Jodi Dean, whose work I respect a lot, won’t vote in the upcoming U.S. elections. The election, she argues, “won’t do anything but secure a false sense of connectedness from those who do vote to the oligarchy that continues to exploit us.” Mark Lance is agreeing with her that voting is the opiate of the masses, but thinks voting can still be useful.
I can’t vote, since I only live and work here; I’m not a citizen. (There are a few places in the U.S. where I could vote locally, though not federally, but the progressive bastion of Burlington, Vermont, isn’t one of them.) But if I could, I would. Here’s why.
Jodi writes:
If I thought we could get some of this [“schools where kids can learn, roads where we can drive, programs that can provide for the less well off”] 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.
Jodi’s right that voting isn’t (usually) as good as marching, mass strikes, and all kinds of other ways to conduct politics. But criminals are no likelier to get into power by Jodi’s vote than they are by her staying home. They get into office in all kinds of ways: by preventing people from voting (happens all the time), by forcing people to vote (worked in the USSR), by encouraging cynicism so that people think their vote is worthless (then the criminals don’t even need a majority; Hitler, for instance, didn’t), by ignoring voting and just taking power directly (easier to do when people don’t vote), etc. It’s easy not to exercise one’s political options, especially if we convince ourselves that it’s useless to try. But that just gives the game away.
Voting is the last step in a long process: figuring out the priorities, talking to people, organizing, communicating, making sure the right people are running for office (or running yourself), supporting them so that they feel connected and indebted to you (and not to the oligarchs who’ll turn them into their criminal accomplices), talking to people you disagree with, etc. Maybe I should underline the last point, since it’s so out-of-synch with politics in the digital era. Talking, and listening, to people you disagree with.
If you haven’t been doing all of that, then you can blame yourself when there’s no one to vote for. If you have been doing that and then they still turn around and do the wrong thing, then you haven’t done enough yet. The system will continue chugging along on its own until it’s changed. Voting alone won’t change it (far from it), but giving other people more votes by your absence won’t change anything. You can rally all you want, but if political representatives feel no need to listen to you, they won’t. You can stage mass strikes, but if no one shows up, it won’t be mass, and it won’t strike anything. It’ll be, well, no different from (in Jodi’s words) standing around and doing nothing.
The most interesting political development that’s emerged in the U.S. in the last few years — interesting in a Lacanian kind of way (because it’s so bizarre and thrown the commentariat into such a tizzy) — is the Tea Party movement. Betcha they’ll vote.
I plan on voting, but I share Jodi’s unease. Particularly because I too have a blue dog representative. When you have one politician who is a corrupt, standard pro-corporate Republican, and the other one is a dem that didn’t vote for health care reform and whose ads talk about how much he hates undocumented migrant workers and how he is far tougher on them then anyone else, erm. How is there is a proper vote in that world? Vote for the guy running ads that you feel are racist, or vote for the crook?
Now, the thing is there are other races, some of which matter a lot (like who wins GA’s state school superintendent), but if I was just going to vote based on the rep race, I would stay home.
I thoroughly share Jodi’s sentiment, thogh I haven’t decided whether I’ll vote yet or not. The democratic party has exercised ansort of political blackmail for the last couple of decades: “vote for us or you’ll get them!”. In the mean time we get the same neoliberal policies. The left needs to seriously begin thing about ways of organizing outsode of party politics, providing genuine alternatives. This won’t happen until we stop behaving like weenie liberals and bowing to this blackmail.
Scu – That’s one of the things I like about US elections – there always seem to be a lot of different things to vote on (which isn’t always the case in other places).
But I can understand the frustration when the big choices are between two bad options, the lesser of two very evil evils. It does often seem like the blackmail you describe, Levi. That’s why I think electoral reform (campaign finance reform, proportional representation and/or instant-runoff voting, etc.) remains one of the most crucial issues, cast aside all too readily in favor of more seemingly “urgent” matters, which is unfortunate.
I think we need to keep reminding ourselves how bad things were a few years ago, and how bad they can still get, and keep a clear eye on who’s been doing good and who hasn’t. There are Dems who haven’t gone along with “the same neoliberal policies” – Kucinich, Feingold, and others in the progressive caucus, for instance – and it’s understandable why they sometimes get convinced to go with the others (otherwise even compromised good policies wouldn’t ever happen). Organizing outside party politics takes a long time, and perhaps the reason why parties don’t deliver much is because Americans haven’t been doing that. But it’s easier done around specific issues – e.g., issues like the Citizens United ruling, where a broad-based (“bipartisan”) consensus could easily have been forged, but where Democrat supporters probably just “trusted” Obama to do the right thing. So he whined about it a little and then gave up, having too many other things on his plate. We could and should have pushed harder. Some people (e.g. in the media) tried, but, in my opinion, didn’t try hard enough to organize across party lines.
American politics are locked in a partisan divide, and I completely understand the psychology that keeps it in force (I’m just as prone to it as anyone), but effective organizing has to be able to get around it, at least to make progress on key issues. There’s some sentiment toward that, but Obama mobilized it in the wrong direction – trying to get Republican politicians’ support when they weren’t willing instead of trying to get people’s support (e.g., on Citizens United, etc) irrespective of what their political leadership was doing. A lot of the left projected too much hope onto Obama – they should have listened to voices of reason (like Chomsky’s) who predicted that not much would change and there’d be disillusion. Disillusion comes from illusion; if you act without illusions, you don’t need to spend years bouncing back & recovering, you just act in the best way possible at any given moment.
Perhaps the left and the right need some collective psychoanalysis… I’m whining now, too, so I should stop. But thanks for your thoughts, which I’m broadly in agreement with. I’m just trying to keep things a little more in motion, I suppose, since the alternatives (depression, cynicism, apathy) seem unhelpful.
I too will vote. But before that here is a response to your question of yore.
Potential non-voters: you like Latour? Shame on you. Watch Van Jones explain why.