Upstream - [RE-RELEASE] A Marxist Perspective on Elections w/ August Nimtz

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

“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 her, but you’ve just got to hold your nose and vote for her — 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. Further resources: The Ballot, The Streets, or Both? by August Nimtz Related episodes: [UNLOCKED] Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia De La Cruz & Karina Garcia Battling the Duopoly w/ Jill Stein Righteous Indignation, Love, and Running for President w/ Dr. Cornel West Upstream: What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante Socialism Betrayed w/ Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison 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.    

Hey everyone, Robert here just popping in to say happy election day and just to personally express that I could not be more excited today to get to choose which member of the oppressing class will rule me for the next four years. It is an exciting day because it's all gonna be over soon I don't think I'm alone in just being so alienated by this process this year and Those fucking text messages. I'm so excited to not get literally 25 30 of those automated text messages every single day That's gonna finally stop hopefully and on that too, a huge shout out to Bernie Sanders for selling my information to the DNC. Thanks man. And you know what? I do actually agree with the terrific Abby Martin who we had on the show recently when she said that she does believe that this election, like they've drilled into our brains, is one of the most important elections in our lifetimes. It really is. And it's because I think for a significant amount of people,

it really has been a wake-up call to the reality of the system and the reality of the Democratic Party, which has always framed itself as being this like bulwark against far-right fascism in the US, against the unchecked powers of capital, but this party which has now fully revealed itself as a right-wing party, that itself has been involved in one of the most heinous and unthinkable horrors of our lifetimes. And that of course is the genocide in Gaza, where it has unapologetically and proudly aligned itself with the outright fascist state of Israel, a state that's run by a bunch of people who are miles to the right of even the Republican Party. And so it's been so ironic to hear Kamala Harris call Trump a fascist, and of course he is.

He's an aspiring dictator. a fascist, and of course he is, he's an aspiring dictator. But it's very funny to hear her say that when the Democrats have not just utterly failed to stop fascism in the U.S., they're encouraging it in their foreign policy. But I think most people listening today know this already, they know that the U.S. has always done this, regardless of which party is in power, the imperial machine marches on, continues to plunder and soak the planet in blood. And I'm just going to ask you to allow me to keep going on this thread just for a couple minutes before I introduce the episode today. The point of a democratic party, or if you want to use the language more typical in like social democracies of a Labor Party, a

party that you know supposedly represents the interests of working and oppressed classes of organized labor and in doing so that party is supposed to prevent the rise in power of right-wing parties and to harness the collective energy and right-wing parties and to harness the collective energy and the will of the working class and oppressed people and organized labor to fight against the powerful interests of capital which are represented for the most part by right-wing parties. At least that's the idea, right? But of course, even in the European social democracies, the Labour parties there have been largely captured by capitalist interests. And you know, they're liberals after all, and they are ultimately more beholden and aligned with capital than they are with the working class and with working

class politics. But at least they're supposed to be some degree, some semblance of representation. But here in the US, our version of a social democratic labor party, or you know, what the party has tried to pretend it is, they've just completely torn that mask off and have truly revealed themselves for what they pretty much, you know, always were, which is just another faction of capital. And I don't think that that has ever been more popularly understood than it is now. And I mean, there's there's not even a pretense anymore, right? So this election is important. I think it's maybe the first time there's been such a stark realization among so many people

in the United States about the Democratic Party. I mean, it couldn't be more obvious, right? The Biden-Harris administration is simply unwilling to go against the wishes of their donors, against the the project of US imperialism more broadly, in order to appease the millions of people pleading with them to stop funding Israel's genocide. They simply won't do it. And they can't. The party is the embodiment of a fundamental, irresolvable contradiction between the people that they purport to represent, or at least, you know, part of that constituency, the progressive or left-ish side of that umbrella,

and the donor class and billionaires who they're completely materially beholden to. And they've struggled with trying to walk that tight rope for decades now. And at least they were throwing crumbs to those progressive liberals and to labor while still doing the bidding of the ruling class. But it really does seem like this time around, they're just like, fuck it.

