"The bourgeoisie cannot win political power for itself nor give this political power constitutional and legal forms without at the same time putting weapons into the hands of the proletariat. As distinct from the old Estates, distinguished by birth, it must proclaim human rights, as distinct from the guilds, it must proclaim freedom of trade and industry, as distinct from the tutelage of the bureaucracy, it must proclaim freedom and self-government. To be consistent, it must therefore demand universal, direct suffrage, freedom of the press, association and assembly and the suspension of all special laws directed against individual classes of the population. And there is nothing else that the proletariat needs to demand from it. It cannot require that the bourgeoisie should cease to be a bourgeoisie, but it certainly can require that it practices its own principles consistently. But the proletariat will thereby also acquire all the weapons it needs for its ultimate victory. With freedom of the press and the right of assembly and association it will win universal suffrage, and with universal, direct suffrage, in conjunction with the above tools of agitation, it will win everything else.
It is therefore in the interests of the workers to support the bourgeoisie in its struggle against all reactionary elements, as long as it remains true to itself. Every gain which the bourgeoisie extracts from reaction, eventually benefits the working class, if that condition is fulfilled. And the German workers were quite correct in their instinctive appreciation of this. Everywhere, in every German state, they have quite rightly voted for the most radical candidates who had any prospect of getting in."
Stolen from a recent post by Doug Henwood.
So the context in regards to this is within the bounds of the Imperial Prussian state, where the Socialist party was quite literally illegal. From the same article:
then the workers' party would have no choice but, notwithstanding the bourgeoisie, to continue its campaign for bourgeois freedom, freedom of the press and rights of assembly and association which the bourgeoisie had betrayed. Without these freedoms it will be unable to move freely itself; in this struggle it is fighting to establish the environment necessary for its existence, for the air it needs to breathe.
Engels is saying that for the independent worker's party to exist (which he and Marx have stated time and time again should take predence over voting for bourgeoisie parties), they had to first get the bourgeoisie elected to eliminate feudal elements and establish the conditions that would allow such a party to exist. Once those conditions are present, then bye bye voting for the bourgeoisie.
Engels did indeed live to see the day where bourgeoisie freedoms prevailed in Germany, and in his later Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (almost 20 years after the piece linked here) he wrote:
As long as the oppressed class – in our case, therefore, the proletariat – is not yet ripe for its self-liberation, so long will it, in its majority, recognize the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tall of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing. But in the measure in which it matures towards its self-emancipation, in the same measure it constitutes itself as its own party and votes for its own representatives, not those of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state; but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling-point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know where they stand.
Engels was obviously overly-optimistic in thinking that universal suffrage would necessarily bring about the success of a workers' party, which would eliminate the need for workers to support the less reactionary bourgeois politicians. The task is, as we all know especially after the defeat of Corbyn, St Bernard etc. a lot more complicated. In the same way, mutatis mutandis, one ought to electorally oppose Trump to give the working class a more favourable environment "for its existence, for the air it needs to breathe." It sounds goofy to use those lofty words to describe voting for a piece of shit like Biden but it's the strategic choice you're unfortunately confronted with.
Nah, Engels would disagree with you. The difference between Trump and Biden for a worker's movement/worker's party isn't material in the way Engels is talking about. Engels specifically sided with the bourgeoisie in completing their revolution, setting the stage for the working class to finally take control. Once that revolution was complete in Germany with bourgeoisie democracy, he realized that now all voting did was measure the readiness of the workers. One way or another the bourgeoisie would not relinquish their power via voting, so it wasn't worthwhile to focus on it. Hence "Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state; but that is enough." Voting for Biden or voting for Trump isn't going to make a difference, since in Engels' understanding voting after bourgeoisie democracy is already established isn't a vector of change.
EDIT: Also note that the" it" that quote you referenced isn't the working class but the workers party. Bourgeoisie democracy is a necessary precondition for the worker's party to exist, but once it exists, or rather can exist (like the US right now), the time to side with the bourgeoisie is over.
