Upstream - A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

“This is the most important election of our lifetimes.” “Voting for a third-party candidate? Might as well throw away your vote!” “You may not like him, but you’ve just got to hold your nose and vote for him — otherwise, Trump might win.”  We're sure you’ve heard each of these lines many times — we know that we have. But, at some point you have to ask: how can every election be the most important one? Am I really throwing away my vote by voting for a candidate whose policies I agree with? Can we ever actually affect change if we’re always voting for the "lesser evil" candidate or party? Isn’t that just a race to the bottom — or, as we're seeing currently, a race towards genocide? Well, in this conversation, we’re going to tackle all of those questions — and much more — with our guest, August Nimtz, Professor of political science and African American and African studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. Professor Nimtz is the author of The Ballot, The Streets, Or Both? published by Haymarket Books. In this conversation, Professor Nimtz explores the question of electoralism as it relates to revolutionary left politics through a deep dive into the history of the Russian Revolution — examining how Marx, Engels, and Lenin approached electoralism and then applying their analyses and viewpoints to today’s situation.  What is the role of elections for the revolutionary left? How can we engage with electoralism without falling into what Professor Nimtz refers to as “electoral fetishism”? What about the "lesser evil" or "spoiler" phenomenon? How can we build a party for the working and oppressed classes without falling prey to opportunism or bourgeois distraction? What can we learn from the European Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, and other historic attempts at revolution — both successful and unsuccessful? These are just some of the questions and themes we explore in this episode with Professor Nimtz. Thank you to Bethan Mure for this episode’s cover art and to Noname for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns. Further Resources: The Ballot, The Streets, or Both? Upstream: What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante Guerrilla History: Electoral Theory and Strategy of Marx and Lenin w/ August Nimtz This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.      

The Republicans are able to do what they can do because there's no resistance. There's no effective working class and no effective resistance because the working class, its organizations, its leadership is weighted to the Democratic Party. And I quote a labor official, the head of the AFL-CIO, retired, I met him in Venezuela, from Delaware. So he knew Joe Biden personally, and he was complaining to Biden in 2012 about the Obama-Biden administration's lackluster performance when it came to the labor movement. And Biden shot back at him and said, look, what are you complaining about? What are you complaining about? You know you have nowhere else to go.

You know you have nowhere else to go. In other words, that's exactly because the working class was weighted to the Democratic Party, not willing to break, not willing to form its own independent political action. That only emboldened the Republicans and in theward direction also of the Democrats. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. This is the most important election of our lifetimes. Voting for a third-party candidate might as well be throwing away your vote. You may not like him, but you've got to hold your nose and vote for him. Otherwise, Trump might win.

I'm sure you've heard each of these lines many times. I know we have. But at some point, we've got to ask, how can every election be the most important one? Am I really throwing away my vote by voting for a candidate whose policies I agree with? Can we ever actually affect change if we're always voting for the quote-unquote lesser evil candidate or party? Isn't that just a race to the bottom? Well, in this conversation, we're going to tackle all of those questions and much more with our guest, August Nims, Professor of Political Science and African American and African Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of

Minnesota. Professor Nims is the author of The Ballot, The Streets, or Both, published by Haymarket Books. In his book and in this conversation, Professor Nims explores the question of electoralism as it relates to revolutionary left politics through a deep dive into the lead-up to and the history of the Russian Revolution, examining how Marx, Engels, and Lenin approached electoralism, and then applying their analyses and viewpoints to today's situation. What is the role of electoralism for the revolutionary left? How can we engage with electoralism without falling into what Professor Nims refers to as electoral fetishism?

What about the lesser evil or spoiler phenomenon? How could we build a party for the working and oppressed classes without falling prey to opportunism or bourgeois distraction? What about the Russian Revolution and the ideas of Engalls, Marx, and Lenin? What can we learn from the European revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, the

Russian Revolution, and other historic attempts at revolution, both successful and unsuccessful? These are just some of the questions and themes we'll explore in this conversation with Professor Nims. And before we get started, just a quick note. Upstream is now entirely listener-funded. We couldn't do this without the support of our listeners and fans. If you haven't already, and if you can, if you're in a place where you could afford to do so, and if it's important for you to help us keep Upstream sustainable, please consider going to upstreampodcast.org forward slash support

to make a recurring monthly or one-time donation. Also, if you can, please go to Apple Podcasts and rate, subscribe, and leave us a review there. You can also go to Spotify now and leave us a review there too. This really helps us get in front of more eyes and into more ears. We don't have a marketing budget or anything like that for Upstream, so we really do rely on listeners like you to help grow our audience and spread the word. Thank you. And just one final note, as you may know, we've been posting daily social media posts on Palestine and Israel since October 7th. Our earlier posts were reaching hundreds of thousands of people, but as Instagram censors began to catch on,

we, along with many other vocal pro-Palestinian voices, have had our accounts heavily shadow banned. Although incredibly frustrating, this is a great reminder that social media is a limited tool when it comes to organizing and political education. It's just a starting point, as is this podcast. The real work, as we'll discuss in this conversation today, is done out on the streets and in our local communities. We hope to see you all out there. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Professor August Nims. All right. Well, Dr. Nims, it is absolutely wonderful to have you on the show. I'm really

glad that you could take the time to do this. And I'm wondering to start if maybe you could just tell us a little bit about what your book, The Ballot, The Streets, or Both aims to do, sort of what led you to write the book and what you were hoping to convey. aims to do, sort of what led you to write the book and what you were hoping to convey. Well, first, Robert, thanks for inviting me to be on the program. I always look forward to an opportunity to talk about the book. The book itself was written around the time of the mass protests internationally related to Occupy Wall Street, developments in New York and elsewhere, Madison, Wisconsin, and of course the Arab Spring.

And the background to the book is that about 25 years ago, I began a project to, as I sometimes half-jokingly say, to liberate Marx from the clutches of political theor of and to do his work and practice in. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union and other Stalinist regimes, I thought it was an opportune time to look at the real Marx and Engels. So I wrote a 2000 book called Marx and Engels, Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough. And in that book, I promised the reader that I would take up the question, what happened to their project after their death? In other words, I said I'd take up the linen question. and the Lenin question. Well, this book, the 2014 book, is really the first down payment on that promise. And when I began to think about the Lenin book, I'd been thinking about it for a number of years, I realized that it would be too massive of a project just to focus on London in a much more general political way.

And I decided to hone in on the electoral parliamentary question because, again, that was being posed in the protests in 2011, 12, Egypt, and elsewhere. And the debate was the ballot or the streets. How do we bring about fundamental change? Can it be done through the ballot box? Can it be done through the streets? And it seemed to me that the question was being framed as an either-or and I knew better that from the Bolshevik experience based upon earlier reading I had done that that it wasn't either or, but rather for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in the traditional Marx and Engels, the electoral and parliamentary arenas were an important tool for the revolutionary process. Not as an end in themselves, but as an important means by which to make a

revolution. So that was the immediate situation, political situation in which the book was written. Yeah. I mean, we are definitely going to get into that question, the ballot, the streets, or both. And as you say, you ask that question, weaving it through the history of the Russian Revolution and the lead up to the Russian Revolution of 1917. And our listeners actually may or may not, I mean, just in terms of our backlog, we haven't really covered the Russian Revolution in any depth at all. And so I think it might be really helpful to give our listeners a basic 101 on the Russian Revolution before we kind of get more deeply into Lenin's views on electoralism and this

electoral question. And, you know, this is obviously a huge question. So however you'd like to tackle it, if you could walk us through the Russian Revolution history. And if you think it's helpful, maybe exploring a little bit of further context, like exploring Tsarist Russia and the components that kind of gave rise to the revolutionary fervor. You know, the 1905 dress rehearsal, I think is also important. You spend a lot of time in the book exploring the Duma period. And, you know, of course, then there is the subsequent February and ultimate October revolutions of 1917. And as you go through that history to feel, feel free to illustrate it with any key figures or key ideas, tensions, whatever you think is relevant.

