The Dead End of Electoralism
As the campaign for the Democratic Party primary begins to gear up democrats
are encouraging activists to campaign and vote for the Democratic Party.
Doing so is a mistake. Electing a democrat will not substantially improve
policy; whomever is elected will do largely the same thing Bush would do
in the same situation. Electoralism weakens the development of a genuine
opposition movement and strengthens the state and ruling class. Real
power lies with the corporate elite and state bureaucracy, not with the
people through elections.
It's unlikely that electing someone other than Bush would lead to a significant
improvement. If Kucinich (or Nader or another genuine left-wing reformer)
got elected and actually implemented everything he says he'd implement (withdrawing
from the WTO, etc.) there would be massive capital flight. He would
then be faced with three choices - let the economy die, nationalize industry,
or undue the reforms he passed. If he does the first option everyone
will hate him, his program will collapse, and the Republicans will win the
next election. He's probably not stupid enough to do that. He's
openly opposed to nationalizing the economy and if he tried it (assuming
congress cooperated and the supreme court didn't just strike it down) there
would probably be a coup like Allende. The most likely course of action,
especially given the spineless nature of Democrats, is the third option.
It is likely that he would scrap the reforms before they were even implemented
once he realized the position it would put him in.
The CIA has manipulated many elections and launched coups against elected
governments in many other countries; they could easily do the same in the
US if necessary. Whoever is elected cannot defy the capitalist class
& state bureaucracy. If a genuinely left-wing government were elected
it would either have to move to the right, becoming just like the other
parties, or be forced out of power. It does not matter who you elect
or what their platform is pre-election, the system is set up so that they
must implement largely the same policies (what the ruling class wants).
We have seen numerous elected leftists move to the right as a result of being
elected over and over again - the Social Democrats, Lula, the Labor Parties,
the German Greens, etc all abandoned their leftist ideas once elected because
of the way the system is set up. If Kucinich were elected he'd do
the same. As such, whomever we elect won't be significantly better
than Bush; he will implement largely the same policies Bush would in the
same circumstances.
During his campaign Bush claimed he would implement a less aggressive
foreign policy - he would not engage in "nation-building" (which is a euphemism
for taking other countries over). One need only look at Iraq to see
how bogus this claim was. Once elected there is no way to insure that
the person elected actually does what he said he would do. They are
isolated from the masses but subjected to intense pressure from the corporate
elite and state bureaucracy. In practice, once in power, they implement
the policies the elite desires regardless of what their pre-election platform
was. Just as electing Bush did not result in a less aggressive foreign
policy (even though he claimed he would implement one) electing a left-wing
democrat will not result in a less aggressive foreign policy (even if that
candidate opposed the Iraq war). Once in power he would be forced to
moderate his programs so that he does basically the same thing Bush would
have done in the same situation. This is inherent in the system.
Had Gore been elected it is likely that we would have ended up with mostly
the same policies that Bush has implemented - look at the right-wing policies
democrats implemented last time they were in power. The Clinton-Gore
team murdered approximately 1.5 million innocent Iraqis through sanctions
& bombings. They were quite aggressive against Iraq. Had
they not laid siege to Iraq for nearly a decade the situation may have been
different so that it would have been much more difficult for Bush to go after
Iraq. The patriot act is a continuation of the trend to restrict our
civil liberties that predates Bush but was accelerated by 9-11. Clinton
passed "anti-terrorism" bills to restrict civil liberties too; Bush is just
following his footsteps. 9-11 is the main reason why the US has gotten
more conservative lately. This would have happened even if Gore had
been in office. Bush's pre-election platform was in favor of less interventionism
than Gore's. If the system can force Bush to go after Iraq then it could
certainly have forced a democrat to do so.
Many democrats have this naive view that everything that is wrong with
society started with Bush and that we must push Bush out at all costs, regardless
of who replaces him. Our goal should be to change policy for the better,
getting Bush out is only good if it helps achieve that goal. Replacing
Bush with Adolf Hitler would obviously be self-defeating. Which particular
person happens to be the figurehead of the oligarchy is less important than
the particular things that oligarchy does. Our problems predate Bush
by quite a bit and are systemic. Bush is merely the latest in a long
line of genocidal imperialist American leaders. There were plenty of
problems before he came to power.
Voting strengthen the state & ruling elite and potentially weakens
revolutionary movements against them. Elections do not facilitate citizen
control over the state; they facilitate state control over the citizens.
Elections create the illusion that 'the people' are in charge when actual
power lies with a tiny elite. They pacify the population. This
is why there were elections in countries like the USSR and Saddam's Iraq
where even the democrats admit that voting doesn't change anything.
They also control the population by getting potentially dangerous (to the
status quo) malcontents involved in 'safe' activity that does not threaten
the status quo. Better to have potential Lenins getting out the vote
for the Democrats than sitting around plotting revolution. They also
bribe potential troublemakers into being more conservative by giving them
paid positions where they have to defend the status quo. Let the most
rebellious attend endless dull committee meetings. This is also why
corporations and the state usually encourage people to vote, even running
ads exhorting the populace to vote and denouncing anyone who doesn't.
It is a means of state control and maintaining the system.
This function of elections as state control is acknowledged by many non-anarchists
outside of the US. In Algeria, for example, when the military dictatorship
last held elections many opposition groups called for a boycott. Most
of these groups weren't radical anti-capitalists - they were either Islamists
or advocates of ordinary bourgeois representative "democracy." They
recognized that the election was just a means of rubber-stamping the system;
real power would stay with the military regardless of who was elected.