Starting with the Biden administration and now with Harris, they've stopped playing that game like completely. I mean, I guess you'll see like, you know, you'll still see these half-hearted attempts to, you know, throw down a crumb or two here or there. Like another leaked news story about how angry Biden is at Netanyahu or like a toothless letter scolding Israel for blocking aid. But you can tell their hearts just are not even in it anymore. They're just mailing it in. It's become completely perfunctory to them. I mean, even with Obama, you know, one of the biggest liberal sellouts, they put on such a show for us, you know, liberal sellouts. They put on such a show for us, you know? Like they tried really, really hard to sell us on change and to convince us that we were voting for a real alternative.

They put on a really, really dazzling smoke and mirror show for us during the Obama years and it was really impressive, you know? Of course, Obama, who promised to codify Roe into law and then, you know, once in office with a super majority and all three branches on his side said it was no longer a priority. Obama who had the opportunity to transform healthcare in the country and instead just gave a giant handout to insurance companies. Obama who led the effort to crush the Sanders campaign in 2020. I mean, when's the last time any Democrat mentioned anything

about health care or Medicare for all? But of course, Obama turned out to be a fraud. But we don't even get that show anymore. We don't even get the Carnival Act and the magic tricks and the effort to deceive us. And it's because they know it doesn't matter anymore. The Democrats decided long ago that the only viable strategy for them

to be able to continue to exist is if they just become the Republicans. Like, as I said earlier, it really did take shape with the Clinton administration. And we've sort of reached the end of that road. Like, you know, we've got people like Dick fucking Cheney and Carl fucking Rove endorsing Kamala Harris.

And so the way that they have addressed that fundamental contradiction is that they just walked away from the whole fucking game. And because there are enough people who are still willing to vote for them, because the Republicans are so uncouth and so ill-mannered about their fascism, what they've ended up doing is just walking, or in some cases dragging, a huge number of Democratic voters down the political spectrum to the right. And they've given a huge number of liberals the excuse and the justification and permission to join the ranks of the right in policy while, you know, maintaining this veneer,

the integument of moral uprightness and progressiveness. And they do this almost solely through the embrace of this cynical, purely performative strand of identity politics that's completely hollow has nothing to do with actually materially improving the lives of oppressed or marginalized identities and everything to do with co-option and performance. And so there you have it. The Democrats are now outright neocons conducting a genocide and the Republicans are now outright neocons, conducting a genocide, and the Republicans are now holding fascist rallies at Madison Square Garden that would make the fucking Nazis blush. And we're watching as the contradictions of capitalism and of liberalism, and I mean liberalism

more broadly as the political philosophy, The whole edifice of bourgeois society collapse in on itself. And I mean, I can't help but think of Antonio Gramsci's famous line, that the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. And now is the time of monsters that has never felt so real. But of course, you know, both zombie parties are in denial. The MAGA Republicans are just hell-bent on building their lifeboats and grabbing as much plunder as they can before the inevitable collapse of the system, the gradual collapse that we're all living through. They've abandoned the system in many ways. And for the Democrats, they want nothing to fundamentally change.

Biden said that outright, and even though Trump talks a big game, nothing will anyways. And for the Democrats, they want nothing to fundamentally change. Biden said that outright. And even though Trump talks a big game, nothing will fundamentally change for capital because capital doesn't want anything to change. They're making more profits now than they ever have. Fossil fuel companies are making more profits than they ever have. And it's happening under Biden and Kamala and her pro-fracking platform will be the same. Things are going great for Capitol, and if anyone tries to disrupt that from either side,

left or right, it won't stand. So ultimately, no matter who wins, we're going to lose, and the spoils of the system will continue to accumulate entirely at the top. We will continue to get squeezed in every aspect of our lives more and more. And soon it won't just be the Palestinians that we see on our screens who are suffering these unimaginable harms. It's not just going to be the people on the fringes of society here in the US that are abandoned and discarded. This terrifying blood-soaked machine is gonna continue chugging along until we have absolutely nothing left to give and until we have also joined the ranks of the hyper-exploited and the super-oppressed as we think of as being so hyper removed from us right now. So

yes, happy election day. And to celebrate today, we're re-releasing one of our, I would say most important and popular episodes from almost exactly a year ago. So if you haven't heard this one yet, it's a great one. Professor August Nimtz is an incredible thinker and speaker. And I truly do believe that this is one of the most fascinating and dynamic episodes we've ever done based off of his book,

