Nowhere in that does it really explain why voting is counter productive. Voting is a tool, and a very cheap one. It only costs at most an hour once every 3 years and requiring knowledge of current events and politics, which is stuff you will know about anyway if you’re involved in any kind of direct action.
The only potential argument there is the psychological one, where people are lead to think voting is enough to do their part, but I don’t think that’s a strong enough argument to pass up choosing your opposition. As shit as Labour is, National and Act are worse, and by any logic other than accellerationism (which is a terrible idea of you care about the human cost), Labour will make fighting capitalism that little bit easier.
I understand not running for office. That article gives good reasons that actually joining politics is a wasted effort. It takes a lot of time and money, and almost always ends up making people slide towards the “reasonable politician”, not the radical that they promised to be.
Mate, I read the whole thing. The only claim I saw as to why voting is counter productive is that “voting convinces people that they’ve done all they need to” idea, which I think is flawed. All the other arguments are talking about voting having low impact and it can’t fundamentally change things.
Please, if there is another part that I missed, tell me what it is, whether that’s something backing up the complacency claim or another claim entirely. I’d love to be proven wrong here.
We argue that electoralism ensures that a statist perspective becomes dominant. Everything is seen in terms of state intervention and following the decisions of the leaders, which has always proved deadly to encouraging a spirit of revolt, self-management and self-help – the very keys to creating change in a society.
OK maybe I read that wrong. The way I interpreted it, I read “electoralism” as using voting as a primary tool. Using that definition, I agree with that paragraph. Voting alone is nowhere near enough to produce real change.
But if the definition of “electoralism” is using voting in addition to direct action, I don’t think that paragraph gives much reasoning behind itself. It’s a good statement, but it needs more backing it up
Oh hey, you’re the guy in the meme
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aotearoa-workers-solidarity-movement-why-we-don-t-vote
Nowhere in that does it really explain why voting is counter productive. Voting is a tool, and a very cheap one. It only costs at most an hour once every 3 years and requiring knowledge of current events and politics, which is stuff you will know about anyway if you’re involved in any kind of direct action.
The only potential argument there is the psychological one, where people are lead to think voting is enough to do their part, but I don’t think that’s a strong enough argument to pass up choosing your opposition. As shit as Labour is, National and Act are worse, and by any logic other than accellerationism (which is a terrible idea of you care about the human cost), Labour will make fighting capitalism that little bit easier.
I understand not running for office. That article gives good reasons that actually joining politics is a wasted effort. It takes a lot of time and money, and almost always ends up making people slide towards the “reasonable politician”, not the radical that they promised to be.
Basically 1 billion dollars for 2022-2023 alone in Australia
https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Federal_Elections/cost-of-elections.htm
“Very cheap” in terms of time, effort, money, and opportunity cost for each individual involved
You clearly didn’t read past the first paragraph then
Mate, I read the whole thing. The only claim I saw as to why voting is counter productive is that “voting convinces people that they’ve done all they need to” idea, which I think is flawed. All the other arguments are talking about voting having low impact and it can’t fundamentally change things.
Please, if there is another part that I missed, tell me what it is, whether that’s something backing up the complacency claim or another claim entirely. I’d love to be proven wrong here.
It is literally in paragraph 2
We argue that electoralism ensures that a statist perspective becomes dominant. Everything is seen in terms of state intervention and following the decisions of the leaders, which has always proved deadly to encouraging a spirit of revolt, self-management and self-help – the very keys to creating change in a society.
OK maybe I read that wrong. The way I interpreted it, I read “electoralism” as using voting as a primary tool. Using that definition, I agree with that paragraph. Voting alone is nowhere near enough to produce real change.
But if the definition of “electoralism” is using voting in addition to direct action, I don’t think that paragraph gives much reasoning behind itself. It’s a good statement, but it needs more backing it up