And yeah, just keeping in mind that our audience may not have a full history or background, not that we can get into a full one here, but just to help orient people as we move forward into the more detailed question of like electoralism? Well, I tend to think of the Russian Revolution as part of that wave of bourgeois democratic revolutions beginning in 1789 with the French Revolution. That is, these revolutions to bring about bourgeois democracy, to end absolute monarchs, what happened in actor in that process, the last absolute monarch in Europe, the Tsar. And so that process, beginning in 1789, finally gets to Russia in 1905. And by that time, because of changes that had taken place in the world capitalist economy, new questions were being posed. And most importantly, there was a new actor on the scene by the time you get to 1905

that wasn't really on the scene in 1789. That's the proletariat. And behind that was the Industrial Revolution. And the product of that was the modern communist movement registered by the document published in February 1848, the Communist Manifesto. So what the Russian Revolution comes to constitute is the bourgeois democratic revolution, but in the context of a rising new class, the proletariat and the communist movement. For that reason, the Russian revolution has a different character than that of what happened a century earlier. And at the heart of the Russian revolution,

in my opinion, and you see this throughout 1917, is which class is actually going to rule? Will it be the bourgeoisie or will it be the working class in alliance with the peasantry? That's the fundamental class question that's being posed. And it takes an institutional form, is which kind of governance, which kind of representative governance institutions will be employed to actually bring about the rule of the proletariat or the rule of the bourgeoisie. Specifically, two kinds of representative democracies, parliamentary democracy on one hand, which represented by

and large the interests of the bourgeoisie, or Soviet democracy, a new kind of representative democracy that was born spontaneously in the 1905 revolution, why Lenin and Trotsky often times refer to 1905 as being the prelude, the dress rehearsal to 1917, especially because of the appearance for the first time of these mass democratic organs of representative democracy at the local level and national level known as Soviets. So that's the broad historical overview of the Russian Revolution, the way it fits in history. Again, once the ending of absolute monarchy and its replacement by representative democracy. And the question posed in the Russian Revolution, what kind be bourgeois representative democracy or will it be proletarian representative democracy as expressed, represented by the Soviets. So that's kind of, in a nutshell, what the revolution was about. And if you want me to elaborate on any of that, that big sketch, I'm willing to do so. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, thank you so

much. That's a really helpful sort of thumbnail sketch of the revolution. And I really appreciate how you put it in juxtaposition to the more bourgeois revolutions of that time. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the Soviets. The Soviets sort of began to pop up around 1905, and then they really sort of formed the backbone of the revolution. I'm wondering, for someone who may not be familiar with what a Soviet is, aside from, you know, the Soviet Union, if you could maybe just flesh that out a little bit. Yeah, basically, Soviet is a Russian word for a council, for a council. And in the 1905 revolution, with these strikes that were taking place, the workers in the various factories, especially in the major city of St. Petersburg, realized that they needed to coordinate their strike activities. They needed to coordinate their strike.

And the world had never seen those kinds of massive strikes before as occurred in 1905. So they needed some kind of a coordination. And the strikes had been going on from beginning in January of 1905 and then especially in the summer of 1905 in October and around about October the workers began to form these councils to which they sent representatives from the various factories and these councils they were called Soviets in order to coordinate strike activities in St. Petersburg. And they began to spread to other cities, to Moscow and elsewhere, wherever you had

working class populations. And again, within each factory, you had committees, democratically elected committees. And from those democratically elected committees, they sent representatives to the urban, the broader council, the Soviet and so on. And again, that's how they began. Lenin was a little skeptical of them at first. He was out of the country. He was in exile, but he got back at the end of October. He was a little skeptical of them at first and because Lenin's scenario for Russia before then is that

Russia would have to go through some kind of period of bourgeois democracy and he wasn't sure that these Soviet's actually one expression of that kind of bourgeois institution he had he had previous envisioned so he had to be one to them. And it's possible, too, he and Trotsky were on the outs beginning of their 12-year-long conflict. And because Trotsky headed up the Soviet for St. Petersburg, that, too, may have caused him to be skeptical about the importance of the Soviets. But once he's back in St. Petersburg and so on, he sees their importance and the significance of them and is one to them. But by December, they are pretty much, the revolution has been squashed. revolution has been squashed and so the shift is away from Soviet democracy to regular bourgeois parliamentary democracy known as Dumas and it's not

until February 1917 that the Soviets reappear. They're a unique institution. What Lenin does, he does a lot of research. He had already been familiar with the Paris Commune of 1871 and read everything he could. On his first trip abroad, he spent a lot of time in libraries and reading about the Paris Commune was of enormous importance for him. And so he began to realize that there was a element of the Soviets that were reminiscent of the Paris Commune, that kind of mass direct democracy at the local level. What he recognizes is that the Soviets in many ways may be an expression, may be Russia's answer to what happened in the commune in terms of these organs at the local level that are called Soviets. And so he's really, when they reappear in 1917 and so on, yeah, he's on a campaign to argue that the Soviets and so on should be seen as an expression.

They're much more representative of the working class and he's really one to them. And his campaign, all throughout 1917, his campaign is to promote Soviet democracy as opposed to bourgeois or Duma or parliamentary democracy on the grounds that the Soviet democracy was much more representative, especially because you had direct, you had recall, immediate recall of representatives and so on, and the characteristic of the commune, and that the Soviets were also organs for making decisions within the workplace

far more significant than bourgeois democracy. So, yes, I don't know if that helps. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's super helpful. And so just to elaborate on a couple of points that you brought up. So the Paris Commune, for folks who may not know or who may need a quick refresher on that, the Paris Commune was this monumental revolutionary historical moment in 1870 when the people of Paris actually rose up and seized power. They took over the city and organized a revolutionary government from March to May before they were brutally crushed. And there's a great documentary on it called The Commune and definitely a lot of great texts if you want to get deeper into that. And then also just to sort of summarize and maybe fill in some gaps about the Russian Revolution. So you've got Tsarist Russia, Tsar Nicholas II is in power at the turn of the century. Conditions in Russia are pretty bad. You've got famines. You've got

an extremely repressive autocracy that looks a lot like a police state. Any dissenter activism is severely punished by death, often by exile, to work camps in Siberia. Newspapers are censored. You have massacres. You have pogroms. You have anti-Semitism, you have a lot of duress and hardships during that period. And then you also have this uprising in 1905, a wave of mass political and social unrest that starts to spread across vast areas of the Russian empire, but focused in St. Petersburg. And it was ultimately crushed by the Tsar. But one thing that came out of that failed revolution, as you refer to it as the dress rehearsal, were the creation of the Soviets. And like you said,

Trotsky played a leading role in creating the St. Petersburg or Petrograd Soviet. And then you have this period known as the Duma period after the 1905 revolution. So the Dumas are sort of the czar's attempt to assuage some of the revolutionary fervor of 1905. And, you know, it's a concession, really. The Dumas are these pseudo parliamentary bodies that don't really have any actual power, but they serve the function of presenting the facade of a parliamentary system. The funny thing about them is that the czar keeps dissolving them over the facade of a parliamentary system. The funny thing about them is that the Tsar keeps dissolving them over the course of like a decade or so as they sometimes grow too radical for his liking. So there's actually four separate Dumas up until February of 1917.

