The Power of your Vote

In a an election campaign before polling day you are made to feel the most important people in the land. Once polling is all over and you have placed your ballot, you are mostly ignored but during elections how different it is. Professional politicians and the media go to endless trouble to influence you and win your support for them and their policies. It is you who can make or break the career of a politician and you who can place power in the hands of a government which during its term of office can by taxation and tariff policies or by subsidies, raise some industries to prosperity and bring others to their ruin. It is you who give power to governments in whose hands rest decisions about peace and war. Whichever of them, gets elected you, it is a defeat for you, a betrayal of your own interests. As far as the workers are concerned, their position as wage slaves, exploited to maintain a propertied class in luxurious idleness, will not be altered. The accumulated wealth of the country (the means of production and distribution) will still be concentrated in the hands of the same small minority of individuals, the capitalist class, who own it at present.

The vote has provided a tool for our emancipation. In the past workers were destined to the political life of their masters’ choice but today, the vote gives us the power to determine our own destiny. Some on the Left have concluded that the vote is of no use to the working class. On the contrary, the vote is rather like the razor blade; you can use it to cut your throat or to have a shave. The vote is a weapon and like all weapons can be misused as well as used properly. So far the workers have used the vote to register their consent to the present system. About twenty per cent of the electorate regularly abstain from voting, although it is impossible to tell how many do so positively (as a conscious refusal to vote for the parties standing) and how many are negative abstainers (those who do not care). Even among those who do not vote many are confused or cynical. Many Labour voters may decide themselves that they want to see a social change in the interest of the working class, many Tory voters are looking for a party that will defend them from the omnipotence of the State.

There is a third possibility, which is not voting for useless leaders, but considering the idea of socialism and then voting for it. The Socialist Party exists to provide an alternative to those who wish to lead the working class. A vote for socialism in the General Election is a vote in your own confidence to determine your future. 

In Cardiff Central and Folkestone & Hythe constituencies there is a Socialist Party candidate who will be conspicuous by not grovelling for your vote, but only asking you to vote for the Socialist Party if you understand and want socialism. Where there is not a Socialist Party candidate standing but you want to cast your vote for socialism, then write “World Socialism” across your ballot paper. In every election it is power that is at stake; are you going to give a blank cheque to the parties of the profit system or will you use your vote in your own class interest? The weapon of the vote is yours; you have only to use it. 

The Socialist Party exists for the purpose of replacing weakness with strength; it seeks to substitute knowledge for ignorance, organisation for chaos. Socialist education is the only solution to working-class difficulties. When the workers realise that, in spite of all the differences in their respective conditions, they are one as wage-slaves, then they will feel the need and possibility of emancipation, and act accordingly.

Socialism will be established only when a majority of workers understand and want it. It cannot be imposed upon the population “for their own good”, and nor can voters be tricked into going for socialism by offering them something else as bait.

The Socialist Party stands in elections on a platform of uncompromised socialism. We do not offer to reform capitalism; we do not pose as leaders. Our position is that the workers must emancipate themselves. Only those who understand and accept socialist principles are asked to vote for socialist candidates. 

Furthermore, those workers who only half agree or disagree with bits of what we say or like our candidate, but not our policies, are emphatically urged not to vote for the Socialist Party. We will only take class-conscious votes; it is the capitalist parties who need the other kind in order to win political power. Of course, it is not only at election time that socialists seek support for our principles: anyone wishing to join the Socialist Party must demonstrate that they know exactly what we stand for. We will accept no second-class members – no associate comrades who go along with us some of the way, but not all. Socialist knowledge must be the basis for involvement in the serious struggle for world socialism.

In this election many of the non-socialist candidates are advocating for the electorate to use their vote as a “referendum” on Brexit. Depending on your position you are asked to vote for the “lesser evil”. Is it ever permissible to vote for non-socialist candidates? You cannot vote for capitalism without the nasty bits. Every vote cast for capitalism is a vote against socialism. You do not vote for only one policy. The party which supports or opposes the EU  will also support all kinds of other measures necessary for the running of capitalism and detrimental to the workers’ interests. 

The Socialist Party has adhered to clear principles since its formation and will continue to be hostile to all the sordid and dishonest political tactics which typify the capitalist system.