While many radicals would be tempted to agree with our analysis of the limitations of electioneering and voting, few would automatically agree with anarchist abstentionist arguments. Instead, they argue that we should combine direct action with electioneering. In that way (it is argued) we can overcome the limitations of electioneering by invigorating the movement with self-activity. In addition, it is argued, the state is too powerful to leave in the hands of the enemies of the working class. A radical politician will refuse to give the orders to crush social protest that a right-wing, pro-capitalist one would.

This reformist idea met a nasty end in the 1900s (when, we may note, social democracy was still considered revolutionary). In 1899, the Socialist Alexandre Millerand joined the cabinet of the French Government. However, nothing changed:

"thousands of strikers. . . appealed to Millerand for help, confident that, with him in the government, the state would be on their side. Much of this confidence was dispelled within a few years. The government did little more for workers than its predecessors had done; soldiers and police were still sent in to repress serious strikes." [Peter N. Stearns, Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labour, p. 16]

In 1910, the Socialist Prime Minister Briand used scabs and soldiers to again break a general strike on the French railways. And these events occurred during the period when social democratic and socialist parties were self-proclaimed revolutionaries and arguing against anarcho-syndicalism by using the argument that working people needed their own representatives in office to stop troops being used against them during strikes!

Looking at the British Labour government of 1945 to 1951 we find the same actions. What is often considered the most left-wing Labour government ever used troops to break strikes in every year it was in office, starting with a dockers' strike days after it became the new government. And again in the 1970s Labour used troops to break strikes. Indeed, the Labour Party has used troops to break strikes more often than the right-wing Conservative Party.

In other words, while these are important arguments in favour of radicals using elections, they ultimately fail to take into account the nature of the state and the corrupting effect it has on radicals. If history is anything to go by, the net effect of radicals using elections is that by the time they are elected to office the radicals will happily do what they claimed the right-wing would have done. Many blame the individuals elected to office for these betrayals, arguing that we need to elect better politicians, select better leaders. For anarchists nothing could be more wrong as its the means used, not the individuals involved, which is the problem.

At its most basic, electioneering results in the party using it becoming more moderate and reformist - indeed the party often becomes the victim of its own success. In order to gain votes, the party must appear "moderate" and "practical" and that means working within the system. This has meant that (to use Rudolf Rocker words):

"Participation in the politics of the bourgeois States has not brought the labour movement a hair's-breadth nearer to Socialism, but thanks to this method, Socialism has almost been completely crushed and condemned to insignificance. . . Participation in parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist Labour movement like an insidious poison. It destroyed the belief in the necessity of constructive Socialist activity, and, worse of all, the impulse to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous delusion that salvation always comes from above." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 49]

This corruption does not happen overnight. Alexander Berkman indicates how it slowly develops when he writes:

"[At the start, the Socialist Parties] claimed that they meant to use politics only for the purpose of propaganda . . . and took part in elections on order to have an opportunity to advocate Socialism

"It may seem a harmless thing but it proved the undoing of Socialism. Because nothing is truer than the means you use to attain your object soon themselves become your object . . . [so] There is a deeper reason for this constant and regular betrayal [than individual scoundrels being elected] . . . no man turns scoundrel or traitor overnight.

"It is power which corrupts . . . Moreover, even with the best intentions Socialists [who get elected] . . . find themselves entirely powerless to accomplishing anything of a socialistic nature . . . The demoralisation and vitiation [this brings about] take place little by little, so gradually that one hardly notices it himself . . . [The elected Socialist] perceives that he is regarded as a laughing stock [by the other politicians] . . . and finds more and more difficulty in securing the floor . . . he knows that neither by his talk nor by his vote can he influence the proceedings . . . His speeches don't even reach the public . . . [and so] He appeals to the voters to elect more comrades . . . Years pass . . . [and a] number . . . are elected. Each of them goes through the same experience. . . [and] quickly come to the conclusion . . . [that] They must show that they are practical men . . . that they are doing something for their constituency. . . In this manner the situation compels them to take a 'practical' part in the proceedings, to 'talk business,' to fall in line with the matters actually dealt with in the legislative body . . . Spending years in that atmosphere, enjoying good jobs and pay, the elected Socialists have themselves become part and parcel of the political machinery . . . With growing success in elections and securing political power they turn more and more conservative and content with existing conditions. Removal from the life and suffering of the working class, living in the atmosphere of the bourgeoisie . . . they have become what they call 'practical' . . . Power and position have gradually stifled their conscience and they have not the strength and honesty to swim against the current . . . They have become the strongest bulwark of capitalism."[What is Communist Anarchism?, pp. 78-82]

And so the "political power which they had wanted to conquer had gradually conquered their Socialism until there was scarcely anything left of it." [Rudolf Rocker, Op. Cit., p. 50] Not that these arguments are the result of hindsight, we may add. Bakunin was arguing in the early 1870s that the "inevitable result [of using elections] will be that workers' deputies, transferred to a purely bourgeois environment, and into an atmosphere of purely bourgeois political ideas. . . will become middle class in their outlook, perhaps even more so than the bourgeois themselves." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 216] History proved Bakunin's prediction correct (as it did with his prediction that Marxism would result in elite rule).

