Over at I Cite, Jodi Dean has written the following righteous rant:
I’m going to be Istanbul next week, so I won’t be here to vote. I’m not going to fill out an absentee ballot, though. I’m not voting. Deliberately. The election won’t do anything but secure a false sense of connectedness from those who do vote to the oligarchy that continues to exploit us.
I’m not saying voting doesn’t matter. It does–to the pundits who want to talk about it, the networks who amp their ratings through it, the ad makers who collect the money poured in to the campaigns, the corps with enough money to buy their members of congress (who seem to get more expensive the more worthless they become).
Voting matters to all those circulating facebook injunctions to vote, telling us to tell our students to vote. Really? We should lie to them and try to get them to feel that this is change they can believe in? That their choices between fascists, oligarchs, and idiots are choices about what’s best for the country? No.
The guy running for re-election in my district is a bad guy blue dog. He’s running against a far right nut job. Blue dogs are already hurting the Democrats. No surprise there–they are basically Republicans who caucus with Democrats in order to screw them. I’m not going to hold my nose and vote for him this time. I prefer not to vote at all. No candidate for me, no vote. The dominant choices for governor are Andrew Cuomo and a nut job–the homophobe who emails people porn. Cuomo is pledging more tax cuts. Really? Like that will help NY schools and strapped communities? What about dealing with extreme inequality of wealth in the state? I bet a tax increase of five or ten percent won’t even be felt by some of the hedge fund guys down on Wall Street. But their tax dollars would certainly help the rest of us–in the form of schools where kids can learn, roads where we can drive, programs that can provide for the less well off.
If I thought we could get some of this by voting, I’d vote. I’ve given voting quite a few chances, though, and, get this, things are only getting worse. The more we vote, the worse it gets. Now this could be a correlation rather than causation. But if voting is what has gotten the criminals into office and given them the chance to plunder and exploit, then why should we think that voting will do something different?
Doing nothing would be better–especially if it became a mass strike.
Standing around would be better–especially if it became a rally or a march.
I thoroughly share Jodi’s sentiment, though I haven’t decided whether I’ll vote yet or not. The democratic party has exercised a sort of political blackmail for the last couple of decades: “vote for us or you’ll get them!”. In the meantime we get the same neo-liberal policies. We’re like Charlie Brown playing football with Lucy, yet when this is pointed out we get the same old lectures about the evil other side, encouraging us to try and kick the ball again when we know very well that our alleged side will proceed to enable and legitimate the evil other side. It’s madness. Meanwhile Rome burns. The left needs to seriously begin thing about ways of organizing outside of party politics, providing genuine alternatives. This won’t happen until we stop behaving like weenie liberals and bowing to this blackmail. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who argues “vote for the democrats or else you’ll get them” is immediately an apologist for these policies and therefore suspect. Until the democratic party illustrates a genuine willingness to take on their corporate overlords, they should be thought as little more than a more moderate version of the ultra-rightest, neo-liberal status quo. And so long as we keep eating the crumbs they throw our way none of this will change. Arguments from incrementalism and the difficulty of change do not pass muster. So long as you continually bow to these forces you will only push things further in the neo-liberal direction (as if they could get any further, for Christ’s sake, even Nixon was to the left of Obama). Incrementalism is just an excuse for continuing to champion corporate interests over the interests of the planet and the vast majority of people.
October 28, 2010 at 5:34 am
I will vote. Maybe because I live in Cali and have some actual choices–and those propositions on the ballot have real effects on my life (like the dreaded Prop 13). I believe that Reagan died in October 2008 when Lehmann tanked, but his zombies still walk the Earth and it will be some time before they are all put to rest. I believe this is the reason Obama appears right of Nixon. Though as a beneficiary of the NHS (born in London) I have to say, thank heavens we at least have Swiss type health care coming our way–really, I mean it. It’s not the NHS by a long chalk. But even achieving that in the face of the army of Reaganzombies was something.
October 28, 2010 at 5:39 am
I’ve gotta say, “I’m going to be Istanbul next week, so I won’t be here to vote” is about the least proletarian way of starting such a post I could think of.