The Ballot, The Streets Are Both. Excellent, excellent book. And if you've already listened to this episode, maybe back when it was released, I think it will still be quite interesting to revisit it in our current context. I think a lot has changed in this past year, but a lot has stayed the same, and I think that Professor Nims's analysis really could not be more relevant to where we're currently at. I also want to encourage you, if you want to dive a little bit more deeper into this topic of electoralism and elections, I would encourage you to check out our three

episodes with all three left candidates, Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia of PSL, Jill Stein of the Green Party, who's now running with Butch Ware, and independent candidates, Cornell West and Melina Abdullah. I personally think that they are all excellent options for a protest vote. Some policies of each campaign might resonate a little bit more or less with you, but I do think they all have important points and such crucial analyses to share. And whether or not you believe in the electoral realm, you know, is one that could be utilized for building the left, at least on the presidential level. These candidates really do represent alternatives to the duopoly of the Republicans and the

Democrats of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, neither of whom give a shit about you or your loved ones. So, okay. Thank you for joining me in that diatribe. I hope that you enjoy the re-release of this conversation with Professor August Nimtz, a Marxist perspective on elections. 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 is organizations of leadership is awaited 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. You know you have nowhere else to go. In other words, that's exactly because the working class is 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 the rightward direction also of the Democrats. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. 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 Engels, 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, are both 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 for 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, 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 theorists and to bring him back into the world of politics, where he made

a conscious choice to be a part 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, their Marx and Engels, their contribution to the democratic breakthrough. 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 after their death. In other words I said I'd take up the linen the linen question. Well this book the 2014 book is really the first down payment on that promise and when I Began to think about the linen book. I've 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 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 of the streets. How do we bring about fundamental change? Can it be done through the ballot box or streets. How do we bring about fundamental change? Can it be done through the ballot box I had? 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 the from the Bolshevik experience, based upon earlier reading I had done, that it wasn't either-or, but rather for Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the tradition of 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, like, you asked that question question sort of weaving it through the history of the Russian Revolution and the lead up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

And you know, 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 one oh one on the russian revolution. Before we kinda get more deeply into lennon views on electoral is on that and this electoral question and you know this is. Obviously a huge question so you know however you'd like to tackle it, if you could walk us through the Russian Revolution history and, you know, 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, too, feel free to, you know, 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 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 France in 1793, 1794. And Russia was part of that wave and it was sort of the last major 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 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 the behind that was the Industrial Revolution and the product of that was the it 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, to 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 as 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 we see Lenin and Trotsky oftentimes referred 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 of representative democracy is going to replace the monarchy? And the fight in Russia is whether or not will it be bourgeois representative democracy, it would be proletarian representative democracy as expressed represented by the Soviets. So that's kind of in a nutshell what the revolution was about. 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 sort of 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 the Soviet is a Russian word for a consul, for a consul. 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 strikes. 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 the Soviets actually were an expression of that kind of bourgeois institution. He had previous envisions, 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 he once he's back in in st. Petersburg and so on he sees their importance and The significance of them and is one and is one to them but by December they are pretty much the 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'd already been

familiar with the Paris Commune of 1871 and read everything he could. One of 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 an element of the Soviets that were reminiscent of the Paris, of the Paris Commune, that kind of mass, direct democracy at the local level.

And 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 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 representatives and so on. And the characteristic of the commune and that the Soviets were also organs for making

decisions within the, within the workplace, far more significant than bourgeois democracy. So yes, that's, I don't know if that, that helps. and 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 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 dissent or 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 Tsar's attempt to assuage some of the revolutionary fervor of 1905. And you know and it's a concession really. The Duma's 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 Tsar keeps dissolving them over the course of 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 I at the time, and the economic hardships brought about by the war. And then quickly factory workers join them and it turns into a huge strike. And actually much of the military disobey the Tsar'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 agitationitation 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 are starting to collaborate with reactionary counter-revolutionaries who are trying to maintain the status quo. 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 counterrevolution 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 counterrevolution, 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 you know any thoughts that you might want to share one important thing about the Paris Commune that linen thoroughly absorb and was marks and engels it's the only time they've made 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 Boyan learned to absorb 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 and set sort of move on and get a little bit deeper and start to bring this question of electoralism into the phrase, and 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 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 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 Riazanov and in that document is these Two what I call kernels of wisdom about elections in the parliamentary process that Lennon 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 Lennon 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 implicit in that is you have a idea what your strength is when it comes time to actually making a revolution. That's the message of that 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 with Lennon's perspective, that's where it begins. It begins with that document by Markson. 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. Where do 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 parliamentaryism, 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. Refinementist parliamentaryism becomes parliamentary work as an end in itself.

