panies that control the economy. They will remain as unelected, and as little accessible to democracy, as before. COLIN ROBERTSON looks at the elections that won't take place on 11 June — and at the difference between the government and the state, and at some of the classic Marxist writings on elections.
When Margaret Thatcher dissolved Parliament and called for the ll June The Guardian, that bland section of the capitalist media, reported the event with a short, almost unnoticeable article headlined Civil servants take reins in poll run-up' (11 The gist of the report explained that 'Mrs Thatchers decision to call a general election means that for the next month the day-to-day running of the country will be left to what has been called the 'permanent government' - the senior civil servants, under Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary.
The Guardian was right. Top civil servants are the 'permanent government', more exactly they are one of the bourgeois state institutions that are permanent. No top civil servant will be elected, re-elected or lose his/ her post next 11 June. In fact no top civil servant is ever elected. They are all appointed.
The operations of bourgeois democracy are structured in such a way that those institutions which are essential for the rule of capital (civil service, armed forces, the judiciary, secret services, etc - not parliament) are never exposed to the 'vagaries' of popular opinion expressed through the ballot box. Furthermore, the selection of people at the top of the permanent' institutions of the bourgeois state is carefully carried on through special and carefully monitored apparatuses -public schools, military acadamies, exclusive clubs and such like. The heavy bourgeois class bias, arrogant elitism, and strong esprit de corps displayed by these apparatuses is inherent in their ruling class nature. Anyone familiar with the selection process for a military academy or a public school, will readily concur with this assertion.
Viewing the state in this light there is a characteristic deviation of reformism/Labourism. It is not simply that they stand for reform - - nor simply the fact that they are for elections have a cherished belief that substantial socialist reform of the capitalist system is possible through the existing state machinery. In a nutshell retormism has an unwitting or deliberate confusion of the state and the government which remains the single most dangerous piece of petty-bourgeios ideological revisionism inside the workers movements. It is the source of innumerable legalist, constitutional democratic prejudices.
It was Eduard Bernstein, the reformist German socialist at the beginning of this century, who popularised the possibility of utilising the existing state machinery to transform society. Since the debates that followed the difference over LNC possibility of transformation of capitalism socialism, using the existing state, has been the line of divide between reformists and revolutionaries.
Marxists do not conclude that elections do not matter from the fact they do not believe the existing state can be used to achiere socialism. Or that what defines Marxism is an anti-electoralist stance, or, to paraphrase the German 'left' Communists, that Marxists reject categorically 'any return to parliamentary methods of struggle, which have become OBSOCIE politically. (Lenin, munism, an infantile disorder).
Lenin's famous pamphlet on ultraleftism is a harsh polemic against the Communist German ultimatism. In it Lenin takes them to task for their cretinism: 'how 'parliamentarim has become politically obsolete if 'millions' proletarians are still not only supporters parlamella lanisi general, but even frankly revolutionaries"?' Lenin put the finger on the contradictions of the ultra-lefts and accuses them of wishful thinking. If the masses continued to have deep illusions in parliament ard the existing state, it is not possible to destroy these illusions simply denunciations. It is necessary to show in practice that these institutions cannot achieve socialism inal ine bourgeoisit capitalism.
Another well known brand of 'left' communists were the Bordigists, a taction of the Italism Commupist Party, who argued against standing for, and participating in, Parliament, because it corrupts. That parliament corrupts is indeed true However, Lenin pointed out that the Bordigists argument was absurd. The police, logic of the Bordigists' argument meant telling the working class not to trust them either -rupts then power, which the Bordigists capture ticipating in parliament would corrupt them even more. As Lenin put it: To express one's "revolutionary by shouting abuse at parliamentarian op portunism, only ticipation in parliament, is very easy; but because it is very easy it is not the solution to a difficult problem, a very difficult problem To have a Leninist position on the elections has nothing to do with concluding that the question is to capture a majority in Parliament and implement an 'enabling act' in order to change the socio-economic basis of the existing system into a socialist one.
that elections are one of the many forms which the class struggle takes in countries dominated constitutional democratic prejudices are particularly firmly rooted.
