On 5 May, at 7.15 pm, we will host No Matter Who You Vote For, Capital Has Already Won, a political event examining the Marxist-Leninist position on the upcoming local elections in Britain, taking place on 7 May 2026. Rather than dismissing elections outright or placing reformist hope in them, this event aims to clarify what bourgeois electoralism represents in the current historical moment: a mechanism for managing the structural crisis of capitalism, not a pathway to working-class emancipation.
We will outline the theoretical coordinates of the capitalist state and bourgeois democracy from Marx and Lenin to the present, while critically confronting the reformist and ultra-left distortions that continue to shape ‘left’ responses to elections. Analysing the concrete functioning of local authorities as administrators of austerity, constrained by shrinking fiscal autonomy and central government discipline, we will show how municipal politics today is reduced to technocratic debates over budget cuts and service provision, rather than genuine struggles over alternative social orders. We will also examine the specific case of Britain, where rising abstention, electoral volatility, and deepening distrust in political institutions reflect the growing difficulty of bourgeois democracy in maintaining stable political consent amid intensifying class pressures.
Our position is to clarify the role of elections and how communists must engage with them in the current reality without reinforcing illusions. This means rejecting both the reformist fantasy that better representatives can deliver change and the ultra-left temptation to disengage entirely. Instead, we treat elections as an arena of ideological struggle where the working class continues to seek solutions, and where communist intervention is necessary to advance independent working-class organisation.
The event will include breakout discussions, in which comrades can collectively engage with and critically debate sections of our statement on local elections and bourgeois electoralism.