Therein what would become known as 20th, 21st century social democracy. Yeah, yeah. And we'll get into that and how sort of opportunism sort of 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 use the electoral system as you know a rostrum for political education an opportunity to unmask other political parties i'm just that the voice that was allowed in the do my at that time was very. 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, because I'm writing

an article on a related issue, what I call voting fetishism. And I hadn't noticed that before to make that connection. Yes, in about 1905 and 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 Tsars' offer of having a Duma when it was very clear that the czar 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 assent, Lenin wrote back to one of his comrades about the elections in 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. 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? And so in the summer of October of 1905, when the revolution was still in Ascension, Lenin is insistent, no, no, no, we want to stay in the streets, still in assent, Lenin is insisting 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. It's 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 as a Tennis, if you're a revolutionary, you're always hoping that things are hotter than they actually may 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 is, he really wants to participate, but he goes along under the discipline, 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 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 and You know, 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 that,

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 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 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 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 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 and giving the reactionaries the possibility of victory. The ultimate purpose of all such phrases is to duke the proletarian. 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's the answer to this question, which is being raised.

Exactly, it's being raised right now. And so, 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, now run it by 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're 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. 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, 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 the advance, what happens if you, and 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 they argue, 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 their 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 peace armory, 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 battlefield. And I argue that there's no better example from US history than the US 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 appallementary means.

It could only be settled on the battlefield. You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with August Nymphs. We'll be right back. scenarios with serotonin laughter'd us, psilocybin with the hybrid, baby couldn't pass it up sushi cutters in a concert with a license on, maybe y'all played the right song, and tell you my secret I used to swim in a dungeon where Moses played her allegiance, Harriet and happiness, I hibernate the masochist every slave in a slave town ready to bleed God, marry the 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 throw me in the back and sell em' head throw me in the back and sell em' head, me back tonight I'm on the moon, I cry balloons, they black and tonight, and they throw me in the back and tell them to hit me Throw me in the back and tell them to hit me back tonight And I land before a land, monasteries and arcane, casual white fans Who invented the voyeur, fascinated with mourning, they hope the trauma destroy Why everybody love a good sad song, a dark album like Tell me that your homie dead, Your mama dead, your brother bled

I'm on the street, the corner with a wall Rains and white castellas Ooh 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 on only trauma to her fan base I'm on the moon, I cry balloons They black and blue tonight And if they hold me in the back, then sell them, they hit me Hold me in the back, then sell 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, ain't me bad, 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 At LaCasam, I shook back like casino dice Satan call me magical negro, cool you got that I popped on the world stage with my AK cockback Saw the royal family and have to get my clout back

In a heart of knights bridge, pullin' bunnies out top hats Everywhere I step foot I leave a trail of names Of the sons of Yakku and the trail of flames I'm on fire, I'm plugged indirectly to Messiah I run with the mighty conics, we expose the liars These infidels killed my mom, it's all I wore now I swear on the Magdy, they never put my sword down The crescent is thawed with the red in the foreground It's the flag that I bang as I'm laying the law down Stab us 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 attest me Or some fuckboy 85 will come run up and press me It's all a hoax, quite simple, a joke like Zelensky The Emams, the Rabbis, and the Pope incidentally Couldn't stop my boat god from quoting quotes from the senses If anybody asks, tell them Fridericon 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 if they hold me in the back then tell them they hit me Hold me in the back then tell them they hit me back tonight I'm on the moon, I cry balloons They black and blue tonight And if they hold me in the back then tell them they hit me Hold me in the back then tell them they hit me That was Balloons by No Name featuring Jay Electronica and Aaron Allen-Kane. Now back to our conversation with August Nims. Another quote from the book, again this is your quote, the justification is always that failing to support the lesser evil allows for the 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 effect of working class and no effect of resistance because the working class, its organizations, the 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 it 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 the rightward direction also of the Democrats.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I couldn't agree more with that analysis. And like personally, I've come to the conclusion that at this point, the Democratic Party is really like 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 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 owners. It was the 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? And my argument, it was simply out of happenstance. It was fortuitous. It was contingency that the 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 in the streets, the working class upheavals that took place in the 1930s. That's what a New Deal, like all concessions, just like the czar's concessions, all concessions from the ruling class come when only 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. 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. It was a Clinton, and it was a Clinton the Clinton and it was a Clinton member. It was a Clinton administration. It was it was a Democratic Party Clinton administration that dismantled one of the three pillars of

