EXCERPT: “Holloway is right to point out that, under capitalism, formal equality of citizens masks real social inequality.19 But highlighting this contradiction is only a starting point. Ignoring the impact of elections on the popular majority will not loosen or do away with the domination of society by the bankers and corporations. In almost all the countries of Europe and America the mechanisms of bourgeois domination have captured the population. For this reason, it is better to look for ways to emancipate the oppressed from this influence rather than ignoring it.

“With their abstention from elections, the autonomists allow the dominant classes to maneuver without any opposition in the electoral arena. This desertion is particularly counterproductive in Latin America, because here the oppressors have rid themselves of the inept dictatorships and used elections to hide social inequality, to derail rebellions, and to depose presidents.

“To present Lenin as a precursor to Stalinist massacres is a liberal caricature. To interpret any political discipline as inexorably leading to terror would mean that we would have to object to all forms of collective structure, including those adopted by social movements that the autonomists support!”