More from Mansoor
This is key. Noone considers the left to be revolutionary, within the parliamentary process except for nutcases like margerie taylor green and middle class hacks. The only way in whi ch a left parliamentarianism could work as a tribune, as a simple rejection of every proposal and every legislation offered, at all times. Given no left wing party would do this, then it ends up being like a match between Manchester city and Bournemouth. The win is decided from the outset by the material conditions, even if the exact result, per se, is not.
Criticisms of the kind you mentioned, which are at any rate put forward out of sympathy for the Left, conceal the main reasons for the failure of the radical Left in parliamentary systems, and condone its parliamentarian illusions especially in European countries. The reason why the radical Left seldom gets anywhere in the elections is not, as the democratic critics of parliamentary democracy would have us believe, that they lack resources to make propaganda, or that the elections are not democratic, or that the mathematical formula for the allocation of seats in relation to the number of votes functions in favour of the big parties, and so on. The reason is that the voter, and first and foremost the large masses of the working class, have a more realistic and less illusory picture of the place of elections and parliament in their lives. They know that the elections are not the means to fundamental changes in society, that the class owner of political power is not determined through elections, that the maximum expectation from the parliament is to help local reform, and that the elections are not over the life or death of capital or capitalism. They know that elections are about a minimal increase or decrease of their share of the possibilities of the existing society during the next electoral period. They are aware that the outcome of the elections of the parliament would only be a more or less faithful reflection of the balance of power, which already, outside the parliament and outside democracy, has been established among the classes.
The workers might be conscious enemies of capitalism, but in the general parliamentary elections they vote, not for the party which is for a revolution against capital, but for the Left faction of the bourgeoisie itself, that is, for the party which, as they see it, is indeed in a position to improve their conditions in relation to the already functioning capital. If fundamental changes are not on the agenda – as the very act of elections, parliamentarism, and the existence of a non-revolutionary situation make the people understand – then it is quite natural that the deprived masses, who have no alternative but to be satisfied with reform, should vote for reformist personalities and parties within the ruling class itself – personalities and parties that, as they see it, have the actual possibility to bring those reforms about. The problem of the Left is not that the allocation of the seats is not proportionate to the number of direct votes, or that the neighbourhood Trotskyist party does not have equal possibilities for propaganda to eventually secure one seat out of four hundred. The problem is that, under normal circumstances, the workers do not regard someone who wants to become a member of the parliament for four years from a revolutionary position against capital a good representative for pursuing their interests through this particular channel. People know and observe the rules of the parliamentary game, except in a period of revolutionary crises – that is when the parliament is no longer a legislative assembly in a stable society, but a platform for political manoeuvring and legislation. One of the most important of these rules is that the winner of the class game is known beforehand; otherwise the game itself will be over altogether.
This is key. Noone considers the left to be revolutionary, within the parliamentary process except for nutcases like margerie taylor green and middle class hacks. The only way in whi ch a left parliamentarianism could work as a tribune, as a simple rejection of every proposal and every legislation offered, at all times. Given no left wing party would do this, then it ends up being like a match between Manchester city and Bournemouth. The win is decided from the outset by the material conditions, even if the exact result, per se, is not.