Elections are a means of rubber-stamping the system in the US as well; real
power stays with the corporate elite (and state bureaucracy) regardless of
who is elected. Of course, the American system of thought control is
so advanced & effective that merely the thought of doing the same thing
as the Algerian democracy & Islamist movements is heresy and automatically
rejected.
As part of this system of thought control those who don't vote are demonized
by corporate media and other groups as "apathetic" or "lazy." Polls
show that a large percentage of those who do not vote don't do so because
they "don't think it will make a difference" or "all the canidates are the
same" or other similar reasons. This is not apathy, it is a refusal to go
along with a broken system. The ideas behind it may be more crude than my
arguement, but they are there. The stereotype of the apathetic non-voter
is just that - a stereotype. It's not like pulling a lever every four
years is any kind of meaningfull participation or major effort, either. The
promotion of this stereotype keeps the system functioning by making it seem
that low voter turnout reflects something other than widespread disgust with
the system.
Chaining us to the Democratic Party hurts the building of a genuine opposition
movement. Support and subordination to the Democratic Party effectively
means support and subordination to the ruling class, since the dems are part
of the ruling class. Any party that wins the election must become the
servant of the ruling class; if the movement supports that party then it
ends up supporting the ruling class. Obviously a movement that supports
the ruling class is not going to overthrow that class.
Whomever is elected will have to do basically the same thing Bush would
do given the same situation. We can bring about social change
by altering the situation. If certain actions result in large amounts
of unrest or radicalization of large numbers of people the ruling class is
less likely to undertake those actions because it will negatively affect
their interests. By raising the social costs we force the elite to take
different positions. A movement subordinated to the Democratic Party,
and thus to the ruling class, isn't much of a threat to the elites so they
can basically ignore it. It will be less effective than a revolutionary
movement that is independent of the ruling class and seeks to overthrow it.
Such a movement threatens to overthrow them, thus driving elites to implement
reforms so as to prevent it from growing.
An example of this is Britain in the late '40s. The British working
class was extremely militant and there was lots of unrest after WW2.
As a result the ruling class came to the conclusion that if it did not want
to be overthrown (or put up with massive unrest that would seriously undercut
their profit) they would have to implement a welfare state in order to placate
the masses. This was implemented. A few decades later the British
working class was less militant and less rebellious so the ruling class came
to the conclusion that they didn't want a welfare state anymore. In
the '70s the Labor party again won the elections on a leftist platform.
Most of the capitalist class, however, didn't want that and so Britain experienced
large-scale capital flight - crippling the economy. The labor government
was forced out, and the Thatcherites took power. The welfare state
was dismantled. The labor party, after being forced out, realized that
it wouldn't be able to win on it's old leftist platform (even if the majority
of the population supported it) and so moved to the right - leading to the
rise of Tony Blair and New Labor.
Electoral campaigns cannot even achieve the goal reformists desire, movement
to the left within the present system, even if all revolutionaries suddenly
converted to their cause. Whomever we elect will, once in power, do
largely the same thing Bush would do given the same situation. Thus
electoral campaigns are, at best, completely wasted. Actually, they're
worse because they help solidify the strength of the inevitable right-wing
regime and undercut the development of a revolutionary movement that can
force the government/ruling class to the left. The ruling class isn't
going to grant concessions unless your movement threatens them and a movement
thoroughly loyal to the democrats does not. A radical revolutionary
movement, however, does. Thus, electoralism not only undercuts revolutionary
movements but it also undercuts the reformist goal of moving the country to
the left within the present system.
Electoral politics disempowers the grassroots. The aim of electoral
campaigns is to elect someone else into office who will then (hopefully)
implement the things we want them to. Instead of acting for ourselves
we try to get someone else to act for us. Power is centralized into
the hands of a few, the rest are disempowered. Elections empower the
politician, not the voter. Energy put into election campaigns is energy
that is not put into direct action. Once elected politicians do what
the corporate elite wants, not what ordinary people want, resulting in the
demoralization and defeat of the movement that had backed it.
This has ruined more than a few movements. The election of Bill
Clinton had a major negative impact on radical activism in the mid-nineties.
In the 1992 election liberals were running around saying how we all
had to do everything we could to elect Bill Clinton and get the "Fascist"
Bush the first out at all costs. When Clinton got into power he was
no different from his predecessor. He failed to deliver on the progressive
reforms he promised (health care, etc.), assisted many reactionary attacks
and murdered more people than Pol Pot. Activists, however, were disempowered
while giving power to politicians. People were discouraged and activists
started dropping out. The mid-nineties saw a dearth of activism which
allowed the right to advance even further. Putting faith in elected
politicians is just a set-up for failure. The last thing we need is
more illusions in the status quo.
Instead of election campaigning we should be using propaganda (in the
positive sense of the term) to change public opinion and direct action to
directly make changes in policy. Direct action means acting for ourselves
to directly change things, instead of relying on someone else to act for
you (such as a politician) act for yourself. Direct action is any
action which people themselves decides upon and organizes themselves that
is based on their own collective strength and does not rely on getting intermediates
to act for them. Examples include civil disobedience, strikes, and
work slowdowns. This can be contrasted with indirect action in which
you hope someone else will fix the problem for you. Electoral campaigns
are the classic example of indirect action - trying to elect someone else
in the hopes that he'll solve those problems for you.
Election campaigns and voting does not alter the direction of the state.
It does the opposite - it strengthens state power. The belief that
citizens exercise control over the state by voting is like the belief that
Iraq had Al-Qaeda links - quite common and quite false. It makes no
difference who you elect; they will do largely the same thing once in power.
Whatever damage Bush inflicts is roughly the same damage a democrat would
inflict in the same situation. Thus, voting doesn't lessen the "damage
Bush would do" because basically the same damage would occur even if someone
else were elected.