"How Marxists Use Bourgeois Elections" is a part of a series of 4 booklets on communist strategy & tactics, which you can purchase here for $15. These booklets can be read in any order:

• How Marxists Use Bourgeois Elections
• Lessons from the Communist International
• Marxism, Mutual Aid and Direct Action
• The Role of the Revolutionary Party

People frequently ask communists: who are you running for office? For this reason, Wellred is publishing this collection of articles putting forward the communist view of capitalist elections and showing how we can use them to advance the working-class struggle.

Our approach to bourgeois elections flows from the Marxist understanding of the state. Communists have studied the history of class society from its earliest foundations to the capitalist era. We are not naive. The state is always a tool for the ruling class to maintain its system of oppression and exploitation. Under bourgeois democracy, the population does not really decide how to run society. As Marx explained, bourgeois elections merely allow the people to choose which of the bosses’ representatives will rule over and repress them. The main capitalist parties, the Republicans and Democrats, share power, and the possibility of one party replacing the other through elections serves as a pressure valve for social discontent. The bourgeoisie have created a system where no matter who wins on election day, the working class always loses.

Despite this, constant capitalist propaganda about government “of, by, and for the people” creates illusions in American democracy. Communists cannot ignore millions of workers who still have faith that bourgeois elections can really change society. On the contrary, we must use elections, as well as any elected positions we win, to expose bourgeois democracy and show it for what it really is—democracy for the ruling class and dictatorship for the rest of us.

This booklet includes the following articles:

• Introduction by Tom Trottier
• "Communists and Elections: Parliament, Positions, and the Party" by Daniel Morley
• "Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?" (Excerpt from "Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder) by Vladimir Lenin
• Comintern Theses on the Communist Parties and Parliamentarism