A mass strike might be better. Protesting at the polls instead of voting at them might be better, too. But just disengaging and flying to Istanbul is not going to make either of those happen.
October 28, 2010 at 3:44 pm
This is the year I, too, have given up on incrementalism, the belief that choosing the lesser evil paves the way to gradual improvement, and in an imperfect world, the lesser of evils makes some sense if fewer people suffer from the consequences.
If there was ever a time when these were valid arguments, rather than rationalizations, that time has long passed. The wars for economic advantage continue to kill and destroy lives beyond counting (they literally–aren’t counted, or accounted for by the Corpratocracy)–no matter the party in power. The poor and powerless are swept out of sight in our neighborhoods–as though they didn’t exist.
The Democratic Party is the enabler in a dissfunctional relationship, promising token measure meant, not to solve problems, but to relieve political pressure on the endlessly rapacious partner–both are bought and paid for servants of the oligarchy and the corporate machinery of power.
I cast my first vote 49 years ago, and have not missed an election since. I’ve worked at the polls in more elections past than I can remember, knocked on doors, made phone calls, worked 18 hour days, GOTV.
No more.
The system is broke. Wire and duck tape repairs only postpone the inevitable and likely make the impending collapse even worse.
I hear knocking on my neighbors door… Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m thinking… well, we have one thing in common this year. I’m not voting either.
October 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Jacob,
It’s tremendously demoralizing and I haven’t been able to figure out how to handle it. In addition to the assault on the working and middle class that you mention, there’s also the environment. There is no incremental solution to the environmental problems we’re facing. We either make serious changes or everything falls apart. What’s really frightening is the parallels to the 1930s. Just as we had dark passions arising then as a result of unfettered market policies, we see exactly the same patterns unfolding here as a result of the erosion of market restraints that have intensified since Reagan. If the economy seriously tanks either due to energy scarcity, environmental transformation that effects agriculture and everything else, or the dynamics we’ve already witnessed over the last few years things won’t be pretty.
October 28, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Been having some very interesting conversations with Mark Crispin Miller lately about massive systematic irregularities in what he calls our “faith-based voting system.” He thinks these irregularities are tied up with straight-up election theft on the part of the Republicans–not just in presidential elections (i.e. Bush), but for congress and at state and local levels. He’s having a hard time getting anybody in the MSM to even talk about it.
One reason to vote: contributing to a statistical difference between exit polls and the reported results can help bring attention to this issue, which signals a fairly serious crisis of democracy in this country.
October 28, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Seems to me that arguments against voting are primarily being upset that the other voters don’t agree with you. Which is fine of course. But it just suggests that persuasion of voters is as important if not more important than voting.
Interestingly I hear nearly identical rhetoric from folks on the right who are equally disenchanted with the Republcan party. (Indeed the tea partiers, whose size is greatly exaggerated by the media I’m convinced, are a manifestation of this)
October 28, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Not really Clark. The polls show voters agree on a variety of issues pertaining to jealthcare, environment, the economy, etc, but elected officials bow to corporate interests rather than the will of the people. We don’t have a democracy but an oligarchy.
