions. It is clear that both the German SPD and the Bolsheviks used stand-down agreements where necessary to win representation in undemocratic electoral systems.⁵ What is unacceptable is, first, government coalitions without the workers’ party having majority control and the ability to implement its minimum programme, which involves accepting political responsibility for the choices of the pro-capitalist parties. And secondly, coalitions which present themselves as broad-front political unity. What is objectionable here is that this is, again, to accept the line of the Possibilists: self-silencing for the sake of unity.

My last point concerned Marxists and local government. Engels in 1881 expressed support for socialist electoral intervention in local government; the Second International offered an (unduly optimistic) view of ‘municipal socialism’ in a resolution at the 1900 Paris Congress. The Bolsheviks in 1917 conducted extensive municipal Duma election campaigns. The Comintern in 1920, imagining the immediacy of revolution, argued for a policy of using local authorities to trigger confrontation with central government; Trotsky in 1939 was considerably more cautious, while still urging participation.⁶

The discussion from the floor featured interventions from a ‘Trotskyist’ from the Spartacist tradition of Oehlerism (which rejects on principle voting for class-collaborationist parties, contrary to Lenin’s arguments in Leftwing communism and to Trotsky’s tactics urged for the French Trotskyists in the people’s front period); and, more unusually, from a Eurocommunist, who argued that a more fundamental break with what had been called communism in the 20th century was needed, both because of Stalinism in the ‘socialist bloc’ and because today’s politics has taken away the space for the sort of cooperative, workers’ education, and so on, activities of the past because these are now embedded in the state.

More comrades were concerned with the issue of local government specifically. What tangible benefits could we offer for voting communist in local elections, having regard to the limits of legality? How can we raise such issues without reducing our election campaigning to them? Should we advocate the replacement of local government funding by indirect taxation with direct taxation? What would be the relationship of electoral work to the struggle for an independent media? How can we raise class consciousness in general? What if we won a majority in a municipal government - in Finsterwolde in 1951-53, central government simply overthrew the communist municipal government.

In my view a number of these issues resolve into questions of tactics, which are dependent on local knowledge (just for example, local government in England is only funded by indirect taxes in the form of central government subsidies). The problem of legal limits has, however, two aspects to it:

On the one hand, Comintern in 1920 was pursuing a policy designed to lead to an insurrection in the immediate term, and its ‘confrontational’ policy for local government reflected that policy.

On the other hand, law is more fluid than it appears, and the underlying issue is the political relationship of forces. What appears to be entirely legal may be suddenly illegalised by the government or the courts. Militant in Liverpool obtained concessions to stave off a confrontation while the 1984-85 miners’ Great Strike was at its height; but the attempt after that to move to confronting the government made the organisation appear to be dumping on their own base - a policy exploited by the Tory government and by the Labour right wing.

RSP

Comrade Specht’s introduction started with the point that the Communistisch Platform comrades had hoped for the session to be or include a debate with the Amsterdam broad-front electoral group, De Vonk (‘The Spark’) which the Amsterdam RSP is engaged with. But after keeping the possibility of a debate open for some time, in the end De Vonk said no. The CP had raised the issue for debate, because the RSP executive has adopted no national line, though discussion has begun.

The left’s approach to electoral politics is characterised by a narrow focus on street and protest action. It is claimed that ‘real change does not take place in parliament’. This is not just a far-left dogma, but is also asserted by the Socialist Party and by the new ‘Progressief Nederland’ unification of the GroenLinks (Green Left)⁷ and PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid - Labour Party)⁸. The result is that the radical left acts as the political tail of NGOs, the trade unions and established parties that set the political line. The left’s electoral voting recommendations, because they are defined by the idea that ‘consciousness arises in struggle’, have the same tailist character and little practical influence.

In the recent local elections, the RSP stood as part of the De Vonk electoral coalition in Amsterdam, and in its own name in Nijmegen. In Nijmegen 837 votes (0.9%) were obtained. In Amsterdam, the 2022 DSA slate obtained 1,472 votes (0.45%); De Vonk represented a substantial advance with 5,248 votes (1.6%), though still at a marginal level overall.

There is a faction that argues against electoral work in general as corrupting. But its arguments are incoherent. Corrupting influences exist in all forms of political engagement; and groups which have never engaged in electoral work or have not done so for decades are politically corrupted.

The real issue is about honesty: what we would do in the event of a victory. How do we translate a national programme into a local one? How can we be honest about what is possible within the existing levels of power?

De Vonk has explicitly included in their programme the point that they will make proposals that “push legal boundaries, strain budgets and make civil servants sweat. Not because we are naive, but because we know: every exception begins as a transgression.” The strategy, therefore, is to provoke legal and budgetary disputes with the civil state (or superstate, in the case of the EU), in order to use “court cases and other pushback” from Brussels or The Hague as mobilising public campaigns. They themselves say on this matter that in such a situation we “must be ready to bring the whole city to a standstill. And ultimately the whole country”.

