Reply To: $15 nmw USA
Although we are all speculating here, I think it is safe to assume on the basis of past and present experience that, as long as the vote exists (and there’s no reason to suppose that it won’t continue to) then people will use it even if without illusions. So, when the movement for a stateless, classless, moneyless, wageless society begins to take off it will express itself, among other ways, electorally, despite what anarchists and other abstentionists might be advocating from the sidelines.
So the question of how a minority of revolutionary councillors and MPs should do cannot be avoided. They could in theory decide to abstain on everything, but insofar as concessions and mitigations can be obtained I can’t see this position being maintained (except in the last days of capitalism when there’s about to be a socialist majority). That’s just not how people react — if they can see that things can be made slightly better or less worse they go for it. Ironically perhaps, the anarchist organisation to which KAZ belongs doesn’t just go for revolution and refuse concession,s as he says socialist councillors should, but devotes most of its activity to trying to get concessions.
Of course there will be dangers if the situation of being a minority in a local council or parliament becomes semi-permanent. The movement has to go on growing. If it stops then the same problem that the German Greens faced will risk happening — “realos” will emerge to challenge the “fundis”. “Possibilism”, or going for what you think you can realistically get in the immediate, is unfortunately the default position.