October 29, 2010 at 1:59 am
Levi,
I really do agree with you that the vote is a form of state coercion and blackmail. That shrill cry from the Democrats – ‘vote for us or you’ll get them!’ – is what Badiou calls ‘the fear of fear’, which is all the liberal-Left establishment embodies, the fear of what will come of their way of ruling rather than the violence of the conditions of rule themselves. I’d imagine Jodi Dean is being at least partly influenced by this. I probably wouldn’t vote in this election if I were American as well but in some respects I think it misses the point. If you consider the Tea Party and the Republicans your sworn enemies, you should vote in this election, though not necessarily for the Democrats. The problem is, in a way, the voluntary vote. Living in a country where the vote is compulsory (or showing up at the ballot station is: you can get your name marked off and then elect not to vote), doesn’t generate an immensely Leftist polity or anything – though I guess Australia must look highly Leftist in the Right-wing runaway that is America – but, far from the height of coercion, a it does put a firm end to things like deliberate voter disenfranchisement and the rampanyt gerrymandering that is turning American politics into a kind of generalized Jim Crow. Mandatory voting also really creates the possibility of third parties, I think – such as our Green Party here, which is emerging as a real force to be reckoned with in our politics (though naturally the two major parties are doing all they can to crush its further advance). Of course, that doesn’t in and of itself resolve the inherent corruption that lies in the vote as a sort of generic endorsement of the capitalis state in whatever way shape or form. In that sense, the vote itself is undemocratic. But for not voting to be more than just an apolitical act, and thus inherently liberal, abjuring a contract based on your right to exercise an individual autonomy, I think the decision not to vote needs to be attached to agitation for an absolutely universal system of voting. I can’t help but think there would be more options on the table today – especially in a nation as given to activism, self-representation and radical experimentalism as America – if there were both the obligation to vote and the possibility for more actionable options than the Left being forced into withdrawal because it can’t condone the sick politics of the only supposedly Left option it has. Maybe this could comprise a key democratic demand for a poll protest, I don’t know: no election has been held to all Americans have voted in it. Again, a universal vote does not deliver an inherently Leftist outcome: that would assume that the vote somehow doesn’t represent above all the state-form in which it takes place. But if the vote is a platform of power, its universalization can be thought of as a type of tactic toward the disaggregation of the two-party political system. The Tea Party, for instance, avers its disenchantment with Republican Party politics but you can bet your last dollar will be there on election day voting for them anyhow. It uses its independence of the vote as a form of activism for the vote. It’s not because they’re trapped and without a choice, so have to vote against their hearts, that they clamor on about their disenchantment, but because the vote is one half of their power: they can only agitate for a further acceleration of Right establishmentarianism, on the one hand, by sandbagging the Right-wing status quo with the other.
October 29, 2010 at 2:06 am
Just to clarify, when I say – “If you consider the Tea Party and the Republicans your sworn enemies, you should vote in this election, though not necessarily for the Democrats” – I mean that the reason for voting shouldn’t really be decided on what the Democrats say – vote for us or you’ll get them! – than on a personal decision to vote down the Republicans and the Tea Party. That doesn’t necessarily mean making the compromising strategic choice of voting Democrat which is about the only way to keep them out of power in practice. I certainly couldn’t given the platform the Democrats are overwhelmingly running on: I hear the racist advertising in the Georgia campaign, for instance, has been quite astonishing. Rather, it’s more about the decision to register one’s refusal to endorse the events that are leading to the re-establishment of the Right, whether it has any impact on that outcome or not. Which is why I think voting does matter even if you don’t vote for the ‘realist’ choice of the Democrats.
October 29, 2010 at 2:51 am
Levi’s point about agreement is important–that’s the unbearable part of the election; the Democrats should be using this agreement but instead they bow to their corporate overlords.
Anon–I’m going to Istanbul to/for work. It’s neither a retreat nor a disengagement (and, I think I make it clear in my post that no vote is not disengagement). Will my trip make strikes etc happen? No. It could be a drop in a flow that pushes one way rather than another, though. I’ll be talking about the Communist Horizon. The talk is posted on my blog. I’m happy that someone already translated a bit of into Spanish. Again, it’s not a big thing, but it’s a little part that builds and allies with others.
Even though my description suggests increments, I agree with Levi’s critique of incrementalism right now and am against the incrementalism of elections.
October 29, 2010 at 10:46 am
And Citizens United is the nail in the coffin.
October 29, 2010 at 2:08 pm
[...] our system is that it is not possible to maintain your dignity. This is largely how I read Jodi or Levi’s posts, as an attempt to maintain some shred of decency in a bargain that is wired to screw us in advance [...]
