November 8 was the date of the midterm election in the United States, in which American citizens were called upon to vote for their preferred representatives at the federal, state, and local levels.

And calling is exactly what the bourgeoisie has done. From every direction, the elements of bourgeois society scream at citizens to fulfill their alleged civic duty: vote! Volunteers canvass neighborhoods and register people to vote at community events. Your family, your boss, and your landlord all pressure you to cast your ballot. Bourgeois political parties and regime trade unions insist that you exercise your right to vote. Schools, universities, and churches join in the chorus. In addition:
     • All forms of news broadcasting – television, radio, and internet
     • Paid advertisements – billboards by the interstate, posters on walls and poles, signs on the buses and the subway, TV and radio commercials, internet ads, etc.
     • Newspapers, magazines, and journals
     • Social media – Facebook, Twitter, and so on
     • Even internet search engines – Google says go vote!

Meanwhile, workers – especially those with lower wages – are much more likely not to vote than the average person. Polls prove this has little to do with disenfranchisement; non-voters simply do not believe voting will improve their everyday lives. What does it say about voting that such a large part of the ruling class advocates for it so earnestly, while the working class seems to have little interest in it?

Bourgeois political analysts and party staffers are always anxious about voter turnout. It’s taken as a self-evident truth that the greater the percentage of the population that participates in the election, the better. But better for who?

Since a century and a half ago, for our movement, the existing democratic institutions have become a machine for holding down the proletariat. Workers’ main problem is the misery of wage-labor: they are caught between the collapsing purchasing-power of their wages and looming unemployment. Many politicians ignore such “bread-and-butter” issues altogether; others, being demagogues, endlessly rant and debate about them, but never do anything to make an immediate, substantial change. A vote is a blank check for these leaders to continue the status quo; elections are nothing but a way of inducing the will of “the People,” manufacturing consent for their own oppression and exploitation.

So to us communists, it is not at all obvious that high turnout is good. On the contrary, we believe that the fewer workers who vote, the better. Indeed, when the working class sees through the illusion of bourgeois democracy and recognizes the necessity of revolutionary action, it will have no interest whatsoever in casting ballots.

Some argue that we should use the vote to create better conditions for revolutionary action, to elect the government we would rather struggle with.

Leaving aside the contradiction between voting for a government only to subsequently turn around and strive to overthrow it, we grant that some governments are easier to overthrow than others, although probably not for the same reasons as the advocates of voting have in mind. The bourgeoisie acts in its own interests: if it allows for apparent progress for some sections of the working class, then it must come in the form of a quid pro quo. A government that feigns friendliness to the workers – conceding certain rights and improvements in their living and working conditions, but only in exchange for dividing the working class and depriving it of its militancy and independence – is not as easy to oppose. When the velvet glove of democracy comes off, revealing the iron fist of fascism underneath, communists breathe a sigh of relief – at least then the workers see who the real enemy is, and instinctively struggle against it.

That is not to say that we buy into the alarmism of the left wing of the bourgeoisie which frames the competition between Republicans and Democrats in the US as a war between fascism and democracy: on the one hand, because right-wing populism in that country is more of a reaction of certain sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat against globalization and modernization than an employers’ counter-offensive; on the other, because the essential content of fascism – unification of the bourgeoisie and elimination of the working class’s independence – have already been embraced by both sides.

It is not that we believe voting does nothing. Voting definitely accomplishes certain things: it perpetuates illusions among the working class, and diverts precious, otherwise potentially dangerous energy towards relatively harmless channels, distracting workers from organizing a real struggle. This is democracy working just as intended by the bourgeoisie which keeps it alive. The modern ruling class has taken to heart an important lesson from the ruling class of antiquity: give the masses bread and circuses to stave off revolt.

Unfortunately for the bourgeoisie, bread is becoming scarce as the crisis of capital advances, and the spell they cast on the working class has already worn off, as suggested by their widespread, spontaneous abstention.

Before long, with the intervention of the proletariat’s class party, the countless simple acts of individual workers not voting due to indifference turn to a positive action of the working class. Then, organized into a united class union front, workers will obtain whatever concessions are still possible under capitalism by the force of strikes that spread across the artificial divisions of nation, industry, trade, and company; fighting without illusions and without compromise.