Can socialism be voted into power?

[dcsmart]

Elizabeth Schulte explains why there is no electoral short cut to winning a society based on workers' power.

May 22, 2009 | Issue 697

Can we vote socialism into power?

IF YOU ask Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck, Americans put a socialist into the White House when they elected Barack Obama president last November.

Obama denies his secret socialistic leanings, and there's good reason to believe him--in the past few weeks, he and his administration have supported the use of unaccountable military tribunals in the "war on terror," opposed prosecution of the Bush administration torturers, celebrated the insurance industry's eager participation in a suspect proposal for health care "reform"--and, of course, continued to hand untold hundreds of billions to the country's biggest banks.

Not exactly a radical.

But the right's hyperventilating about socialism does raise the question: Are elections the way to win a socialist society. After all, it seems like an easier and more peaceful task to vote socialism into office than to organize a mass revolutionary struggle.

So can we vote socialism into power?


In his speeches, Debs shifted the debate away from everyday election themes and used the platform to enumerate the ills of capitalism--and how both the Democratic and Republican Parties backed up the system and workers' role in transforming society. He said in 1912:

The Socialist Party is the only party in this campaign that stands against the present system and for the rule of the people; the only party that boldly avows itself the party of the working class and its purpose the overthrow of wage-slavery.

So long as the present system of capitalism prevails and the few are allowed to own the nation's industries, the toiling masses will be struggling in the hell of poverty as they are today. To tell them that juggling with the tariff will change this beastly and disgraceful condition is to insult their intelligence. The professional politicians who have been harping upon this string since infant industries have become giant monopolies know better. Their stock in trade is the credulity of the masses.

Socialist ideas got a wider hearing in the context of increased class struggle. In biggest labor struggles of the 19th and 20th century--the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Pullman in 1894, the Lawrence textile strike in 1912, the sit-down strikes of the 1930s--the greed of the U.S. ruling class was laid out for everyone to see, as workers took on police and company thugs.

Under these kinds of conditions, it's easy to see the possibilities for a political party that represented working people.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/22/can-we-vote-socialism-into-power

there is also suggested reading in the article.