We share this call to boycott the Quebec elections:

Boycott the Bourgeois Elections! Fight For Workers’ Power!

For the vast majority of the population, voting is useless. From one election to the next, the wealth gap continues to widen, attacks on workers are multiplying, the military budget increases, wars against the peoples of exploited countries carries on, indigenous peoples’ extreme poverty persists, and that, no matter the ruling party, whether right or “left”. The reason for this is very simple: under capitalism, despite universal suffrage, it is those who hold Capital—banks, industry, natural resources, trade, media, etc.—who decide. State and parliament, despite their democratic varnish, are in reality nothing but the apparatuses used by the bourgeoisie—the social class who owns the means of production—to maintain its domination on society. In Canada, this domination currently takes on the form of bourgeois democracy.

Like all the previous electoral campaigns, the one currently taking place in Quebec is the theater of a competition between political formations (QLP, CAQ, PQ, QS) who are in reality only different fractions of one and same party representing the interests of the big bourgeoisie. Whether they adopt a more protectionist or more free-trade discourse, whether they are federalist or sovereigntist, all agree on the essential, namely the maintaining of the capitalist system of exploitation and the private ownership of the means of production.

Although there are minor differences in how they propose to manage capitalism in the province, these differences fade quickly as soon as the needs of Capital demand it. Under these conditions, for those who have nothing but their labor power and their personal possessions—that is to say for the vast majority of people—the act of voting consists in choosing periodically which bourgeois will crush them in parliament for the next few years! Many workers understand this, as proved by high abstention rates at each election.

Bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie! As long as we have not overthrown the power of the ruling class and we have not established a new state at the service of the toiling masses, until the working class has seized political power by force, democracy will be just a empty phrase used to deceive the people. We must refuse the electoral masquerade and fight outside of parliament—against the bourgeois State—to take possession of the means of production and to establish a workers’ democracy, a new regime in which the workers will no longer be profit-making machines but will have a real control over their living conditions.

The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) calls for an active boycott of the provincial bourgeois elections in Quebec and to fight for the power of the working class! To actively boycott elections is of course not to vote, but it is also to denounce bourgeois democracy by acts and to tackle, concretely, even on a small scale, its institutions. That is why our party calls for the multiplication, throughout the electoral campaign, of actions and gestures of protest against bourgeois power. We must seize without waiting of all the means of action within our reach, as modest as they are. It is by first mastering simple forms of struggle that we can then move on to more complex and impactful forms. We are also calling for a combative street demonstration in Montreal on election night, Monday, October 1 at 6:30 pm at Place Émilie-Gamelin.

These actions will serve to advance the revolutionary movement towards the proletarian offensive of May 1, 2019. On that date, we will politically commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike—one of the most important events in the history of the Canadian working class—by massively storming the Montreal financial center and confronting in the street the capitalist state. This is what it means to actively boycott the elections and the bourgeois parliament! The workers must reconnect with the traditions of struggle of their class, reclaim their past experience and organize themselves now in the political struggle to overthrow the power of the capitalists!

Revolt Against Bourgeois Democracy!
Fight for the Power of the Working Class!
Forward to the Proletarian Offensive of May 1, 2019!