As we approach the much-hyped 2018 midterms, I wanted to discuss how I see the role of voting in a broad effort to extinguish the trash fire of American politics. I sort of changed my mind about voting. Not about what it is, but how I’m going to interact with it.
The Lever and the Ratchet
During the time I’ve spent time organizing with my union, we were trained to think of political problems in terms of leverage. We don’t endorse many candidates for office because, quite frankly, we’re going to have to fight most of them after the election anyway.
Voting is an obvious lever. It’s the one we’re given. But it’s a pretty pitiful one that may hide some other characteristics. During elections, some of us are allowed to select a pre-approved representative from the ruling class to explain their policies to us. You might have a populist campaign show up now and then but, when they get into office, who is right there to turn the screws? Capitalists have lobbyists, model legislation, political/private sector connections¹, and the campaign cash politicians must always be raising if they want a shot in hell at reelection.
This weak leverage comes around once every two, four, or six years. It tends to be limited to a yearlong pre-election opportunity to extract promises, none of which will come to pass if they directly conflict with the interests of the 1%. Politicians can have whatever high-minded ideals they want, but once they get in office, the objective circumstance is that our leverage is gone, whereas the capitalists’ remain. More and more, I see liberals at least paying lip service to this. I can’t count the times I’ve heard, “it’s our responsibility to hold them accountable once they’re in office.” What I have never heard is how they intend to do this. Back an internal challenger within the same party? Protest their offices? Vote for them less enthusiastically next time?
Now hold on, I hear some of you saying. Isn’t that exactly what the Tea Party did? And didn’t they, in doing so, remake the GOP into a fighting force for white Christian ethnonationalism? Well, sure. But don’t assume that the system responds in an equivalent fashion to all claims. High school civics has effectively trained us to think of the United States government as an anything machine. Democratic participation in yields political change out. History does not support this analysis. I would counter propose something more along the lines of “Rightist democratic participation yields state violence and wealth consolidation; Leftist democratic participation yields FBI intervention.” The United States is not a democracy. If that’s not obvious to you yet, I’ve got a few miles of pipe in Standing Rock for sale.
Heeling Empires
What we are looking at is an increasingly unstable empire whose rulers are looking for ways to keep control as soft power fails. Left wing populism demands popular control of institutions and means of production. Right wing populism demands a knee in the back of the scapegoat(s) du jour. The latter is cheap, the former is an existential threat to the ruling class. Which one do you think they’ll put on the ballot?
But let’s suppose I’m wrong. Let’s suppose organizing around elections yields a sizeable Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic president by 2020. Let’s say these same organizers win the uphill battle against the DNC’s internal, anti-democratic bylaws and starts replacing center right politicians with leftists through primary challenges. Let’s say these leftists manage to generate enough internal party discipline to start passing leftist legislation. Let’s say this legislation actually makes it past a deeply conservative judiciary and becomes law. Now what? We could speculate. Or we could look at Europe, where this has actually happened. And the prognosis is not good.
Social democratic parties have held power in many countries throughout Europe, sometimes for lengthy periods. Greece, Spain, Sweden, France, Finland…the list goes on. And is any single country on that list free of corrosive right wing nationalism? Is any single one of them successfully bucking the global capitalist order, reversing austerity, expanding popular control of institutions and worker control of production, or adequately addressing climate change? Not as far as I can see. Which begs the question: why the fuck not?
Because they can’t.
Because government is not an anything machine. Because change comes from leverage — power — not some reverent fantasy of civic participation.
Ask yourself: if leftist agitators within the Democratic party win the almost unbelievably improbable uphill battle to take control of the government, do you believe the United States regulatory apparatus even has the ability to constrain a trillion dollar company like Amazon? Let’s say Bill Gates, Jeff Ellison, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, and Sheldon Adelson decide they don’t like your redistributionist agenda for some reason. Do you figure they might have some leverage to undermine you? Maybe use some of their newspapers, TV channels, radio stations, and social media sites to convince people that your ideas are evil and dangerous? Do you think, if they wanted to, they could put a tourniquet on the economy a year out from the elections and forever associate Democratic socialism with economic stagnation? But they would never do that, right? They’d just let you take their money.
That’s the capitalists. What about the security state? The NSA, the FBI, the CIA, DHS? What about the military? What about all these branches of government that have seen bipartisan support and swelling budgets since their establishment without even a pretense of public oversight? Do you think they might have accumulated some leverage? Do you think they’re neutral?
It’s a lot to grapple with. And you’ve got about 10 years to get it done.
Petting the Sheepdog
Okay, ya got me! I’m registered! I’m going to vote². In the (increasingly short) long term, I think it’ll all wash out the same. The innumerable feedback loops extending from the process of climate change are almost certainly going to extinguish human civilization within my lifetime. If I could envision a fantasy scenario of where I’d like to be when things are going to shit, a country with a stable leftist government and a massive anti-authoritarian mutual aid/street movement sounds relatively cozy. But realistically, I think we’re going the opposite direction; see: Poland, Hungary, Austria, Brazil, the U.S., Egypt, etc.
I worry about how electoralism hoovers up energy and resources that could have been directed to building leverage that will outlast an election cycle. I worry about what happens when people pin their hopes on the ballot and then are left feeling disheartened and betrayed when nothing comes from it (again). But to be totally fair, my ideas on What To Do are also 20th century anachronisms.³ I feel like we’ve been in the throw-shit-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks phase for a while now. I used to not vote because it doesn’t matter. Now I do vote because it doesn’t matter. Well, except to you. It matters to you. And I like you. So I’ll do it if it makes you feel better.
Maybe in return you could see your way to publicly and materially supporting organizations and individuals taking militant direct action⁴, even and especially the “uncivil” ones. If we’re going to beat back the tides, we just might need each other.
¹Necessary to get things done and handy for finding cushy, highly paid consultancy positions after you get out of office. ty for your service!
²Offer valid in selected races (get fucked JB Pritzker)
³join a union, buy guns, scream at nazis in public, stop eating animals
⁴actually I would settle for liberals just no longer actively undermining these groups. that’d be sick, thanks in advance!
SONS OF THE MIDWESTERN DARKNESS 