So then there's another uprising and this time it happens on International Women's Day in St. Petersburg again. And a huge number of women go on strike. They just walk out onto the streets and they march. And it's largely a response to the incredibly unpopular war, World War One at the time, and the economic hardships brought about by the war. economic hardships brought about by the war. And then quickly factory workers joined them and it turns into a huge strike. And actually much of the military disobeyed the czar's orders to crush this uprising because many of the soldiers in the army are equally disaffected. And that's the big difference between 1905 and 1907. And so the czar is forced to abdicate. They kick him out. And what happens is that the Duma sort of transforms into this self-selected provisional government. But there's also the Soviets. So you have these sort of two pillars of power.

And there's this months-long power struggle between the more bourgeois provisional government and the Soviets. And eventually, largely because of the Bolsheviks mass organizing and agitation, and because they really start to gain mass popular support, the Bolsheviks led by Lenin are able to finally break this sort of weird dual power situation between the provisional government and the Soviets. And just in time too, because the provisional government and the liberals within it just in time too, because the provisional government and the liberals within it are starting to collaborate with reactionary counter-revolutionaries who

are trying to maintain the status quo. And so the Bolsheviks in October of 1917 are able to gain enough support that they overthrow the provisional government and in a remarkably bloodless couple of days are actually able to take power through the Soviets and move the revolution from its stage of bourgeois parliamentarism to socialist revolution. And then of course, there are several years of counter-revolution by the forces of reaction. Actually, 14 countries invaded Russia at this time, including the US, to fight against Bolshevism and reinstate some kind of monarchism or capitalist friendly political system. And a lot of the capitalist class in Russia are part of this counter revolution. And they also do a lot of sabotaging trying to gum up

the machinery of the socialist transformation. But this all failed, despite brutal fighting and huge setbacks. It all failed. And the Russian revolution, the socialist revolution of Russia was successful. And yeah, so I don't know if there's anything you'd want to add to that or any thoughts that you might want to share. Lenin thoroughly absorbed, and it was the Marx and Engels, it's the only time they've made a a correction to the manifesto in the 1872 preface to the manifesto, I think it was either the German or the Russian preface, they pointed out that the chief lesson for them of the Paris Commune was that the working class cannot utilize the bourgeois state to carry out socialist

transformation. One thing was proven, as I said, by the Paris Commune, the working class cannot utilize the bourgeois state to carry out socialist transformation. And boy, Lenin absorbed that lesson to his very essence and to his bones. And so that's also crucial in understanding his perspective on the Soviets as an alternative to bourgeois democracy. Cool. Well, I think that that's a pretty good orienting outline of the Russian Revolution. And hopefully that can help folks as we sort of move on and get a little bit deeper and start to bring this question of electoralism into the phrase, since that's sort of the topic that we want to dig most deeply into today. So yeah, my first

question would be if you could talk about Lenin and his views on electoralism, his concept of and his views on electoralism, his concept of revolutionary parliamentarism, and maybe perhaps illustrating it with any examples from either his time or our time, just to maybe give it some flesh for people and take it down to eye level. Well, yeah. Lenin's notions and approach to the electoral process has its origins. It was based upon his reading, correctly in my opinion, his reading of what Marx and Engels, the few kernels of wisdom that Marx and Engels had bequeathed about the electoral process. And there's a document, famous document, that they wrote, Marx and Engels. It's a self-criticism document, actually. It's very important, in my opinion. And Lenin, we know from the Russian Bolshevik archivist, biographer, historian for the Bolshevik party, David Ryazanov.

We know that Lenin memorized the 11-page document, and he loved to quote it, according to Ryzanov. We know that Lenin memorized the 11-page document and he loved to quote it according to Riazanov. And in that document is these two, what I call kernels of wisdom about elections in the parliamentary process that Lenin really employs to make his case and his approach for the electoral parliamentary process. One of the things I didn't know when I wrote my Marx book and then actually when I wrote even when I wrote my Lenin book is that the document is a self-criticism of Marx and Engels' position on elections. When they first had to deal with elections in Germany during the German Revolution in January 1849,

the question was whether or not should the working class have its own candidates or not, or should it go along with what they called basically the lesser evil to vote for the petty bourgeois Democrats. And what I did know, I only discovered a few years ago, and had I known this, I would have included it in the London book. We actually have the minutes from the meeting on January 15th in Cologne where the minutes say the following and again the question is whether or not should the workers have their own political party and own candidates for the elections or should they support the petty bourgeois Democrats the lesser the lesser he was to keep out the more reactionary figures and the minutes say the following citizen Marx is also of the opinion

that the workers association as such would not be able to get candidates elected now, nor is it for the moment a question of doing anything with regard to principle, but of opposing the government absolutism and the rule of feudalism. And for that, simple Democrats, so-called liberals, who are also far from satisfied with the present government, are sufficient. Things have to be taken as they are. Since it is now important to offer the strongest possible opposition to the absolutist system, plain common sense demands that if we realize that we cannot get our own view of principle accepted in the elections, we should unite with another party also in opposition so as not to allow our common enemy, the absolute

monarchy, to win. That's from the minutes. And so in Marx and Engels' first venture into the electoral arena, they supported voting for the lesser of the two evils in order to keep out the more reactionary elements. They would soon correct that. That's what the 1850 document is a self-criticism of that decision. And because as things turned out, the real world of politics is petty bourgeois Democrats have betrayed the working class. And so the message of the 1850 address is from there on, the working class should run its own candidates, even if there's no possibility of them winning and so on. It's crucial that the working class have its own candidates. There are two reasons for that. One, it's an opportunity to get out your own ideas, your program.

It's a way to do political education, one. And second, it's a way to count your support, to count your forces. And second, it's a way to count your support, to count your forces. And implicit in that is you have an idea of what your strength is when it comes time to actually making a revolution. That's the message of that document. And boy, there's no document, I argue, that informed Lenin more for 1917 than the 1850 address of Marx and Engels. So if you're asking what Lenin's perspective, that's where it begins. It begins with that document by Marx. The importance of the working class having its own candidates and in that directive is that elections are not an end in themselves. They're not an end in themselves, but a means to an end.

