QGood Afternoon.
My name is Jay, and I am a new member of CPUSA. I've been reading the manifesto diligently and doing as much research as I can so I'm fully informed, but I have a question that I can't seem to find a concrete answer to.
I was wondering if communists are allowed to vote in elections? I see a lot of discourse online about voting for democratic candidates and just participating in elections in general, and while I understand completely that democrats are just as bad as republicans in a system like this, it's a little confusing. Midterms are coming up soon, and this is my first time voting ever, and I would really like to participate, but am I allowed to?
AWelcome to the Party, comrade! To be perfectly concrete from the outset, yes, communists absolutely can vote in the United States.
The confusion you are encountering is not accidental, and it is largely a product of bourgeois ideology which reduces politics to the isolated act of an individual “pulling a lever” in a booth. That is not how we understand either voting specifically or politics more broadly. For a Marxist-Leninist, voting is not a matter of personal conscience or a moral "choice" between decent, bad and worse. It is a tactical deployment of collective working class power in a specific arena and a specific context. In the context of our limited bourgeois democracy, this is an arena where the ruling class has concentrated a great deal of its own energy and strength. To abstain entirely is to cede that arena without offering any fight and leave it wholly in the hands of the ruling class.
Communists vote not as isolated individuals making an individual moral calculation, but as members of a class that uses every available tool to defend our working class, to build its collective confidence, and to prepare for the longer and more fundamental struggle for power ahead. The fascist movement and its allies want us demoralized, divided, and hidden away. We refuse to submit.
The primary political reality of the electoral arena in 2026 is the struggle to strengthen U.S. democracy and defeat the fascist danger, and to work with organized labor to encourage it to continue being independent politically, and to struggle for power. The fascist MAGA movement must be countered now. MAGA's attempt to consolidate the U.S. fascist movement by disenfranchising workers, Black and brown people, women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community, their attempt to dismantle every programs and institutions that workers fought and died to establish and expand, can and must be halted.
This is where the Leninist understanding of tactics becomes necessary. Lenin, in his writings, did not argue for participation in elections because he thought parliaments were especially useful. He argued for participation because the masses orient themselves toward elections, utilize them as a primary form of political expression, and a Communist Party that refuses to engage in that arena isolates itself from the very people it seeks to lead. The question of participation in the electoral arena is a question of whether we can use the electoral moment as a point of collective mobilization, a practical exercise in building working class unity and discipline against the most immediate and dangerous threats that we face, which can be used to grow and strengthen the working class and the Communist Party. Participating in and building grassroots movements capable of putting forward our own Party candidates is a crucial part of these efforts.
The confusion you are encountering is not accidental, and it is largely a product of bourgeois ideology which reduces politics to the isolated act of an individual “pulling a lever” in a booth. That is not how we understand either voting specifically or politics more broadly. For a Marxist-Leninist, voting is not a matter of personal conscience or a moral "choice" between decent, bad and worse. It is a tactical deployment of collective working class power in a specific arena and a specific context. In the context of our limited bourgeois democracy, this is an arena where the ruling class has concentrated a great deal of its own energy and strength. To abstain entirely is to cede that arena without offering any fight and leave it wholly in the hands of the ruling class.
Communists vote not as isolated individuals making an individual moral calculation, but as members of a class that uses every available tool to defend our working class, to build its collective confidence, and to prepare for the longer and more fundamental struggle for power ahead. The fascist movement and its allies want us demoralized, divided, and hidden away. We refuse to submit.
The primary political reality of the electoral arena in 2026 is the struggle to strengthen U.S. democracy and defeat the fascist danger, and to work with organized labor to encourage it to continue being independent politically, and to struggle for power. The fascist MAGA movement must be countered now. MAGA's attempt to consolidate the U.S. fascist movement by disenfranchising workers, Black and brown people, women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community, their attempt to dismantle every programs and institutions that workers fought and died to establish and expand, can and must be halted.
This is where the Leninist understanding of tactics becomes necessary. Lenin, in his writings, did not argue for participation in elections because he thought parliaments were especially useful. He argued for participation because the masses orient themselves toward elections, utilize them as a primary form of political expression, and a Communist Party that refuses to engage in that arena isolates itself from the very people it seeks to lead. The question of participation in the electoral arena is a question of whether we can use the electoral moment as a point of collective mobilization, a practical exercise in building working class unity and discipline against the most immediate and dangerous threats that we face, which can be used to grow and strengthen the working class and the Communist Party. Participating in and building grassroots movements capable of putting forward our own Party candidates is a crucial part of these efforts.
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The Communist Party USA is a revolutionary working-class political party founded in 1919 in Chicago, IL.
The Communist Party stands for the interests of the American working class and the American people. It stands for our interests in both the present and the future. Solidarity with workers of other countries is also part of our work. We work in coalition with the labor movement, the peace movement, the student movement, organizations fighting for equality and social justice, the environmental movement, immigrants rights groups and the health care for all campaign.
But to win a better life for working families, we believe that we must go further. We believe that the American people can replace capitalism with a system that puts people before profit — socialism.
We are rooted in our country's revolutionary history and its struggles for democracy. We call for "Bill of Rights" socialism, guaranteeing full individual freedoms.
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