October 29, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Like David, I also live in Australia, where the vote is compulsory. I didn’t vote in either of the last two general elections, and I haven’t been fined, although I think I am probably liable to be. Having the vote is of course hugely preferable to not having the vote. But elections do not democracy make. Capitalism makes a monkey out of democracy. It’s like TV programming: the customer is not the viewer, but the advertiser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition
October 29, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Totally sympathize with how you feel. I really felt that way in 2000, and we all remember that. If it’s lesser of two evils I think it is “far lesser.”
October 29, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Spoil your ballot paper? I don’t know about over there but over this side of the pond they have to count them.
October 29, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Indeed. There is a qualitative difference between the parties, which considered within a neoliberal framework is closer that it might be to mainstream commentators, but it nonetheless real. Tim’s example of heath care is one example and there are numerous others with regard to foreign policy, particularly with regard to the Middle East.
Much the same in the UK election recently. The Tories planned to and are gutting public services in the biggest cuts in living memory which will, among other things, push the poor out of London in a remarkable move of social cleansing. Labour planned to cut slightly less, but it still would have been slightly less and there are members in the party who remain uncommitted capitalist realism, in contrast to the Conservatives who are based on this principle and that of property. There is a slight difference, but it is the difference, say, between thousands being thrown into unemployment and millions. This is an important difference in terms of human suffering. I had numerous arguments with anarchist friends to this effect and they just didn’t get it – beautiful soulism and the politics of the vague boycott won out.
October 29, 2010 at 8:11 pm
PS – It’s also somewhat contradictory. Voting does nothing, but not voting, boycotting it, is a political act. If it does nothing, you might as well vote considering how minimal it is, just in case as it isn’t doing positive harm!
October 30, 2010 at 10:33 am
Jodi: Maybe it’s a difference in basic assumptions. I’m no internationalist, and think internationalism is mostly a pipe dream, though anti-nationalism is a fine goal. When I’m working in local communities, especially coalitions of students, professors, and workers, I find the jet-setting academic lifestyle of conference-going is more often an impediment than a help. It’s very difficult to build locally rooted cross-cultural understanding between workers and academics if the academics live very different lifestyles than workers do. To most workers, the typical academic lifestyle feels bourgeois, even if the academics are themselves formally workers (they do earn a living selling their labor for a paycheck). They’re workers in the same way that a corporate lawyer is formally a worker; but few in the working class feel much kinship or solidarity with the Goldman Sachs lawyers on their Honolulu retreat, even though they’re also workers. Academics aren’t that far gone, but solidarity is still hard to build due to huge cultural differences, many of which feel like they boil down to academics living a lifestyle that feels bourgeois from a working-class perspective, whether or not that’s a fair feeling.
October 31, 2010 at 12:37 am
Before you don’t vote, watch Van Jones break it down, Latour-style.
http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2010/10/before-you-dont-vote.html
October 31, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Two of the oligarchs running in CA — for gov and senate — did not vote. They do not believe democracy is relevant unless they are running it undemocratically. A non-vote looks just like theirs or that of the apathetic. Cast a blank or just vote on propositions or for a 3rd oparty. I have begun to vote Green because I think the 2 party system is dead.
November 2, 2010 at 2:44 am
Although this is slightly irrelevant to practical matters, I think Latour is correct to note that contempt for politicians is ubiquitous in academic circles. (I fit in with this characterization myself). For Latour, it goes without saying, all reality is political—a ‘parliament of things’ or a ‘democratic politics of things’. As such, the politician is representative of all actants: entities must always mediate between the strife of conflicting forces. That is to say the politician, like all actors, must make compromises and balance multiple factors. Doubtless, Latour’s politics is not solely human-related, but human politics nonetheless involve assembling chains of actors by the laborious work of translation. In this sense, Latour is disappointed in the proclivity of philosophers to outright reject politicians for their indecent and messy negotiating work.
My point is not to defend the ‘gated politics’ of the US but rather to see in what way we might conceive of a practical Latourian political involvement. Or is it just theoretical? Seemingly not, given that Latour is the philosopher of ultra-concrete entities. I, however, do not know how this translates into practice. I have only read Harman’s Prince of Networks and Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, so perhaps it is already articulated elsewhere that I am not aware of.