That is a way, once again, to do political education, and secondly, to be able to determine what your support is, whether you have support in society and so on, which will be necessary in order to determine when and how and successful to carry out a successful revolution. Elections as a means, parliamentary work as a means, rather than an end in itself. So to answer your question about Lenin's perspective on revolutionary parliamentary versus reformist parliamentarism, the key difference is that for Lenin and for Marx and Engels,

The key difference is that for Lenin and for Marx and Engels, elections and parliamentary work should only be seen as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Refinish parliamentarism becomes parliamentary work as an end in itself. Therein what would become known as 20th, 21st century social democracy. Yeah, and we'll get into that and how opportunism began to pervade a lot of the more revolutionary parties in Europe. And yeah, I mean, in reading your book, it was really fascinating seeing how Lenin deployed electoralism strategically. I mean, as you said, he used it not just, you know, he never obviously ran in the Duma period, but during the Duma period, the Bolsheviks would put up candidates and they would use the electoral system as, you know, a rostrum for political education, an opportunity to unmask other political parties. Just that the voice that was allowed in the Duma at that time was very,

it provided them with one more tool in their toolkit as they were also planning strikes and working more on the streets and going into factories and doing the more, at that time, illegal work of building a revolutionary movement and class consciousness. Yeah, just a couple of things. One, there's a lot in my book, as you know, and only recently that I discovered something I didn't notice before, and I failed to connect the dots. And that is, in 1906, Lenin's analysis of the elections to the first Duma, he lays out, he previews, I argue he previews his strategy for 1917, in which he sees the elections and participation in the elections, again, not as an end in themselves, but as a way for determining when to make the revolution. And that's his conclusion, the conclusions he draws from the 1906, from that first set of Duma elections.

And again, I didn't make, I only noticed that when I was going back and because I'm writing an article on a related issue what I call voting fetishism and and I hadn't noticed that before to make that connection yes in about 1905 in 1906 one of the most useful quotes I think about Lenin and his approach to the process and to reform and revolution is his directive to his Bolshevik comrades in 1905. I think it was in October or late summer of 1905. And the question was, how should the Bolsheviks respond to the Tsar's offer of having a Duma when it was very clear that the Tsar was trying to get the masses out of the streets. So to make that concession and to have Duma elections, and that caused a big debate and

so on within the Bolsheviks about whether or not to respond or not. But in that moment when the revolution was still in the ascent, Lenin wrote back to one of his comrades about the elections and the parliamentary process. He said, yes, we want a parliament, but we must fight for a parliament in a revolutionary way. That's actually what he says. We must fight for a parliament in a revolutionary way, but not in a parliamentary way for a revolution. Not in a parliamentary way for a revolution. So he's open to the idea of getting a parliament, in other words, a bourgeois democracy. The question is, how do you bring it about? How do you bring it about? And so in the summer of October of 1905 when the revolution was still in

Ascent, Lenin is insistent, no no no, we want to stay in the streets, we want a parliament, but the question is how do you bring it about and if it's brought about by the masses in the streets it has a greater possibility of doing something fundamentally serious when it comes to political work. By January 1906, it's pretty much clear, at least to Lenin, that the momentum of the street actions has died down. And so it was necessary then to participate in the election. That caused a big debate within the Bolsheviks. So always one of the most difficult things in a revolutionary process, how do you determine what the mood is, what the street temperature is?

And there's a tendency, if you're a revolutionary, you're always hoping that things are hotter than they may actually be, and you may overestimate the mood of the masses. And so Lenin, the question of whether or not to boycott those elections or not, and the majority of the Bolsheviks wanted to boycott those elections. But Lenin, we could tell when you're reading him, he really wants to take advantage of the elections because the revolutionary process has died down. And we should see the elections as an opportunity to do, again, political work, education, and to count one's forces until the Revolutionary Wave erupts again. So Lenin really wants to participate but he goes along under the discipline of the party and so the Bolsheviks boycott. And he will say later in his famous document in 1920,

Left-Wing Communism, that it was a mistake. It was a mistake on the Bolsheviks to have not participated in those elections to the first Duma. And yeah, I love that quote, we must fight in the revolutionary way for a parliament, not in a parliamentary way for a revolution., we'll get into, you touched on, you mentioned parliamentary fetishism, which we're going to get into as well, which I think is related to that. But I also want to ask you first, before we do get into a little bit more of, of that, um, I'm curious what you do think of the lesser of two evils or the wasted vote dilemma. I know that you brought it up early in

the conversation as it was brought up by Marx and Engels in the 19th century. But particularly, we've been talking about a lot of history. So maybe just to bring us into the present real quick before we weave back in and out into history. In the context of the upcoming presidential election, I'm sure many of our listeners are now aware that Cornel West is running, for example, as an independent. And it's already become clear that the liberal establishment is trying to paint him as they tend to, as a spoiler, just as they did with, say, Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders. And so I'm going to read a quote from the book. This is one of your quotes. It's not Lenin or Marx, it's yours. And then I'm going to read a quote from the book this is one of your quotes it's it's not lenin

or marx it's yours and then i'm going to ask you to maybe unpack that and answer this question about the lesser two evils so the quote goes the biggest political obstacle today to independent working-class political action is a lesser evil thinking every working-class vote for the lesser evil bourgeois politician is another step away from building a real working class alternative. And every vote for a bourgeois politician helps reproduce bourgeois politics. So, yeah, I'm wondering if you can unpack that quote and talk a little bit about this lesser of two evils issue. Sure. Well, yeah, that that quote is inspired once again by Marx and Engels in the 1850 document. Let me just read from that 1850 document where they address for the first time that issue.

Even where there is no prospect, whatever, of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces, and to lay before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection, they must not allow themselves to be bribed by such arguments of the Democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the Democratic Party in giving the reactionaries the possibility of victory. The ultimate purpose of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is infinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body." That was the

answer to this question which is being raised, exactly it's being raised right now. And so if you, my opinion, yes, it's much more advantageous for the working class to have its own political parties and not be concerned about the splitting of the vote. What I'm doing, I'm writing a piece now on this, and I'll run it by you at some point when I've finished on the splitting of the vote phenomenon. you at some point when I've finished on the splitting of the vote phenomenon. Underlying their perspective or this attitude, which I've just read from, is the assumption, which I'm trying to flush out now, is that, again, when we are voting, we're not exercising political power. When we are voting, what we're doing is registering a preference. We're registering a preference of either a candidate or a particular policy. And to believe otherwise, to think that we are actually exercising political power, is to engage in what I call voting fetishism. In other words, that attitude about

the splitting of the vote question is based on the assumption that real politics, serious politics, effective politics doesn't really take place in the electoral arena. Real politics takes place on the streets, on the barricades, on the battlefields. That's the underlying assumption, that is real politics, real power is not exercised in the voting process. What you're doing when you're voting, you're not exercising power. You're registering a preference. You're registering a preference for either a candidate or a particular policy. And so the splitting of the vote phenomenon is based upon the assumption that you're exercising real power.

And Marx and Engels and Lenin, I argue, had a different position about voting. Real politics takes place not in the electoral arena, not in the parliament, but outside, on the streets, on the barricades, and so on. That's the claim I'm making, that is implicit in that argument, and why they were not nervous, why they were not afraid of reactionaries being elected, is that the reactionaries, the way you deal with the reactionaries is in the streets, on the barricades, on the battlefield. That's where real politics will actually take place.

