This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Don't Vote for Imperialism!

MIM's bourgeois elections page

This page was created to promote MIM's line on bourgeois electoralism under imperialism when many people are talking about the 2004 presidential election. We welcome reviews of candidates in the 2004 elections as well as discussion and debate on elections. Please also send us links to other MIM material on elections that we missed in here. All elections page e-mail can be sent to mim124@mim.org.

MIM's elections slogan can best be summed up as "Don't Vote, Organize." Oppressed people everywhere and the revolutionaries who work in their interest are not distracted by the billion-dollar smoke-and-mirrors campaigns of imperialism.

The majority of white Amerikans support or participate in the electoral system. The system overall represents their interests, though it favors the rich among them. Still, their choices are limited and they are constantly grumbling and protesting by not voting.

If some candidate throws Amerikans a bone--a tough crime bill with lots of new prisons, some protectionism against foreigners, a war or two--then they may get temporarily excited and go pull some levers. But their elections are not what changes the direction of the country. They rubberstamp the decisions made by international patriarchal capital, and they get paid to do it.

Revolutionaries act on the belief that people are bigger than individual votes, and that improvements within the Amerikan system are made at the cost of increased exploitation of the oppressed. Every day wasted on these elections means millions more death sentences for the oppressed.

Read more about MIM's general line on imperialist elections here: Don't vote for imperialism

Lenin on Elections (from State and Revolution):

"To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people in parliament -- such is the real essence of bourgeois parlimentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics." (chapter 3, sec 3)

"People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy." (chapter 4, sec 5)

What should you do instead of voting?

If you've read through this web page and agree that organizing people to vote in imperialist elections is a waste of time, then you've got a responsibility to do something better with your time, something that really challenges imperialism! Here are a few ways to get involved:

Join the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL), a mass organization led by MIM

Download, copy and distribute one of these anti-imperialist elections flyers: The Enemy Chooses a Leader or Amerika Votes for Terror or Butcher Nations Elect Butchers

Pick a campaign and get out on the streets organizing people.

Help distribute MIM Notes and build public opinion against imperialism.

Still not sure what to do? Try reading this.