History is littered with examples of radical parties becoming a part of the system. From Marxian Social Democracy at the turn of the 19th century to the German Green Party in the 1980s, we have seen radical parties, proclaiming the need for direct action and extra-parliamentary activity denouncing these activities once in power. From only using parliament as a means of spreading their message, the parties involved end up considering votes as more important than the message. Janet Biehl sums up the effects on the German Green Party of trying to combine radical electioneering with direct action:

"the German Greens, once a flagship for the Green movement worldwide, should now be considered stink normal, as their de facto boss himself declares. Now a repository of careerists, the Greens stand out only for the rapidity with which the old cadre of careerism, party politics, and business-as-usual once again played itself out in their saga of compromise and betrayal of principle. Under the superficial veil of their old values - a very thin veil indeed, now - they can seek positions and make compromises to their heart's content. . . They have become 'practical,' 'realistic' and 'power-orientated.' This former New Left ages badly, not only in Germany but everywhere else. But then, it happened with the S.P.D." [The German Social Democratic Party] in August 1914, then why not with Die Grunen in 1991? So it did." ["Party or Movement?", Greenline, no. 89, p. 14]

This, sadly, is the end result of all such attempts. Ultimately, supporters of using political action can only appeal to the good intentions and character of their candidates. Anarchists, however, present an analysis of the structures and other influences that will determine how the character of the successful candidates will change. In other words, in contrast to Marxists and other radicals, anarchists present a materialist, scientific analysis of the dynamics of electioneering and its effects on radicals. And like most forms of idealism, the arguments of Marxists and other radicals flounder on the rocks of reality as their theory "inevitably draws and enmeshes its partisans, under the pretext of political tactics, into ceaseless compromises with governments and political parties; that is, it pushes them toward downright reaction." [Bakunin, Op. Cit., p. 288]

However, many radicals refuse to learn this lesson of history and keep trying to create a new party which will not repeat the saga of compromise and betrayal which all other radical parties have suffered. And they say that anarchists are utopian! In other words, its truly utopian to think that "You cannot dive into a swamp and remain clean." [Alexander Berkman, Op. Cit., p. 83] Such is the result of rejecting (or "supplementing" with electioneering) direct action as the means to change things, for any social movement "to ever surrender their commitment to direct action for 'working within the system' is to destroy their personality as socially innovative movements. It is to dissolve back into the hopeless morass of 'mass organisations' that seek respectability rather than change." [Murray Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society, p. 47]

Moreover, the use of electioneering has a centralising effect on the movements that use it. Political actions become considered as parliamentary activities made for the population by their representatives, with the 'rank and file' left with no other role than that of passive support. Only the leaders are actively involved and the main emphasis falls upon the leaders and it soon becomes taken for granted that they should determine policy (even ignoring conference decisions when required - how many times have politicians turned round and done the exact opposite of what they promised or introduced the exact opposite of party policy?). In the end, party conferences become simply like parliamentary elections, with party members supporting this leader against another.

Soon the party reflects the division between manual and mental labour so necessary for the capitalist system. Instead of working class self-activity and self-determination, there is a substitution and a non working class leadership acting for people replaces self-management in social struggle and within the party itself. Electoralism strengthens the leaders dominance over the party and the party over the people it claims to represent. And, of course, the real causes and solutions to the problems we face are mystified by the leadership and rarely discussed in order to concentrate on the popular issues that will get them elected.

And, of course, this results in radicals "instead of weakening the false and enslaving belief in law and government . . . actually work[ing] to strengthen the people's faith in forcible authority and government." [A. Berkman, Op. Cit., p. 84] Which has always proved deadly to encouraging a spirit of revolt, self-management and self-help — the very keys to creating change in a society.

Thus the 1870 resolution of the Spanish section of the First International seems to have been proven to be totally correct:

"Any participation of the working class in the middle class political government would merely consolidate the present state of affairs and necessarily paralyse the socialist revolutionary action of the proletariat. The Federation [of unions making up the Spanish section of the International] is the true representative of labour, and should work outside the political system." [quoted by Jose Pierats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 169]

Instead of trying to gain control of the state, for whatever reasons, anarchists try to promote a culture of resistance within society that makes the state subject to pressure from without. Or, to quote Proudhon, we see the "problem before the labouring classes . . . [as] consist[ing of] not in capturing, but in subduing both power and monopoly, — that is, in generating from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labour, a greater authority, a more potent fact, which shall envelop capital and the state and subjugate them." For, "to combat and reduce power, to put it in its proper place in society, it is of no use to change the holders of power or introduce some variation into its workings: an agricultural and industrial combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its slave." [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 398 and p. 397]

To use an analogy, the pro-election radical argues that the state is like an person with a stick that intends to use it against you and your friends. Then you notice that their grasp of that stick is uncertain, and you can grab that stick away from them. If you take the stick away from them, that does not mean you have to hit them. After you take the weapon away from them, you can also break it in half and throw it away. They will have been deprived of its use, and that is the important thing.

In response the anarchist argues that instead of making plans to take their stick, we develop our muscles and skill so that we don't need a stick, so that we can beat them on our own. It takes longer, sure, to build up genuinely libertarian working class organs, but it's worth it simply because then our strength is part of us, and it can't be taken away by someone offering to "wield it on our behalf" (or saying that they will break the stick when they get it). And what do socialist and radical parties do? Offer to fight on our behalf and if we rely on others to act for us then we will be disarmed when they do not (and instead use the stick against us). Given the fact that power corrupts, any claim that by giving the stick of state power to a party we can get rid of it once and for all is naive to say the least.

And, we feel, history has proven us right time and time again.