this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Participating in bourgeoisie elections on revolutionary terms or helping improve the material conditions of others? (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 4 days ago by tildatagtwo@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml
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Hi all, I haven't posted here before but I had a question about two things that seem somewhat conflicting to me? I'm a fledgling Marxist and I remember reading that Lenin had said something about how we should only participate in bourgeoisie elections in our own revolutionary party, but I think he maybe also said something about helping the material conditions of others (instead of being a accelerationist) . How does one do both of these things or is there a balance? I haven't yet read "What is to be done?" but I imagine maybe reading that would help me get a better understanding of these things? Please let me know if i'm misremembering this, thank you :)

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[–] readmotherfucker@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 days ago

Bourgeois politics/elections is quite simply another battlefront on which we must fight. To say that you will not participate in it is to say that it is a battlefront you are willing to concede.

HOWEVER! Participation does not mean participating within a Bourgeois party!

It means creating your own political party, in which you do not at all expect to get elected and in which you treat the bourgeois parties as your enemies! Any reform that you push for or work to have enacted (perhaps even with the assistance of bourgeois parties) should be for the sole purpose of raising class consciousness and hastening the revolution!

This is elaborated upon by Lenin in "What is to be Done?" and "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder".