Ballot, the Streets-or Both

focuses on V.I. Lenin's approach to electoral politics and the institutions of bourgeois democracy, drawing on Bolshevik debates and Marx and Engels's own writing to show this to be a central feature of their revolutionary strategy.In Lenin's electoral strategy, Nimtz uncovers an important attempt to chart a course between plain opportunism and anarchist rejections of the electoral arena. Instead, he shows, electoral campaigns can be seen as crucial for developing political education and organization and as a key way to measure left forces and communicate with the wider population. As left-wing reformist projects, including the Bernie Sanders campaign in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in the United Kingdom, reassert themselves as a political force, Nimtz's examination of historical debates about electoral politics, the capitalist state, and marxist strategy proves timely and instructive.