The CPUSA National Election Conference, May 23, 2026, focused on the coming midterm elections. For that reason, this Marxist IQ is dedicated to the question of elections and their relationship to Marxism and the struggle for socialism.

1. Beginning with the Communist Manifesto, Marxist movements and parties have defined the struggle for democracy” as the struggle for

b. Political rights that would enable the working class to obtain economic and social power.

2. As workers fought to achieve the right to vote in elections in many countries, Karl Marx warned that workers

d. Must struggle to establish labor-led socialist parties so as not to have to choose every few years what party of the ruling capitalist class would govern them.

3. Presidential elections in U.S. history have played a role in accelerating far-reaching changes of a progressive or revolutionary nature. Which of the following elections did not usher in major changes in U.S. politics and society in the interests of labor and the people?

c. Ronald Reagan in 1980.

4. Even by modern capitalist definitions of democracy, which concern “free and fair” elections, the U.S. ranks as among the least democratic among major capitalist industrialized countries because

a. There is no check on the use of money by individuals, corporations, and parties in elections.
b. Restrictions on the right to vote significantly limit voter turnout.
c. Campaigns are usually waged for many months on the basis of “negative advertising” principles, personal attacks, appeals to racism and traditional ethnic and gender biases, exaggerated and/or invented domestic and international scandals and crises.
d. All of the above

5. In concrete conditions of struggle, Lenin said

a. As long as you are unable to disperse the bourgeois parliament and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work inside them, precisely because in them there are still workers who are stupefied by the priests and by the desolateness of village life: otherwise you run the risk of becoming mere babblers.
b. Vote for the most working-class-aligned candidate available, even if they’re not socialist, as a tactical maneuver — not out of illusions in them, but to expose them.
c. Elections are a tool, not an end.
d. All of the above

Your score:
0 wrong: Theoretician. Write an article! Teach a class!!
1 to 2 wrong: Developed Marxist. Form a study group, join the party.
3 to 4 wrong: Developing Marxist. Keep studying and stay in the struggle!
5 wrong: Danger! Deviations possible. Study and then study some more lest you drift into the marsh of opportunism!