>>2493151Those criticizing Bernie Sanders and AOC from the left know that they exist to co-opt US workers and youth into supporting the status quo of US capitalist imperialism against the rest of the world, not to organize workers as a force independent of the bourgeoisie, which is the opposite of what Marx, Engels, and Lenin said to do in a bourgeois election. Don't forget that the Democratic and Republican Parties are bourgeois political parties, and there's no possible way to reform them into a workers' party.
The Marxist position for bourgeois elections is not abstentionism, but rather organizing into a distinct revolutionary party of the working class for proletarian class domination that is independent of the bourgeoisie. Using the election to count forces and demonstrate its program to the masses, even if its candidates have no chance of winning. Voting for communist candidates is a duty if you call yourself a communist, to develop experience in the class struggle and spread propaganda to the masses.
Let's start with a link demonstrating my point about Bernie Sanders and AOC as an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOoTEDB7l18Now let's begin with three quotes from Marx and Engels on how communists should act in a bourgeois democratic election:
<Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1850, "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League"https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm
<The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' party. And this step has been taken, far more rapidly than we had a right to hope, and that is the main thing. That the first programme of this party is still confused and highly deficient, that it has set up the banner of Henry George, these are inevitable evils but also only transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement–no matter in what form so long as it is only their own movement–in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn wisdom by hurting themselves.
<Frederick Engels, “Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1886”, Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge In Hobokenttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_11_29.htm
<Complete abstention from political action is impossible. The abstentionist press participates in politics every day. It is only a question of how one does it, and of what politics one engages in. For the rest, to us abstention is impossible. The working-class party functions as a political party in most countries by now, and it is not for us to ruin it by preaching abstention. Living experience, the political oppression of the existing governments compels the workers to occupy themselves with politics whether they like it or not, be it for political or for social goals. To preach abstention to them is to throw them into the embrace of bourgeois politics. The morning after the Paris Commune, which has made proletarian political action an order of the day, abstention is entirely out of the question.
<We want the abolition of classes. What is the means of achieving it? The only means is political domination of the proletariat. For all this, now that it is acknowledged by one and all, we are told not to meddle with politics. The abstentionists say they are revolutionaries, even revolutionaries par excellence. Yet revolution is a supreme political act and those who want revolution must also want the means of achieving it, that is, political action, which prepares the ground for revolution and provides the workers with the revolutionary training without which they are sure to become the dupes of the Favres and Pyats the morning after the battle. However, our politics must be working-class politics. The workers' party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party; it must be independent and have its goal and its own policy.
<The political freedoms, the right of assembly and association, and the freedom of the press — those are our weapons. Are we to sit back and abstain while somebody tries to rob us of them? It is said that a political act on our part implies that we accept the exiting state of affairs. On the contrary, so long as this state of affairs offers us the means of protesting against it, our use of these means does not signify that we recognise the prevailing order.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Apropos Of Working-Class Political Action".https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/21.htmLenin also agrees with me if you read the text “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder in the section written "Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?", so I will leave the link to the page if you want to read it:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm