Socialist Workers Party

They have good politics in my opinion, but what do you all think about them running candidates? They say it's to reach out to other working people, fighting for workers rights, while realizing that the system isn't going to bring out the change we need, only revolution can do that. Do you think participating in the elections reinforces a capitalist mentality? I recently spent the weekend with the VP candidate and other congressional candidates, and it was definitely a great experience, but I have my doubts such as the whole running candidates and other things. Any thoughts on their politics would be appreciated too.

I do not think that running for office is necessarily counter-revolutionary. What matters is what you do when in office; for example, if a socialist got elected to office and put in no legislation that you could pick out as socialist-leaning then they would be sell-outs. If the person was elected, and proposed legislation to forgive mortgage, medical, and student debt then that would be fine in my opinion.

Honestly, I don't think that the question can be answered without specifics. One thing that I can say is that if using the electoral system is your primary means of attaining Socialism, you will fail. There has to be an established - permanent and organized - grassroots movement for anything done in the government to matter. Politics is a tool, not an end. You cannot use only a wrench to build a table.

EDIT: Also, it is cool that you were able to talk to a lot of people like that.

There is no harm in socialist organizations putting up candidates for elected office, as long as they are honest about the limitations inherent to that particular form of engagement with the bourgeois political system. The most that can reasonably be expected from a socialist holding office in a bourgeois state is for that individual to attempt to pass trivial reforms and (more importantly) educate his or her constituents.

It is my opinion that far too much energy is wasted in attempting to engage the bourgeois political system in this fashion. It diverts resources and initiative into an enterprise that does very little to actually threaten the fundamentals of said system.

Admin wrote:There is no harm in socialist organizations putting up candidates for elected office, as long as they are honest about the limitations inherent to that particular form of engagement with the bourgeois political system.

They are very persistent in the need for revolution, that's one of the majors things we all talked about.

Admin wrote:It is my opinion that far too much energy is wasted in attempting to engage the bourgeois political system in this fashion. It diverts resources and initiative into an enterprise that does very little to actually threaten the fundamentals of said system.

Here you directly contradict the first quote on top, which is fine but I want to think more about this. They aren't a wealthy party by any means and at every event we stopped at, donations were asked for and we had raffles, gave out books, etc. There is a HUGE stress on reading and educating yourself which I simply loved. Everything else we spoke of I agreed with, but my main problem is exactly that. Why waste so much time and energy running for something you can't win? There is simply not enough of the masses involved in a worker's party to even compete with the capitalists. Why not work hard on building the mass movement THEN running candidates when you have supporters in the millions? I have even recently thought of why the socialists of all parties (ISO, SWP, SP USA) have not put aside their theoretical differences and DO something together. Work on uniting the working class and building solidarity instead of arguing over theoretical differences.