Collective action

Elections are part of a bigger picture

Elections are a way to build power, but they come at a cost. Election campaigns suck up resources, energy and enthusiasm. It can seem like collective action, but campaigning does not build class power so much as they expend it in the hope of winning access to state power.

And winning elections is not a guarantee of success: politicians are not always accountable to the people who elected them, other parties can also win elections to run the state and reverse reforms, and the state is not always a force for good — for example when it is used to suppress working class power through austerity, the police, courts and prisons.

Of course, there is value in election campaigns. Campaigning itself gives the party and our candidates a platform to share our political ideas with many people. Campaigning is also an excuse to meet and talk to people in our communities, and build relationships with them for the long term. If elections are won, representatives can help us build power by transferring money, resources and assets back to local control for democratic use.

Branches can help members get active and collectively organise

Members' time and energy can also be used to build power "from below" — for example, by building trusting relationships in workplaces, neighbourhoods and communities — and by building our own well-resourced organisations and institutions like trade unions, tenants unions, community kitchens and so on.

Your proto-branch could set up 'member sections' (or 'fractions') to help members get active in different ways:

• Working groups that organise in workplaces through rank-and-file organising or trade union campaigning
• Working groups that focus in social movement organising like setting up an Apartheid Free Zone, an Anti-Raids Group, or a tenants union
• Working groups that gather grievances on the doorstep, via stalls or at assemblies so that we can build campaigns that help them out

Focusing branch meetings on collective action, rather than just administration or election campaigning, can also keep members engaged and active.