the New Deal. A to family of dependent children. The A F D C. It was a Democrat. Republicans couldn't have gotten away with it, but the Democrats could get away with it. It was Clinton get away with it. It was Clinton who dismantled it. Yeah. And again, I think, you know, looking back at this long arc of history, you know, history

and reality support the positions that, you know, 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 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 myths about vanguardism on the left. You know, there are a lot of folks who 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 US 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 of a trail of the Russian Revolution

That's a fact. That's what the Russian Revolution was overthrown. The O'Connell 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 the 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, well the Vanguard Party for Lenin as he explained in what is to be done

simply as 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 will 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 master's 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 and 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 of the Vanguard. And it's the masses themselves that will, 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. And it seems to me that the evidence is very clear, and

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 the peasantry the overwhelming portion of the population voted with its feet for the Bolsheviks. As Lenin printed out in what is to be done to be the vanguard you have to act like the vanguard you have to be recognized you have to be recognized as the v 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 yeah, organizing for decades, one of the really important things that I think is missing right now. And we actually got into this entire episode that we just released 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 uprising, and how a lot of that

fervor and that energy, you know, abolish the police, defund the police, all of that revolutionary energy on the streets was sort of like 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, if there's 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 are really erupted, 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 London on this question, on the need for a vanguard revolutionary party. Her view was that the party would come into existence 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 Liebman, they paid with their lives for that I think 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 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 would happen 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 in the zone 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 said, bogged down. And I'm sure the people, I give them the benefit of the doubts, 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.

So you quote very liberally in the book from Lenin, and I really love that. I have like an entire multi-page Google doc of just Lenin quotes now that I'm gonna 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. 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 you know, this was written a hundred 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. It's one of my favorite quotes and it's also relevant. This is exactly what I'm referring to here in the Twin Cities. That if you really want police reform, yeah, it's gonna 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 1934 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 the book 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 gonna 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 the reform? What's the way in which you get the 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, you know, social democracy, what we might now understand more socialism, and then this idea of bourgeois liberal democracy. Yes, for Lenin, as was the case, Lenin, that quote comes out of the perspective of Marx and Engels, comes out of the perspective of Marx and Engels and it actually I think it goes back to the English Civil Wars in 1647-16 1649 and I take advantage of the opportunity I always like to promote and to advertise the significance of that of that moment and 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 Liske 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 class societies, 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 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 mean. But elections, even in the most honest elections, even in the most democratic 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, Winstanley especially, in 1649. Can you talk a little bit to I think it's kind of related like the mistakes that were made by labor parties in Western Europe you know such as for example the German Workers Party or the UK's Labour Party 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 Lenin to go back not 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 then 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 debauchery. 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 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 Dmytcheviks. It also produced Dmytcheviks which were much more akin to the German party.

So it's not just revolutionary turmoil that produces a revolutionary party, but it 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 Nazis, the fascism is born on the ashes of those three attempts. It's not an accident that Hitler names 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. Well, and speaking of demoralization, I'm wondering, this episode is being released on Election Day, and I'm wondering, you know, 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 US left. Well, I think the most important thing right now for the immediate left that is organized and provides 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, 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 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 that 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 a campaign now, the campaign now for a working class political party. The working class needs its own political party. And 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 term 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 this election, so all you're doing, you're allowing the Democrats to be voted up by default. If you don't actually present your own candidate, 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, you know, I'm not asking you to like endorse anybody and neither are we here, but I'm just asking if you- No, 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. 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 the two, 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 the consequences that come with it.

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 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 US 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, who really want to do that is to run their own candidates, 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 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 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 upstream conversation with Professor August Nims, 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 Lenin 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 upstreampodcast.org visit UpstreamPodcast.org

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