Opinion
Voting divides, spurs authority
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I didn't vote Nov. 7; in fact, I was adamantly against it. Although I'm an activist on a variety of political and social issues, I advocate radical electoral abstentionism.
Voting is a divisive system. It encourages factionalism and competition, rather than cooperation and addressing people's problems. And when a decision is narrowly reached, the majority must force its will unto the minority so the group moves forward divided, making implementation more difficult.
Formal consensus decision-making is a more egalitarian alternative to voting. Instead of trying to overpower the "other" side through money, organization, or appealing to prejudices and emotion, consensus forces people to talk about the issue of conflict and address other's concerns. When concerns are expressed, they become the concerns of the whole group. You cannot just take a side, then raise your hand or mark your ballot. To influence decisions, you must engage in constructive dialogue.
However, there are more compelling reasons to reject electoralism. It's ridiculous that a mere 13 hours every two years, during which you have the opportunity to select from a few options that you didn't even set, somehow constitutes "democracy" or "rule by the people."
Democratic government is impossible. Voting simply legitimizes the authority of the state. What's called Liberal Democracy was an adaptation, undertaken by expanding late-medieval nation-states, to the rise of guns and the printing press. When the masses of people have access to guns, and can communicate and record what the government is doing, it's not long before they are going to realize they are being exploited, rise up, and overthrow or assassinate their king or lord.
And so, political democracy was invented to give the masses a perception that they are in control, because we get to select from a representative of the ruling class. In other words, we pick who is better at lying to us.
In truth, the ability of the public to actually participate in decision-making is peripheral at best, because of the narrow concentration of corporate power that removes from the public arena most decisions that belong there. Real decision-making power rests in the hands of unaccountable, unelected and unseen managers who make important decisions in secret.
As for specifics on this election, the two referendums were largely meaningless. Gay marriage and civil unions were already outlawed in Wisconsin. The referendum merely enshrined it in the Constitution, making it more difficult to overturn.
While I am against the death penalty for a variety of reasons (it is barbaric, its application is incredibly racist and classist) the number of capital punishment cases are a drop in the bucket of the total injustice of the so-called "criminal justice" system. Yet they receive disproportional media coverage, drawing attention to the racism and injustice of the system.
All the major party candidates were a joke. Doyle and Green were hardly distinguishable from one another, and both were very obviously puppets of corporate power. The same goes for Herb Kohl, who refused to debate the two candidates running against him: Green Party candidate Rae Vogeler and the Republican Lorge, a reactionary who didn't even have the support of his own party.
The attorney general race was framed as "top cop." What? It's top lawyer. Top cop is the head of the FBI, an unelected position. Meanwhile, Tammy Baldwin voted for House Resolution 921 granting unconditional support to Israel's recent bombing of Lebanon. Both she and Dave Magnum were vocal supporters of the United Nations, the means by which liberals rationalize imperialism in the third world.
As for third parties, the Green Party's candidates (Vogeler for U.S. Senate, Nelson Eisman for governor), while well-intentioned, had the wrong priorities. They advocate steeply progressive income taxes, when the real problem is the Federal Reserve's monopoly on the money supply, which generates great disparities in wealth to begin with. While the Libertarian Party is better on the Federal Reserve (but for all the wrong reasons), they discount the other major role of government in economic inequality: corporate personhood and corporate power.
If people want change, we need to look outside the ballot box. African-Americans didn't end segregation through voting. Even after it was declared unconstitutional, they had to organize their communities for a sustained struggle against an entrenched order. Social change can only come from bottom-up struggles, while voting is merely a distraction to maintain the status quo and keep us compliant.
That's why I didn't vote last Tuesday. Instead, I did a banner drop in support of the popular uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico. A solidarity group I'm involved with is planning a benefit for the people of Oaxaca. Such activism will do far more than the act of voting, which only perpetuates a coercive and authoritarian power structure.
Bill Anderson (certainkindoffool@gmail.com) is a Community Activist, Anti-Authoritarian Social Revolutionary and Anarchist philosopher. He is also a former UW student.
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BH haven’t your realized yet that everybody thinks Bill is crazy????
IP hash: 63dac000
who describes themselves as a “Social Revolutionary”? I’m sure Che didn’t have that printed on business cards.
while I agree that the state is the source of all oppression and that voting yields false legitimacy to institutions that exist only to exploit the working class, still… holy crazy.
IP hash: f188e0f0
BH, why the hell did you publish this?
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Finally a moment when Democrats and Republicans can unite… and call this guy a moron.
PS. If you had ever taken a civics class you would know that we live in a Democratic Republic, not a strict democracy. Personally I loved this article; you have UN bashing worthy of John “I am the walrus” Bolton, and extreme leftism worth of straight-jacketed leftist wackos. Kudos for the mix.
IP hash: 9f1e29fb
Bill, you’re not an activist. You’re an idiot.
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Leave it to a socialist to argue against democracy…
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Bill, go to hell.
-every rational student on campus
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LET THIS BE A WARNING TO ALL UW GRADS WHO FAIL TO LEAVE MADISON.
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Maybe Bill can hook us up with some of that home brewed booze from Oaxaca when he is done fantasizing about a society that doesn’t exist anywhere.
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He’s not a socialist, he’s an anarchist… but still, he’s a moron.
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How does a Community Activist, Anti-Authoritarian Social Revolutionary and Anarchist philosopher make a living these days? If the answer is free-market capitalism, I will figuratively crap myself.
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“African-Americans didn't end segregation through voting.”
Yer right, it was white people’s votes that ended it. Just like it was white people fighting and dying that ended slavery in the US.
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we live in a republic, not a democracy.
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Nice rant! you go guy.