And what happens if you don't have, you miss the opportunity by not having your own candidate, you miss the opportunity to do political education, to make your argument. And their claim was that it was far more advantageous for the movement, for the workers' movement, to have done that kind of political education and to count, to count where there's support. Those advantages far outweighed any kinds of disadvantages that might have come with reactionaries being elected. That's the claim that they're making. And I argue that's exactly what Lenin, that was Lenin's approach also. That's the underlying, I'm making this piece, I call it voting fetishism,

the underlying assumption when they're taking that position, they are taking that position about splitting the vote because they don't think that's where real power is exercised. Real politics is not decided. Power is not decided in the electoral process. Power is decided outside. It's on the streets, on the barricades, on the battlefields. And I argue that there's no better example from U.S. history than the U.S. Civil War, the developments that happened between 1857 and 1865. That's the most educational moment, I think, in U.S. politics, and it illustrates the limitations of the electoral process, the judicial process also. The worst decision the Supreme Court ever made, the Dred Scott decision in 1857.

That was overturned. How was it overturned? On the battlefield. Lincoln's election, presidential election, didn't settle on anything. The Confederacy withdrew. Slavery could not be settled by constitutional or parliamentary means. It could only be settled on the battlefield. You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with August Nymphs. We'll be right back. Yo, when I was monumental I was tatted up and bad as fuck And dreaming of scenarios where Saratona laughed at us

Psilocybin with the hybrid, baby couldn't pass it up Gucci cutters in the concert with the lights on Maybe I played the right song and tell you my secret I used to swim in a dungeon where Moses pled her allegiance Area and happiness, I hibernate the masochist Every slave in a slave town ready to bleed God Married a treetop for money and new crib Yo daddy just lost to his petty capitalism Niggas broke for a living but pray for riches and death

Niggas under distress, niggas supposed to finesse I'm on the moon, I cry balloons They black and blue tonight And I thought, hold me in the back until the night Hold me in the back until the night I hit me, throw me in the back and tell em they hit me back tonight, I'm on the move, I cry balloons, they black and blue tonight, and I throw me in the back and tell em they hit me, throw me in the back and tell em they hit me back tonight, and I land before land, monasteries and arcane, casual white fans, who invented the voyeur, fascinated with mourning, they hope the trauma destroyer, why everybody a good sad song a dark album like tell me that your homie dead your mama dead your

brother bled along the street the corner where the walgreens and white castle is oh yeah we know that you miss him and if you sing about his sister then we buying a ticket for real front row center still gratitude she love him but she can't tell if it's genuine or just consumption analyze the gumption monopolize the landscape she's just another artist selling trauma to her fan base i'm on the moon i cry balloons they black and blue tonight and i throw me in the back and tell them they hit me throw me in the back and tell them they hit me back tonight baby hit me back where you at We on a spaceship, we waitin' under the dark moon Where you at and where you go? Supernova stars gon' take us home Baby, hit me back where you at?

We on a spaceship, we waitin' under the dark moon Where you at and where you go? Supernova stars gon' take us home Like Lazarus, I was dead for three whole nights Alakazam, I shook back like casino dice Satan call me magical negro, cool, you got that I popped on the world stage with my AK cock back Saw the royal family and had to get my clout back In the heart of Knightsbridge, pullin' bunnies out top hats

Everywhere I step foot, I leave a trail of names Of the sons of Yaku and the trail of flames I'm on fire, I'm plugged in directly to Messiah I run with the mighty conners, we expose the liars These infidels killed my mom, it's all our war now I swear on the Magni to never put my sword down The crescent and the star with the red in the foreground Is the flag that I bang as I'm laying the law down

Establish the beachhead behind enemy lines Now I'm Pink Floyd in Berlin, I'm laying the law down Establish the beachhead behind enemy lines Now I'm Pink Floyd in Berlin I'm tearing the wall down Face to face, I bet nary a devil to test me Or some fuckboy 85 will come run up and press me It's all a hoax, quite simple A joke like Zelensky The he-mans, the rabbis, and the pope

Incidentally, couldn't stop my bo-goth From quoting quotes from the Sensis If anybody asks, tell them Farrakhan sent me It's the war of armageddon and i'm begging the listener if you ain't fighting that mean you either dead or a prisoner i'm on the moon i cry balloons they black and blue tonight and i thought hold me in the back and tell them to hit me hold me in the back and tell them to hit me back tonight i'm on the moon i cry balloons they black and blue tonight. And I throw me in

the back and tell them to hit me. Throw me in the back and tell them to hit me. That was Balloons by No Name featuring Jay Electronica and Aaron Allen Kane. Now back to our conversation with August Nymphs. Another quote from the book. Again, this is your quote. The justification is always that failing to support the lesser evil allows for the, quote, greater evil, the reactionaries, to win. The major problem with this argument is its lack of clarity about what reaction is and

how it advances. One thing is certain. The logic of capital dictates that unless there is a real working class alternative, bourgeois politics will keep moving to the right, especially in the context of this still unfolding crisis. Every delay in the pursuit of independent working class political action only emboldens reaction. I think that goes a long way explaining the rightward direction of the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party.

Yeah, yeah. But the Republicans are able to do what they can do because there's no resistance. There's no effective working class and no effective resistance because the working class, its organizations, its leadership is awaited to the Democratic Party. And as you may have read in that section, I think it's in that section of the book, I quote a labor official, the head of the AFL-CIO, retired, I met him in Venezuela, from Delaware. So he knew Joe Biden personally, and he was complaining to Biden

in 2012 about the Obama-Biden administration's lackluster performance when it came to the labor movement. And Biden shot back at him and said, look, what are you complaining about? What are you complaining about? You know you have nowhere else to go. what are you complaining about you know you have nowhere else to go you know you have nowhere else to go in other words that's exactly because the uh working class was weighted to the democratic party not willing to break not willing to form its own independent political action that only emboldened the republicans and in a rightward direction also of the Democrats. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I couldn't agree more with that analysis. And personally, I've come to the conclusion that at this point, the Democratic Party is really the graveyard of revolutionary action in many ways. The graveyard and the black hole of progressive politics. Yes. Yeah. I mean, like the Republican Party is

quite openly antagonistic to and serves like as the enemy of labor, but the Democratic Party is supposed to represent labor. It's supposed to be the vehicle through which working class politics can impose its will. And instead the the party just absorbs, co-ops, and exhausts working class politics. But let me raise something with you, and I've raised this before with people. Why should we expect the Democratic Party to be the party of the working class? Let's think about it. This was a party of the slave owners. This was the party of the slave. It was a Republican party that was the revolutionary party, not the Democrats. So you have to ask, why did this happen? How did the Democratic Party get this image? party of the slave owners became known as the party of the working class. Going into the 1930s, before the Roosevelt administration, nothing in the history of the Democratic Party, nothing in

its history, would have suggested that it would be later seen as the party of the working class. And the only explanation, therefore, for that is simply fortuitous. It was by chance. The Roosevelt administration's New Deal program, which was the product, which was motivated by the masses incessions from the ruling class come when the threat of violence itself on the part of the masses, of the plebeians. That's where the New Deal program came from. And so the Democrats happened to be in office at the time, and they were able to benefit from it. And it came with a price. That's the closest we've ever had to a labor party. But the labor movement, the leadership of it, took the labor movement into the Democratic Party. And that was also encouraged, by the way, by the Communist Party, because the Communist Party

