Oh my goodness, finally some real radical analysis on Substack. With all the democratic socialist shaming I’ve seen on here about voting, I was starting to think it was the only way to “change anything”.
Amongst many other things I’m sure you’re aware of. Fascist border policies, being a terrible prosecutor in the past. It’s naive as fuck to think it’s going to be better with her in charge.
Speaking from a similar position of contempt for existing institutions, I've always been somewhat skeptical of the notion that voting has any ethical dimension to speak of. I agree that the material consequence of casting a ballot is almost nonexistent, and to me that also suggests it ought to be totally written off as meaningless and devoid of ideological content. If we acknowledge that the whole damn system is materially driven and responds only to bourgeois class-based interests, I don't see why we should accept any part of the civic mythos that accompanies that system. "Support" and "oppose" are actual human terms reflecting a moral stance, and one of the many flaws intrinsic to bourgeois democracy--in the US, at the very least--is that it was never designed to accommodate any human expression outside of amoral self-interest in the first place. As an occasional voter who considers themselves an anarchist, my only motivation to vote is the thought that some number of individual abstentions, when taken in aggregate, could conceivably add up to the difference that swings a particular locality. It's just the Kant-for-babies question of, "What would happen if other people also made this choice?" I don't share the liberals' belief that it's harm-reduction, so much as I think it's such an insignificant choice that the slightest suggestion of an iota of material difference between electoral outcomes is--at least to me--worth the non-effort. If I had a real disagreement, it would be that by feeling obliged to have the voting conversation in the first place, we still give the outward appearance that we DO care about voting or not voting-- obviously enough to bother talking about it. I don't have strong feelings about abstaining on principle, but to my mind, there's something about the encouragement to abstain en masse that tastes like the inverse of the 3rd Party reformists' belief that "if only ENOUGH people. . ."
If we must have the discussion, my inclination is to steer it toward the point that electoral fetishists are actively choosing NOT to reduce harm by refusing to commit their time and energy to developing meaningful alternative institutions. Since that's what's of real consequence, it almost feels like a kind of mistake to position radical work as the alternative to their focus-- rather than as the only real concern, from which they're detracting. "YOU'RE the irresponsible one" feels like it could be a better tactical approach to the subject, but that's just my impression.
Oh my goodness, finally some real radical analysis on Substack. With all the democratic socialist shaming I’ve seen on here about voting, I was starting to think it was the only way to “change anything”.
"socialists" doing free voter turnout for the second in command of an actual genocide should be ashamed. History will absolutely not absolve them.
Amongst many other things I’m sure you’re aware of. Fascist border policies, being a terrible prosecutor in the past. It’s naive as fuck to think it’s going to be better with her in charge.
Speaking from a similar position of contempt for existing institutions, I've always been somewhat skeptical of the notion that voting has any ethical dimension to speak of. I agree that the material consequence of casting a ballot is almost nonexistent, and to me that also suggests it ought to be totally written off as meaningless and devoid of ideological content. If we acknowledge that the whole damn system is materially driven and responds only to bourgeois class-based interests, I don't see why we should accept any part of the civic mythos that accompanies that system. "Support" and "oppose" are actual human terms reflecting a moral stance, and one of the many flaws intrinsic to bourgeois democracy--in the US, at the very least--is that it was never designed to accommodate any human expression outside of amoral self-interest in the first place. As an occasional voter who considers themselves an anarchist, my only motivation to vote is the thought that some number of individual abstentions, when taken in aggregate, could conceivably add up to the difference that swings a particular locality. It's just the Kant-for-babies question of, "What would happen if other people also made this choice?" I don't share the liberals' belief that it's harm-reduction, so much as I think it's such an insignificant choice that the slightest suggestion of an iota of material difference between electoral outcomes is--at least to me--worth the non-effort. If I had a real disagreement, it would be that by feeling obliged to have the voting conversation in the first place, we still give the outward appearance that we DO care about voting or not voting-- obviously enough to bother talking about it. I don't have strong feelings about abstaining on principle, but to my mind, there's something about the encouragement to abstain en masse that tastes like the inverse of the 3rd Party reformists' belief that "if only ENOUGH people. . ."
If we must have the discussion, my inclination is to steer it toward the point that electoral fetishists are actively choosing NOT to reduce harm by refusing to commit their time and energy to developing meaningful alternative institutions. Since that's what's of real consequence, it almost feels like a kind of mistake to position radical work as the alternative to their focus-- rather than as the only real concern, from which they're detracting. "YOU'RE the irresponsible one" feels like it could be a better tactical approach to the subject, but that's just my impression.