But can you apply this model to smaller municipalities? Finsterwolde in 1951 did not lead to this dynamic of a general strike; but communists are more likely in ‘normal times’ to win majorities in smaller municipalities.

Testing legal boundaries in the hope of triggering the mass strike does not prepare the working class for the political choices that must be made. Rather, it merely invites state intervention, media witch-hunting, and so on. What is needed is clarity for the working class about what is possible within the framework of the political goal of dismantling the capitalist constitutional order. We reject coalitions with bourgeois parties, including at local level. Faced with these issues, the party needs its own means of communication with the mass of the working class - especially, its own extensive press, capable of formulating a consistent counter-narrative to that of the state and the bourgeois press.

De Vonk has created a membership-based electoral coalition without a shared programme or agreement on the accountability of any councillors elected: “For now, we have decided that we do not want a rigid, dogmatic line.”⁹ But this approach is not workable for a political party which gets MPs or councillors elected. Based on our programmatic vision, we want to curtail the power of the capitalist state and expand the power of the working class. How do we deal with proposals that, for example, increase benefits, but also increase the control mechanisms of benefits agencies? How do we deal with the right to demonstrate? Are we prepared to allow the capitalist state to curtail that? Anti-discrimination measures that increase the power of ‘human resources’ departments? These are daily political choices, for which you must be prepared with a coherent political programme.

Equally, communists need to pursue strict control over individual elected representatives. They are, after all, under constant pressure to act in the interests of the ruling class. We can only resist high salaries, cushy jobs and the social pressure to ‘take responsibility’, as a collective. Elected representatives and parliamentary groups need to be subordinate to the party executive and the congress, or at local level to the branch executive and the members’ meeting. The accountability mechanism and recallability are not merely organisational measures, but prefigurations of the minimum programme - they embody the principle that representatives are subordinate to their electors, in contrast to the bourgeois notion of the ‘free mandate’. Again, accountability of this sort depends on political debate on the party’s political programme and strategy, which is unlikely within a diplomatic unity. De Vonk, in contrast, seeks to avoid debate as tending to blow up the diplomatic unity: claiming debate is “more damaging than attacks by fascists”.

The general discussion which followed was, again, largely addressed to the limits on the powers on local government. One speaker made the point that ‘impossible’ demands can become ‘possible’ with sufficient political pressure. Comrade Specht responded that what was at issue was, rather, leftists creating an illusion of what is possible at local council level, and strategically gambling that the working class will not lose faith in the party when confronted with those limits, but will instead move towards a general strike and revolution. This is pulling the wool over people’s eyes. Another raised the issue of standing for neighbourhood councils, which have merely an advisory capacity. A speaker from the floor replied to this one that you can stand for elections to bodies you want abolished, while comrade Specht added that the Bolsheviks stood for various undemocratic and merely advisory bodies.

Another issue posed: given the criticisms of De Vonk, should communists support the RSP’s withdrawal from it? Comrade Specht’s view was that this would not be right; the RSP is still, in effect, a propaganda group. The mistake of RSP Amsterdam is putting forward De Vonk as the best model.

‘Syndicalist quackery Weekly Worker March 19 2026 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1577/syndicalist-quackery). The Marx references are www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/politics-speech.htm (September 20 and 21 1871 speeches at the London Congress of the First International), www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/21.htm (alternative report of September 21) and www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm (November 23 letter to Friedrich Bolte).↩︎
www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/00/parti/kmpc073.htm.↩︎
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1866/08/instructions.htm (1866).↩︎
S Harrison Poor men’s guardians London 1974.↩︎
M Macnair, ‘Electoral principles and our tactics’ Weekly Worker April 13 2011 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/861/electoral-principles-and-our-tactics); ‘Principles to shape tactics’, April 20 2011 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/862/principles-to-shape-tactics); ‘Propaganda and agitation’ April 27 2011 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/863/propaganda-and-agitation).↩︎
F Engels, ‘Two model town councils’ Labour Standard June 25 1881 (CW Vol 24, pp394-96); the 1900 resolution is at www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/second-international-resolutions-book/ch05.htm, headed ‘Municipal socialism’. See also WG Rosenberg, ‘The Russian municipal duma elections of 1917’ Soviet Studies Vol 21 (1969), pp131-63; Comintern Second Congress, Theses on the Communist Parties and Parliamentarism www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/ch08a.htm)[#v2 p49]; L Trotsky, ‘Nationalised industry and workers’ management’ (May 12 1939) in Writings 1938-39 New York 1974, pp326-29.↩︎
Originally a 1989 fusion of the Eurocommunist Communist Party of the Netherlands with several left-Christian groups.↩︎
Not a party with a trade union-based history, like British Labour, but a post-1946 Nato artefact, fusing the old Social Democratic Party with a left-liberal group and the Christian Democrats.↩︎
Interview in De Telegraaf.↩︎