George Martin Fell Brown, Socialist Alternative (ISA in the United States)
(This article was first published on 8 July 2024)
This November, millions of Americans will vote in a presidential election where we’re expected to choose between two candidates nobody wanted. For all of America’s formal democratic structures, most of us feel we have little say in society. We’re not alone. The year 2024 is seeing national elections in 64 countries across the globe. This adds up to nearly half the world’s population. But this “year of elections” accompanies several years of democratic back-sliding globally.
With the collapse of Stalinism, the neoliberal order ushered in more “democracy” than ever before, at least formally. But this was accompanied by entrenching the power of the capitalist class. Now that order is in crisis. Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, warned last year in his book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism: “Our economy has destabilized our politics, and vice versa. We are no longer able to combine the operations of the market economy with stable liberal democracy.”
As the neoliberal order gives way to a new age of disorder, the political center has been crumbling. The result has been increased polarization. Initially, this polarization saw the growth of new left formations, from Syriza in Greece to Podemos in Spain, to the movement around Bernie Sanders here in the US.
However the same capitalist crisis that allowed those new left formations also put them under intense pressure in a period very unlike the postwar boom where mass workers parties achieved significant reforms. The new left formations were put to the test and found wanting. The same polarization then gave way to right-wing populist figures: from Trump in the US to Modi in India to Orban in Hungary. But these right populist forces have no solution to the capitalist crisis either. This provides new openings for left and working-class forces.
There is no simple trend in the year of elections consistently to the right or to the left. However, the elections taking place around the world are all reflections of the growing capitalist crisis and the age of disorder.
Capitalist democracy world tour 2024
A common theme in the recent elections has been the ousting or weakening of incumbents.In South Africa in May, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority for the first time since the end of apartheid. Years of corruption and austerity have instead benefited the Democratic Alliance, the traditional party of the white ruling class, the vaguely left-populist Economic Freedom Fighters, and uMkhonto we Sizwe, a populist split from the ANC led by Jacob Zuma.
Without an adequate left alternative, the popular anti-establishment mood can be seized by far right and right-populist forces. The far right saw sizable growth in the June elections for European parliament. These elections saw gains for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. Alternative for Germany, a party plagued by associations with the country’s Nazi past, has become the second biggest party in Germany. Far right forces also made gains in Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia. Outside of Europe, Nayib Bukele’s victory in El Salvador’s February general election, following on from the election of Javier Milei in Argentina last December, shows the dangers of the far right extend far beyond Europe.
This is only one side of the anti-establishment polarization. After the European elections, French President Emmanual Macron called a snap election. After the National Rally, the main beneficiary of the elections has been the New Popular Front, a coalition of mostly left parties headed by Jean-Luc Melenchon. This shows how the capitalist crisis can open up opportunities for the working class as well as dangers.
In places where new left formations are being built, they can tap into the popular mood and thwart the growth of the right. In Mexico’s June election, the left-wing Morena party won a sweeping majority, with Claudia Scheinbaum becoming the first woman president in North America. While Morena is a loose formation with competing political trends, its victory brings about significant openings for struggle, and has horrified big business. The same happened after Senegal’s election in March, when the newly formed left-wing PASTEF party won in the face of severe state repression from the US-aligned president Macky Sall.
The Senegal example shows both openings for the left and the danger of democratic backsliding. Many of the elections making up the “year of elections” are shows put on by authoritarian governments. Following the death of Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s June elections are a stage managed show to keep the old guard in power in the aftermath of the mass protests that shook the country in 2022. Similar stage managed affairs occurred in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Chad. Russia’s March election was a prime example of this. Ukraine, for its part, hasn’t held its scheduled elections this year because the country is under martial law.
For countries trapped between the big imperialist blocs in the new cold war, elections have turned into intra-imperialist proxy battles. Taiwan’s January presidential election was seen as a referendum on the island’s relation to China. The aftermath of the election has seen the Taiwanese nationalist president Lai Ching-te in a deadlock with a parliament led by the pro-China Kuomintang. Bulgaria’s June parliamentary elections saw a similar deadlock with numerous pro-Russia and pro-EU having no clear path to a government. In Moldova’s July election, this is also exacerbating national tensions with the Russian minority in Transnistria Gagauzia.
In some countries, elections have seemed to reveal a turn to normality. India’s election, held from April through June, was expected to see a landslide for the right-populist Modi. Instead, his Bharatiya Janata Party lost its majority with more traditional capitalist parties gaining. In the UK, the much hated Tories have called a snap election in July, which is expected to be a landslide victory for the Labour Party. In spite of the Labour Party’s past as a workers’ party, Keir Starmer’s current leadership has been dominated by uninspiring politics and witch hunts against the left. Both countries show that reactionary politics is also unstable in the age of disorder and, even without a credible alternative, can be swept from power.
That’s what happened in the US in 2020 when Trump was swept out of office, not due to any enthusiasm about Biden, but through pure revulsion against Trump. However, as this year’s election shows, that’s not enough to get rid of Trump-ism. Without a serious left-wing challenge to the capitalist system, reactionary forces will find a way to return.
Marxists & elections
Under capitalism, elections are fundamentally run in the interests of the ruling class. In State and Revolution, Lenin famously said: “To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament–this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism.” However Marxists recognize the value of participating in bourgeois elections, which Lenin saw as “training the proletariat for revolution.” Like it or not, elections are the time when working class people most consistently engage in politics, and that shouldn’t be ceded to the capitalists.
A key thing that distinguishes Marxism from reformism and liberalism is how we engage in elections. The expectation isn’t that capitalism can be voted out of existence. Real change is made through the mass movement of the working class. But the platform of elected office can be used to build such movements. This is how Socialist Alternative used our Seattle city council office through Kshama Sawant over the past decade. Failure to understand this is what led to the betrayals of Bernie Sanders, the squad, and countless other new left formations around the world.
Ultimately, meaningful long-term change requires the overthrow of the capitalist system. This can only be accomplished through the activity of the masses. Since the rise of neoliberalism, the organization of the working class has been massively thrown back and hollowed out. As such, Marxists are faced with a dual task: to build the revolutionary forces of Marxism, and to build the mass organizations of the working class. New left formations, like France Insoumise, or Morena can act as initial steps towards rebuilding those mass working-class organizations. But the pressures of capitalist crisis constantly threaten to derail such movements.
The role of a revolutionary party is to navigate these challenges. To understand the complexities of the age of disorder, to engage in the day to day struggles of the working class and help develop a strategy to win real victories while pointing to the objective need to end capitalism in order to win fundamental change. This is how we can transcend the limited “year of elections” capitalism is willing to offer us and create a whole new, genuinely democratic, socialist world.