Universal franchise and elections are not in themselves part and parcel of the bourgeois democratic prejudices Lenin talked about. It took hard and mighty struggles by the Chartists first, bourgeois and the Suffragettes later, to win the democratic right to vote On the contrary the Marxist critique of bourgeois democrary Is inal there are not enough elections - not that there are too many. In particular that elections are not extended into the state apparatus, which is completely peaceful not elective, into where the 'dictatorship reigns. The illusion lie in the conception that counterposes legality to force and in not understanding the nature of the bourgeois state itself.
Lenin wrote in Revolution, regarding the Paris Commune, that 'The Commune, therefore, appears to have released the smashed state machine "only" by fuller demohistorically Left-wing Combrand of anti-parliamentary can it be said that and 'legions' of "counterpropaganda or • and, indeed, will Tor 11 barnament cor- recall.
against parspirit" only exactly condemning parbourgeois capitalist society itself, ownership of capital, It means by bourgeois that is 'where legalist, either stifles bourgeoisbreak with existing legality.
take cluded from the elections.
because dedicated to or into the economy capital' of the working class.
The State cracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to 'But as a matter of fact this "only" signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is them:
case of 'quantity being transformed into quality: democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed into proletarian Lenin noted that the nature of the private sets limits on democracy is always hemmed in by the democracy: 'In capitalist society narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority.
Marxists stand for the defence and extension of democratic rights. If, as is very often the case, existing legality OI. suppresses people's democratic rights we call on people to This does not mean that elections place under bourgeois democracy substantially alter, or have the potential to alter, the fundamental class character of the existing state. Such elections leave the fundamental structures of the state intact. The existing institutions of the state are exNo decisive, long-lasting advance towards socialism is possible without the destruction of the state machinery the state apparatus serving capital. The destruction of the machinery of coercion in the hands of the bourgeoisie is the fundamental strategic line of march Does this mean that democracy is in contradiction with socialism? Not in the least. The much talked of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is the substitution of bourgeois (i.e. highly limited) democracy by the most complete extension of democracy to all fields. The first historic example, the Paris Commune of 1871, was characterised by the total accountability and recallability of all functionaries at any moment, including the judiciary and the police. No material privilege was accorded to "the reduction of the wages of state functionaries to the level of a worker's wage', as Marx put it, was the fundamental against bureaucracv Hurthermore the Com munards first decree was the suppres sion of the standing army and the in tegration of armed force into society:
Such steps ensured the democratic. participation of all the people in the running of the affairs that concern their lives at all times — not only during elections, nor indirectly by simply voting for somebody who will run their lives on behalf of them. This is in contrast to bourgeois democracy which ensures that people participate as little as possible in the running of their own lives at best are able to vote once every five years to elect a small group of people to parliament who are not even directly accountable to those who elected them in the first place.
True makes every political institution accountable to the people. Bourgeois democracy does not, and cannot, even expose the essential bodies that guarantee bourgeois rule to democratic scrutiny, let alone make them elective. It confines elections -by its nature and in order to protect the private ownership capital parliamentary bodies and local government. No elections will take place on Il June for the civil service, the army, or the boards of the companies that control tne economy. The elections on 11 June will decide the MPs in parliament. It will decide who forms the government. It will not alter who holds state power in Britain. On the contrary the elections on Il June, touching only a tiny part of the capitalist state, are designed to ensure that state power remains exactly in the hands of those who held it before.
Seeds the atro Viewpoint carries news, documents and analysis of working class movements trom around the world and is indispensible reading lor all sociallsts In the latest issue are in-depth articles on El Salvador and South Africa International Viewpoint is available from most left bookshops, or by › nost tron Other Books, PO Box 50, London N1 2XP.
Rail strike deepens A MASSIVE stay away by students and youth rocked the sham whites-only election in apartheid South Atrica. They joined the 26,000 rail workers who have been out on strike for eight weeks and striking postal and telecom workers who have been out for over a month.
Immediately following the stay away, in the early hours of Thursday 7 May, two powerful bombs were exploded COSATU House, the Johannesburg 2½ million workers London were burnt down, Germiston they WC1C smashed up and the catering commercial workers CAWUSA's offices the workers March Andrew the inSuerdo e working of black whole rapidly depot nationwide, showing the level of organisation achieved SARHWU, conditions heavy repression. their during They their slogan 'organisation Socialist Action 22 May 1987