Would Marx have supported voting for (or otherwise supporting) centre left political parties?

ChatGPT said:

Short answer:
Sometimes yes, sometimes no — and always for strictly strategic, not principled, reasons.
Marx never endorsed centre-left politics as a matter of conviction, but he did at times support voting for or tactically aligning with non-revolutionary parties when it advanced working-class organization or exposed contradictions within bourgeois politics.

Below is the clearest, historically grounded account without romanticising or simplifying him.

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1. Marx’s general position: absolute distrust of liberal or centre-left parties

Marx consistently argued that:

• Liberal, social-liberal, and centre-left parties represent fractions of capital,

• They may temporarily conflict with the aristocracy or conservative blocks,

• But they ultimately uphold the capitalist state and property relations.

He repeatedly criticised what he called "bourgeois radicals", “democrats,” and “progressives” in the 1840s–1870s for:

• co-opting workers,

• demobilising movements,

• seeking reforms that stabilize capitalism.

So Marx would not have offered “support” in the sense of political endorsement, identity, or belief.

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2. But Marx did endorse tactical electoral behaviour—sometimes even alliances

This part is often forgotten.

Examples:

(a) 1850s–60s:

Marx and Engels explicitly supported tactical alliances between workers and radical-democratic parties when:

• the working class lacked its own independent party,

• or when such alliances could sharpen contradictions between ruling classes.

This is not unlike Lenin’s later “support the liberals as a rope supports the hanged man” — but Marx is earlier and less dramatic.

(b) The First International (1864–1872):

Marx sometimes advised trade unions and worker groups to support the most democratic bourgeois faction if doing so would:

• secure specific political freedoms that the working class needed (press, assembly, union rights),

• weaken reactionary forces,

• open space for proletarian organization.

This is very much in line with his maxim:

“Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs.”

In several letters, Marx told socialists to vote for candidates who would advance the legal and institutional conditions for class struggle, even if those candidates were bourgeois.

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3. But Marx also warned that supporting these parties can easily become corruption

His biggest fear was absorption into bourgeois politics.

He criticised the German Social Democrats in the 1870s for slipping into:

• parliamentary cretinism,

• reformism dressed as revolution,

• opportunistic adaptation to liberal norms.

Marx also criticised workers’ parties that “tail” liberal governments, arguing this:

“makes the proletariat a mere appendage of the bourgeoisie.”

If he saw today’s centre-left (social democrats, progressives, moderates), he would view most of them as:

• capitalist managers,

• technocrats of inequality,

• buffers against proletarian autonomy.

He would oppose supporting them uncritically, permanently, or as a matter of identity.

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4. The criterion Marx would use today

Marx’s framework would lead him to ask:

Does supporting this centre-left party strengthen or weaken working-class power as an independent force?

He would support centre-left candidates only if:

• they expand democratic conditions for class organization,

• block a materially more reactionary faction,

• or open a political fissure that can be exploited by workers’ movements.

He would not support them if:

• the working class already has an autonomous party,

• the centre-left is demobilising radical movements,

• or if supporting them reinforces illusions about the state as a neutral instrument.

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5. So the real answer is paradoxical

Marx is neither:

• the revolutionary purist who says “never vote for bourgeois parties”,

• nor the pragmatic reformist who says “support the lesser evil”.

His stance is destituent in spirit but instrumentally opportunistic:

• Never let bourgeois parties define the horizon.

• But use them as temporary levers when it materially advances the working class’s capacity to act.