was following, carrying out the perspective of Moscow, known as the Popular Front. And so wherever the Communist Party had influence in the labor movement, they helped also to bring the labor movement into the Democratic Party. So again, my argument is, if you look at its history, nothing, nothing in the history of the Democratic Party would have predicted that it would be later seen as the party of the working class. later seen as the party of the working class. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because as we see all of the progress that was made during the New Deal, and we have to always remember that that progress was really only limited to a specific slice of the American people, all that progress was slowly undone. And it was undone as a bipartisan project over the next century. And it was a Clinton, remember, it was the Clinton administration, it was a Democratic

party, Clinton administration, that dismantled one of the three pillars of the New Deal, aid to family of dependent children, the AFDC. It was a Democrat. The Republicans couldn't have gotten away with it, but the Democrats should get away with it. It was Clinton who dismantled it. Yeah. And again, I think looking back at this long arc of history, history and reality support the positions that Marx and Engels and Lenin and countless other revolutionaries have taken over the decades, which is the need for an actual revolutionary movement that centers the proletariat, that centers working in oppressed people instead of something like the Democratic

Party, which we all know now to be another bourgeois party. And to, you know, maybe go back a little bit into into the history as we look at this question specifically of revolution. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the idea of the vanguard party, you know, how Lenin conceived of it, and what some maybe, you know, some popular myths about vanguardism on the left. You know, there are a lot of folks who have have some trouble with that idea. They think it's authoritarian, what you call the contortions and discomforts of some Democrats in the book around vanguardism.

And yeah, maybe just describe what it is, how it was utilized by the Bolsheviks. And, you know, maybe if you think there's ever been anything close to a revolutionary vanguard party in the U.S. Yeah, I think we have to be honest and say that this problem of Leninism and that people have difficulty with is the product of the betrayal, the betrayal of the Russian Revolution. That's a fact. That's what the Russian Revolution was overthrown. The counter-revolution took place beginning about 19, after Lenin's death, beginning around about 1927 or so. And by 1935, Stalin's perspective had become hegemonic in what used to be the Bolshevik

Party. had become hegemonic in what used to be the Bolshevik party. And with that, all kinds of horrors came into place, and all kinds of things were done in the name of Marxism, Leninism, that had nothing to do with the original project and program of Marx and Engels and Lenin. Yeah, the vanguard party for Lenin, as he explained in What Is To Be Done, Yeah, the vanguard party for Lenin, as he explained in What Is To Be Done, simply is an expression of a fact that is in the radicalization, the process of radicalizing and so on, it's uneven. It's very uneven. There are those who radicalize, politicize much earlier than others.

That's who the vanguard is. And the vanguard is the vanguard only if it's recognized by the, you can only be the vanguard if in fact you're actually recognized by the rank and file and the masters and so on. What happens under Stalin is that quote unquote the vanguard is imposed on the working class. But yeah, vanguard, as Lenin explains in What Is To Be Done, is simply a fact, namely, that in the revolutionary process, there are those who see what needs to be done much earlier than others. And that's what history has, in fact, revealed. The question is, what do you do with that? And organizing that layer and bringing in the masses into the process and so on is the task. That's the task of the vanguard.

And it's the masses themselves that will decide whether you are a vanguard or not. It's the masses that will decide whether or not you are the vanguard or not. It's the masses that will decide whether or not you are the vanguard or not. And it seems to me that the evidence is very clear in the leading up to of 19 to 19 November, October, the October Revolution. It's clearly it's the Bolsheviks could not have done what they did without the support of the masses of workers and the peasants. And nowhere was that better seen, I think, than during the Civil War, and where the peasantry, the overwhelming portion of the population, voted with its feet for the Bolsheviks.

As Lenin pointed out in what is to be done, to be the vanguard, you have to act like the vanguard, and you have to be recognized. You have to be recognized as the vanguard, you have to act like the vanguard. You have to be recognized. You have to be recognized as the vanguard party. You can't, in other words, you can't declare yourself to be the vanguard. And an important part about the success of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 is that it probably couldn't have happened if Lenin and the Bolsheviks hadn't been organizing as a vanguard party, gaining momentum and organizing for decades. One of the really important things that I think is missing right now, and we actually got into this for an entire episode that we just released by the time this episode comes out, I'd say about a month ago, By the time this episode comes out, I'd say about a month ago with Brett O'Shea and Alison Escalante of the Red Menace podcast is a lot of the energy on the left right now. And, you know, we have a lot of activism. We have a lot of protests. We have a lot of energy. But there is no vanguard party in the United States. There's no party to organize it, to propel it, to give it a form.

And, you know, we see how all of these different movements just continue to stay as moments in the United States. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that. And specifically, I've heard you talk about how this played out during the 2020 uprising, the George Floyd played out during the 2020 uprising, the George Floyd uprising, and how a lot of that fervor and that energy, abolish the police, defund the police, all of that revolutionary energy on the streets was sort of funneled into these more official bourgeois elements, vote instead of going out in the street and that kind of thing. You're absolutely right about the Bolsheviks and the prior work. The Bolsheviks could not have done what they did in 1917 without that prior work. And for me, there's no more telling quote from Lenin, I think,

than something he said in 1901 as a prelude to what is to be done. In 1901, he says, as a prelude to what is to be done. In 1901, he says, if there is no revolutionary party in place before the proverbial shit hits the fan, it's already too late to form a party when that happens. It's too turbulent. If you don't have a revolutionary party in place

before the turbulence, before things really erupt, it's too late. It's too difficult to form a revolutionary party in the turmoil. And sadly, in my opinion, there's no more tragic confirmation of that than Germany, than what happened in Germany. As you probably know, Rosa Luxemburg, a really courageous fighter, she disagreed with Lenin on this question, on the need for a vanguard revolutionary party. Her view was that the party would come into existence when

when the masses take to the streets, when it erupts, that's when the revolutionary party would come into existence. And sadly, very very sadly, maybe the greatest tragedy of the 20th century is what happened in Germany when things did hit the fan in Germany coming out of the first world war there was no revolutionary party in place to channel that in to do what the Bolsheviks had done it was too late and she and other revolutionaries like Liebknecht they paid with their lives for that I, perspective of not doing the preparatory work for an advance. So yes, when you get to upheavals and so on, you get to moments like what happened here in 2020 here in the Twin Cities and so on, in the absence of a working class party, a

revolutionary party, that energy in the streets dissipated, and the Democrats were able to come along and to convince people to channel that energy into the parliamentary process. There's a slogan someone once coined, quip, about the civil rights movement. She made the comment, I think it was Flo Kennedy, someone asked her about 1966 or 7, whatever happened to the Civil Rights Movement? And her response, out of the streets into the suites. Out of the streets into the suites. And this is exactly what happened with the Civil Rights, and it happened later with other movements and so on. And we saw an example of that here in the Twin Cities. And I happen to know, I think, I know the people who made the proposal. I know some of them personally and so on who made

