it’s a circus for the hoi polloi to make them feel like they have a stake in politics

what even is the point of having elections if elections ultimately won’t get you the kind of government people wanted

To create a theatre of approval for the status quo. See for example the Russian Duma under Nicholas 2. Any time the government was something other than hardcore monarchists/nationalists he’d order the Duma disbanded

To gauge the population’s engagement and what representations and (proportions of representations) of classes the parties in parliament have mobilized and from where. To use as a central point of political agitation and analysis. To be where the masses are, most of whom still believe in parliamentary politics, to, under communist banners, help mobilize inside of these large political upswells of energy to agitate for communism and throw weight behind the left in these coalitions (while maintaining freedom of propaganda and agitation to criticize), to show exactly this; to prove to the mobilized masses through their own lived political experience why we are right and why bourgeois democracy is not the answer, and that liberals will side with fascists before they give the left an inch.

This is honestly an incredible victory assuming the communists in France have read their Lenin and have been agitating to expect this (which, both from a history standpoint and just knowing that weird smarmy gnome Macron, is not hard to anticipate); I can’t think of a better gift to the communists of France than Macron doing this and now creating a large portion of people who realize that bourgeois democracy is not a pathway to a better world, but an impediment to it. As well as instill a realization in people the true nature of liberalism and liberal politicians in capitalist politics in a more effective way than any propaganda ever could (which the propaganda is only to prompt thought and awareness and show who was right in their analysis to those who then live, or did live the political experience of this and witness it, it takes the experience to change the perspective of the masses)

I’d like to know why macron was so eager to hold an election. Waiting would have benefitted the far right from a numbers perspective.

What was the point of holding elections now, if you were going to give the reigns to the far right anyway? Now he actually looks like he is subverting French democracy.

Part of me thinks he believed the initial polls that broadcasted a far right victory, and decided to go with it.

weird that

It was and is still worth not shutting up about this. This has been and continues to be large victory for the communist movement. It was a large mobilization of masses of engaged politically active workers in a state where the masses still largely believe in parliamentarism; who formed sprawling coalitions into a large left national upswelling that also made international headlines, who now have themselves and onlookers been shown, better than any ultraleft cynicposting online ever could, why bourgeois liberal democracy is an impediment to progress rather than a channel for it.

The amount of communists, or potential communists and neutral communist-sympathizers-to-revolutionary-politics this has inevitably created and left in its wake dwarfs what the Bernie-clinton thing did in the US. And that made a lot of communists, I’ve worked with some; and that was milquetoast compared to this. Especially if the communists of France who many I know were in the coalition or engaged in other ways have been reading their Lenin and have been agitating beforehand about the predictable inevitability (historically, and just Macron, as well as theoretically deducible) of this; that the liberal establishment will obstruct and even side with reactionaries before giving ground to the left. This is the best gift to the communist movement that France and Western Europe in general has seen in a while. I think it was wrong to belittle it then and is wrong to not appreciate it now.

Lloyd George Macron entered into a polemic… with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations with the Labour Party New Popular Front (NPF)… Lloyd George Macron argued that a coalition—and a close coalition at that—between the Liberals and the Conservatives was essential, otherwise there might be a victory for the Labour Party NPF which Lloyd George Macron prefers to call “Socialist” … “In Germany it was called socialism, and in Russia it is called Bolshevism,” he went on to say. To Liberals this is unacceptable on principle, Lloyd George Macron explained, because they stand in principle for private property. “Civilisation is in jeopardy,” the speaker declared, and consequently Liberals and Conservatives must unite. . . .

… Thus the liberal bourgeoisie are abandoning the historical system of “two parties” (of exploiters), which has been hallowed by centuries of experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters, and consider it necessary for these two parties to join forces against the Labour Party NPF.

…
At present, British French Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson Castets and Mélenchon and against Lloyd George Macron and Le Pen they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill Barnier and Le Pen (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson Castets and the NPF in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons Castets will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons Castetses and the Snowdens Mélenchons just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.

INDEX: “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder
Ch.07: Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?
Ch.09: “Left-Wing” Communism in Great Britian

It’s good to have concrete evidence of this happening though because now you can just point to France when people start bleating that western democracy works, and you just need to vote harder.

Colonialism? They’re certainly already doing their best in that regard.