Down with electoral opium — Long live the class struggle!

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No proletarian who opened a newspaper or turned on the radio or TV could have missed it, given how much the media have been beating the drum: 2027 will be an election year, and the campaign has already begun.

This comes as no surprise to us, given that political life in democracies is punctuated by those grand fairs of illusions known as elections. Lenin, for his part, had already pointed out the essential feature of capitalist democracy: “the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!” (1) Marxist revolutionaries know full well that in democracy as in dictatorship, it is always the bourgeoisie that rules. (2) The state, far from being an impartial arbiter above the classes, is the “committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,” as stated in the Communist Manifesto (3). The proletariat therefore has nothing to expect from elections.

They have nothing to expect from it, but that doesn’t stop the “electoral opium” from taking its toll. Admittedly, it tends to be less and less effective, as evidenced by the steadily rising abstention rate in presidential elections since at least 1995 (with the exception of 2007), a trend that is particularly pronounced among the working class, where nearly one in two workers does not turn out to vote in various elections. This does not, however, prevent the bourgeoisie—always highly inventive—from multiplying incentives to vote.

The most effective of these is the famous “Republican bloc,” an electoral manifestation of democratic anti-fascism. By regularly invoking, since 2002, the threat of fascist forces coming to power—a harbinger of the transformation of democratic institutions into a dictatorship, the repression of any working-class dissent, and even, among the most fervent anti-fascists, the establishment of concentration camps—the bourgeoisie has managed to maintain a certain level of interest among the population, including the proletariat, in the elections. One need only recall the 2024 legislative elections—called early following Macron’s unexpected dissolution of the National Assembly, and in which the National Rally was poised for a landslide victory—to demonstrate just how the combination of electoral opium and antifascist opium produced an explosive cocktail, one that was entirely detrimental to the true interests of the proletariat. We thus saw that voter turnout jumped by nearly 20 percentage points in each of the two rounds compared to the 2022 legislative elections. In fact, it was the highest turnout since the 1997 legislative elections. It is clear that this surge in turnout is primarily due to the mobilization of the proletariat—and particularly its youth—the two main groups that typically abstain from voting.

In this regard, 2027 looks set to be a repeat of 2024. According to polls and other bourgeois experts, the far right’s victory has never been more certain. We can therefore predict, with little risk of error, that the rhetoric of the “Republican barrier” will be trotted out ad nauseam among the political forces of the left—and especially the “far” left. The latter have, in fact, specialized in luring militant workers toward electoral illusions, most often by invoking the danger of fascism in power. This tactic is all the more likely to succeed given that this time around, the candidate of the so-called radical left—Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise—has a good chance of reaching the second round, a first since the “anti-capitalist” Mitterrand made it to the second round in 1981. In fact, some Trotskyists have already taken the plunge, not hesitating to campaign for Mélenchon as early as the first round. This is the case with the NPA-L’Anticapitaliste, centered around its long-standing, media-savvy spokespeople, Besancenot and Poutou; the misnamed “Revolutionary” “Communist” Party; and the perennial Lambertist splinter groups. While the rest of the Trotskyist movement has decided to campaign for an independent candidate—thereby helping to perpetuate electoral illusions among the most militant sections of the proletariat—it is highly likely that these bourgeois opportunist groups will call for a vote for Mélenchon in the second round, “without illusions but without reservation.” (4)

If the proletariat must turn its back on elections, it is not because of some foolish, anarchist-style apoliticism, but because elections serve a specific function in bourgeois society: to perpetuate the proletariat’s illusions that another political strategy or another leader might genuinely defend its interests, thereby diverting it from the only path leading to its emancipation—the path of class struggle, ranging from the simple defense of its immediate interests to the insurrectionary struggle to overthrow the bourgeois state and establish its dictatorship.

Yet election periods have often been times of social peace, a “truce” in the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. While it has sometimes happened that certain elections have been accompanied by protests, these are more the exception than the rule, for “electoral opium” is a hard drug, particularly effective at numbing the proletariat.

Even though we know that our calls will, at best, be heard by only a small minority of the proletariat, while the rest will be led astray into the quagmire of elections, it is our role and our duty as revolutionaries to remind everyone that the class struggle knows no truces—including electoral ones—and that the only path that will enable the proletariat to confront the attacks—which will undoubtedly intensify—that the bourgeoisie is preparing against it is to take up the struggle to defend its living and working conditions.

And while it is true that the NR is an undeniably anti-proletarian force—despite what its demagoguery might lead one to believe—and that its rise to power will inevitably be accompanied by terrible attacks on the working class, the fact remains that this party is every bit as bad as the many heirs of the outgoing president, and even as the forces of the left and far left, which, historically, have always served to push through the most terrible attacks against the proletariat, taking advantage of the relative support they enjoyed among the exploited.

No matter which candidate wins the election—whether it’s Le Pen, Mélenchon, or one of Macron’s interchangeable successors—the proletariat must follow one and only one path: the resumption of the class struggle!

For the unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, with or without papers, of all ages and genders, whether unemployed or employed!

For the resumption of the independent class struggle against capitalism and imperialism!

(1) Lenin, The State and Revolution, § 20 « The Transition from Capitalism to Communism », 1917.

(2) « In explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilization, bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system, all Socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels, namely, that the most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists », Lenin, « Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat », First Congress of the Communist International, 1919.

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