the proposal about to defund the police. And the problem with that is it took the movement into the bureaucracy of city politics. And as you probably know, the Democratic Party, officially the Democratic Former Labor Party, which has an interesting history behind that slogan. It's been dominant in Minneapolis politics for more than a half century. And the DFL leadership encouraged young people to abandon the streets and to focus attention on making sure that Donald Trump would not get re-elected. In many ways, that's what happened to the George Floyd protests throughout the country. And we've seen that before. And exactly because the working class does not have its own political party. And so the Democrats are able to get away with that. And so, yeah, taking it into the

parliamentary process, the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy of the bourgeois state bogged down. And I'm sure the people, I give them the benefit of the doubt. People who made that proposal, I give them the benefit of the doubt that they meant well. But as Lenin once said, in politics, it's not intentions. It's not intentions that count. It's actions. It's not intentions. You may have all the good intentions and so on, but this is what happened. entire multi-page Google Doc of just Lenin quotes now that I'm going to be using for a long time. But one of the ones that I really, really liked and which I think is very relevant to the conversation that we're having, the last response that you just shared, quote, reformist tactics are the least likely to secure real reforms. The most effective way to secure real reforms is to pursue the tactics of

the revolutionary class struggle. Actually, reforms are won as a result of the revolutionary class struggle, as a result of its independence, mass force, and steadfastness. Reforms are always false, ambiguous, and permeated with the spirit of, I think it's pronounced Zubatavism, which is, don't worry about that for any listeners. It's socialism advocated by police agents during the czarist period. To pick the quote back up, they are real only in proportion to the intensity of the class struggle. By merging our slogans with those of the reformist bourgeoisie, we weaken the cause of revolution and consequently the cause of reform as well, because we thereby diminish the independence, fortitude, and strength of the revolutionary classes.

And yeah, I would love it if you could reflect or comment on that, because I think that's just so true. And this was written 100 years ago, which is so wild to me that we're still having these debates. But yeah, please go ahead. No, I'm glad you I'm glad you like that as one of my favorite. It's one of my favorite quotes. And it's also relevant. This is exactly what what I'm referring to here in the Twin Cities that if you really want police reform, yeah, it's going to take place outside the mechanisms, the framework, the institutions of the bourgeois state. This is what I was referring to earlier about the reforms that came, the concessions that were granted by the Roosevelt administration. They would not have been granted without the masses in the streets in Minneapolis and other big strikes in the 1930s, 34 and 1936.

Think about the right to vote. the other big strikes in the 1930s, 34 and 1936. Think about the right to vote. You will sometimes hear people say that the most important thing you can do in politics is vote. Well, if that's true, then how do you explain how people like me, who at one time was denied the right to vote because of the way I look, how did I get the right to vote? That important reform. I got the right to vote because people like me and others had been in the streets. We had to fight. That's the only way we get it. And that's the only way we're going to keep it, by the way.

It's the only way in which we'll keep it. So yes, the reforms. Reforms are extremely important for the revolutionary process, as Lenin is trying to emphasize. But it's how do you get to reform? What's the way in which you get to reforms? Are they given to you or do you fight for them? Because if you fight for them and so on, that sets into motion the logic of a revolutionary. Not inevitably, not inevitably, but it sets into motion the possibility for real revolutionary change to come about. One thing that I wanted to sort of unpack a little bit too is sort of the juxtaposition between this idea of democracy versus liberalism. And I'm going to read a quick quote again of

Lenin's that you provided in the book. He says, we have no illusions about the significance of broad democracy. No democracy in the world can eliminate the class struggle and the omnipotence of money. It is not this that makes democracy important or useful. The importance of democracy is that it makes the class struggle broad, open, and conscious. And this is not a conjecture or a wish, but a fact. And so, yeah, I'm wondering if you can talk about what he was describing here and what the difference is between what Lenin referred to in his times as social democracy, what we might now understand more as socialism, and then this idea of bourgeois liberal democracy. Yes. For Lenin, as was the case, Lenin, that quote

see. Yes, for Lenin, as was the case, Lenin, that quote comes out of the perspective of Marx and Engels. And it actually, I think it goes back to the English Civil Wars in 1647, 1649. And I take advantage of the opportunity, I always like to promote and to advertise the significance of that moment. The most radical voices in the English Civil War, Gerard Winstanley, sometimes known as a digger or a true lover, loveler, he engaged in debates with other radicals in that moment about elections and the suffrage, universal suffrage, and how do you make sure that you have democratic elections and so on. And when Stan Lee argued that even if you had universal suffrage and the best democratic

elections, there will never really be full of democratic as long as you have classicides, as long as you have inequalities in wealth, as long as you have classicides, as long as you have inequalities in wealth, as long as you have a society based upon inequalities in wealth, those with more wealth will use their wealth to implement, carry out policies that serve their interests. And so democracy is always limited under conditions of social inequality. But that doesn't mean that democracy is unimportant. To the contrary, democracy, civil liberties, the vote, other liberal democratic methods and so on can be extremely important if seen as a means to an end rather rather than an end in itself, as a means to an end. As Marx and Engels sometimes put it, liberal democracy can be weapons in the hands of the proletariat.

Weapons in the hands of the proletariat. They are a means, but elections, even in the most honest elections, even in the most democratic elections, they can never be fully democratic because of class inequality. So they began with a very sober perspective. That doesn't mean that they're dismissed, to the contrary, no, no. Liberal democracy was really important as long as you saw it as a means to an end the means to an end to carry out a socialist only with a socialist revolution in other words that is only with the overthrow of class society could you have real democracy only with the overthrow of class society can there be real democracy and i argue that goes back to the levelers, Winston, especially in 1649.

Like, I'm curious, what led those parties to move more and more into the more liberal and neoliberal arenas, as opposed to, say, the Bolsheviks, which totally rejected opportunism and sort of, you know, as you mentioned, until there was sort of the counter revolution and Stalinism, which totally changed the landscape. But yeah, I'm wondering, yeah, maybe just talk a little bit about how we got from the origins of these labor parties, which were, you know, in many ways, just as radical as the Bolsheviks to what we see now. Right. Yeah, no, it's an important question. And it's so important that it caused a kind of an intellectual political crisis for London when the German party voted to support the war credits, voted for to fund the First World War after they had pledged not to do that. And it really, really was a shock to everybody that they did this. And it forced London to go back not just to Marx and Engels, he went back to Hegel. He did a deep dive into Hegel to try to explain contradictions. How did this actually come about? The brief answer,

in my opinion, from what Lenin and others and Trotsky and others pointed out, is that after 1848, after the 1848-1849 revolution and so on, there wasn't really a revolutionary moment in Germany until 1918, from 1848 to 1918. And we know from history it requires revolutionary moments to produce revolutionary behavior. It requires revolutionary moments. And Germany was largely quiescent between after 1850 until basically 1918. And the Bolsheviks had the good luck. The Bolshevik project is the product of the fact that Russia was so unstable, so politically unstable, and the environment, in other words, is what produced the Bolsheviks. That was missing in Germany. And so the people who had considered themselves revolutionary at one time and so on began to see themselves more and more as part of

this stable system in which they had an interest in. They were the largest party in Europe. There were all kinds of perks that came with being in the Reichstag. And they began to more and more become, we see this in the labor movement, and how the labor movement officialdom can become conservatized over time. And these labor parties, the labor movement itself, always remember the trade unions, as Marx and Engels always explained, trade unions themselves are not a revolutionary instrument in and of themselves. They are defensive. They are a defensive instrument. They are not a revolutionary organ. They are to defend the interests of the working classes.

