The Dead End of Electoralism
August 13, 2003
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. It 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 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. That is why there were elections in countries like the U.S.S.R. and Saddam's Iraq where even the Democrats admit that voting didn’t change anything. Elections 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. Elections 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.
The 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 do so because they "don't think it will make a difference" or "all the candidates are the same" or other similar reasons. This is not apathy, it is a refusal to go along with a broken system. 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 meaningful 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 direct action to directly make changes in policy. Direct action means acting for ourselves to directly change things, instead of relying on someone else (such as a politician) to act for you, 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.