They're not seen as an offensive, something to go on the offense with. And so that was always a limitation with these labor parties. But most importantly, I think it was the fact that Germany was by and large relatively stable. It lacked a revolutionary atmosphere to produce what Russia produced. And the Bolshevik experience also reveals that it isn't enough just to have a revolutionary period, because the Russian period also produced the Mensheviks. It also produced the Mensheviks, which are much more akin to the German party. So it's not just revolutionary turmoil that produces a revolutionary party, but also the leadership and a very conscious leadership.

But that's my brief answer, at least my reading of the answer that Lenin didn't live long enough. He explored the question, but after the revolution, he really had to move on to other things. But Trotsky spent a lot of time thinking about what happened to the German party. And I'm drawing a lot on Trotsky's insight about the absence of revolutionary opportunities, revolutionary opportunities in Germany from 1848 until 1918. And when things really hit the fan, it's too late. There's no party, there's nobody there to provide the leadership, and thus the tragedy, the tragedy of Germany. And when the Germans try to make a revolution, as you know, three times they try to make the German working class, but there's no leadership. And the fascism is born on the ashes of those three attempts. It's not an accident that Hitler named his party a socialist party. He's trying to take

advantage of the pro-socialist sentiment that existed within the working class within Germany. So it tried three times. Three times, the working class tried three times, but failed. And that failure led to demoralization, and it's out of them that the fascists are able to take power. Hmm. Well, and speaking of demoralization, I'm wondering, this episode is being released on election day, and I'm wondering, let's try to bring all of the wisdom here from your book and the wisdom of Lenin and Marx and Engels into the present. And I'm wondering, what do you think the US left can take and learn from what Lenin and Marx and Engels have talked about with electoralism, particularly specifically to the specific condition that we're currently in, in the specific options that we have and where we currently are right now as the U.S. left? Well, I think the most important thing right now for the immediate left to do is organize and provide solidarity for the strike wave that's taking place within the United States. It's

something we haven't seen in quite some time. And the most important of those strikes, of course, is the UAW strike and to bring solidarity to those strikes. And if we don't do that, if the left doesn't do that, the Democratic Party will try to take advantage of the strike wave. And so bringing solidarity, organizing solidarity for strikes is extremely important. And a part of that is to try to impart to the working class the lessons from history, and that is if the working class doesn't

have its own political party, if it doesn't have its own political party, it will not be able to advance. And the betrayal of the Democrats. The Biden administration is trying to take advantage of the UAW strike and to have the working class to ignore the fact that it was the Biden administration that took away the right to strike for the railroad workers when they wanted to go out on strike last November and December. And he enacted the 1920 Railroad Act, which took away the right to strike for workers, and if workers don't have the right to strike and so on, you're taking away their effective power.

And that, it speaks to what happens when working class is not in power. This is a kind of a state, the kind of political system that you end up with. And so the fact that so many people, you think about it, you and I know this to be the case, people hate the choices they have right now. The idea that this is going to be a Biden and Trump election and so on is turning off so many people. And in my lifetime, I don't think there's been any better opportunity than to make the case to campaign now, to campaign now for a working class political party. The working class needs its own political party. If we don't have our own political party, this is what we end up with. This is the kind of situation that we end up with, which is turning off all kinds of

people. I imagine the abstention rate, as was the case in 2016, what 43% of the eligible electorate did not vote. I suspect it may be as high as that, if not more than that this time. And boy, again, I can't think of a better time for the left to be putting forward its own candidates, its own working class candidates and so on. And if we don't do that, and if the left doesn't have its own candidates going into the election, so all you're doing, you're allowing the Democrats to be voted by default. If you don't actually present your own candidates, it's not enough to criticize the Democratic

party. The question is, do you have your own candidates in the election? That's going to be the test do you see any um you know i'm not asking you to like endorse anybody and neither are we here but i'm just asking if you know it's going to be very difficult for the reasons that you because the democrats are running the democrats are running on the slogan of donald trump being an existential threat to democracy he's an existential threat to democracy. He's an existential threat to democracy. For those of us, by the way, who are old enough, remember a similar Democratic Party slogan

in 1964. In the 1964 election, the Democrats ran on the slogan that if Goldwater, the Republican Party candidate, was elected, he was a threat to the future of humanity. He would start a nuclear war. He would start an Armageddon. That's the slogan they ran on. The lesser of the two evils. That's the slogan of the Democratic Party right now with Trump. It's not what you're for, it's what you are against. That's the slogan that they are running on. And so, yes, it's very tempting to be sucked into that once again. And as I said, we pay a price every time we delay, every time we delay the process in organizing our own political party for the working class and so on, we will be sucked more and more into that black hole, into that graveyard with all of the consequences that come

with it. CB And do you see any examples of a working class party? I know that a lot of people talk about the DSA. Some people hate the DSA and they think that they've fallen really far into opportunism. I personally think that they do a lot of important sort of on the ground work like local chapters, but, you know, not just the DSA. But, you know, are there any glimpses of a political party that could represent the working class in the US? Or, you know, maybe is our role simply to just gum up the machinery of the U.S. imperial war machine so that other countries can have their revolutions without the United States' boot on their neck. Yeah.

What do you see our role in? And do you see any kind of glimpse of a vanguard party? Yeah, not much. Yeah, it's not much. The real test for those who want to break inside the DSA, who want to break with the Democratic Party, if they really want to do that, is to run their own candidates. Run their own candidates on a working class program. And that would be the real test for how serious they are about, I think, breaking with the Democratic Party. Right now, the only party I know on

the left that has its own candidates preparing for elections in a very modest way is the Socialist Workers Party. And they take to heart that kernel of wisdom that Marx and Engels bequeathed, and that is, even if you have no chance of winning in an election, you should run your own candidates. That's the only... There may be some other formations on the left I'm not familiar, I'm not familiar with, but that's the only one I know. And the DSA, there are enough forces, DSA is large enough, it's in those forces who are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party, in my opinion, it's not enough to be just dissatisfied, the real test is, okay, put forward your own candidates and so on and run them on a really independent program for the working class that serves

the interests of the working class. But I suspect the pressure is on. Trump is the existential threat to democracy. It will make many people think twice about actually doing that. But as you've read from my book, every time we delay that, we make things indeed more dangerous. You've been listening to an Up conversation with professor august nymphs a professor of political science and african-american and african studies in the college of liberal arts at the university of minnesota and the author of the ballot the streets or both published by haymarket books please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. And if you liked this conversation,

you may want to check out our bonus episode from last month with Brett O'Shea and Alison Escalante titled What Is To Be Done, where we explored many of the themes from this episode and what Lennon had to say about revolution. Thank you to Beth and Mir for this episode and what Lennon had to say about revolution. Thank you to Beth and Mir for this episode's cover art and to No Name for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is a labor of love. We distribute all of our content for free and couldn't keep things going without the support of you, our listeners and fans. Please visit Thank you. For more from us, please visit upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter and Instagram for updates and post-capitalist memes at Upstream Podcast.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And if you like what you hear, please give us a five-star rating and review. It really helps get Upstream in front of more eyes and into more ears. Thank you.