Against voting
As I was invited, and politely but pointedly refused, to join the “maybe or maybe not breakaway faction” of the Libertarian Party, the Boston Tea Party, the aftermath of their initial organizational convention seems like a good opportunity to review my stance against libertarian/anarchist voting and involvement in political parties. While fellow Movement of the Libertarian Left stalwart Wally Conger also recently published a highly recommended anti-voting recap post on his blog, I’d like to offer my own specific take.
There are a number of radical libertarian arguments against voting, but I also believe that critical examination of one’s own positions with ruthlessly logical precision is demanded if one’s aim is truth and understanding. Reliance on weak arguments can lead to confusion and intellectual drift. As an example, note carefully J. Neil Schulman. He’s an absolutely great science fiction writer. He is also a man who has given countless hours of his own life working to spread libertarian ideas — most notably and memorably, in my opinion, with his novel of agorist revolution, “Alongside Night“. He has, over time though, abandoned the agorist tendency to avoid and denounce voting — going so far over to the dark side as to stump for Bush in 2004! His pro-voting rationale:
I was a non-voter from 1975 to 1990, registering to vote in 1991 after years of political abstinence on the proposition that if voting was participating in State violence, and I could carry a gun to use in violent self-defense if necessary, then I could cast a ballot in self-defense if necessary.
Schulman’s point here is correct, but only as far as it goes. In one relatively short sentence, he sets up a weak argument against voting and knocks it down, taking it for granted that it is the principal libertarian argument against voting. He ought to know better.
Schulman is, theoretically, quite correct that while voting may philosophically qualify as violence, it is not necessarily aggressive violence but could instead be considered defensive violence. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine if voting for Bush would qualify. My own opinions are well known.
My reply to Schulman and other voting libertarians is this…
The principle reason not to vote is that, by voting and electoral reformist approaches generally, you are sabotaging and confusing your own message. Real libertarians are free-market oriented anarchists. We seek, in the words of Karl Hess, “The Death of Politics“. The simple fact remains that unless you are getting rid of the State completely, there will be winners and losers in the form of beneficiaries and victims of the remaining statist aggression. While that may not be a direct ethical issue, it is a strategic blunder that puts the end of statist banditry further off by making unneccessary enemies within the realm of electoral politics. Those enemies don’t have to be your enemies outside of the context of electoral reformism. A stateless society really does have something to offer almost everyone as a benefit, apart from the worst of the most parasitic elite of the political class — the so-called “Higher Circles” or “Power Elite”.
Let me put it this way…
It is absolutely correct that, if one’s choices have been constrained by coercion to supposedly either having one’s head cut off or one’s finger cut off it is objectively better to only lose one’s finger. The problem is that by seeking to become the wielder of the knife against all one’s fellows, one confuses and brings into disrepute your arguments for not cutting anything off.
Tom Knapp has compared politics to a drug he is not yet ready to give up his addiction to. I believe a better comparison might be to a cult — the idolatrous and bloodthirsty cult of the state, built on the “rock” of superstition. In a world in which public discourse is dominated by the mythology of this cult, you’re either an atheist or you’re not. You’re not going to effectively spread atheism by promoting the Church of Atheism. That dog won’t hunt, and neither will a “libertarian” political party.
To my friends and comrades in the struggle for liberty, I ask you to please not take this as condemnation or an assertion of moral superiority on my part. Far from it. It is my mea culpa.
I’ve spent years and years of my life trying to “build” a libertarian political party and consequently soft-pedaled, watered down and generally mangled the libertarian message — though with generally more principled results than some.
I’ve even gone so far as to run for political office and win, holding a city council seat in North Kansas City, Missouri from 1996 to 1998 and running for higher office after that.
I browbeat friends who were not registered to vote into registering to vote and voting. I should have left them alone. One man’s apathy is another man’s boycott.
I was wrong. Konkin was right. I’m sorry.
The fact also remains that a lot of well-intentioned libertarians who aspire toward principled behavior, including some who see themselves as more Left than Right, remain attached to counter-productive electoral reformist strategies. As I’ve said before, if we (agorists and radical left-libertarians generally) are the new Reds, there will be shades of pink. Such is the nature of the battle of ideas. There will be a spectrum of incomplete acceptance.
Political libertarians must be engaged. I do recommend participating in discussions with them on libertarian email lists and community sites such as Hammer of Truth and Liberty for America. Just as Marxists infiltrated and attempted to subvert more moderate left parties, some left libertarians with secretly revolutionary sympathies might prudently seek camouflage within all sorts of political parties. Such efforts may or may not be already under way. I’ll never tell.
It is my own opinion, though, that publishing, loudly proclaiming and applying our ideas is absolutely necessary. Some paths are hard. Look within to find the strength to choose them.
Share This
Nice post. Of course I’ve thought about these issues too. Just some quick thoughts:
I am pretty sure that I will never vote for anyone. I’d probably have to reconsider under the following two circumstances:
-If there were a candidate who said that his only goal is to abolish the State. I would reconsider it although it would be pointless for me to vote because if such a person could get a lot of votes, we could sure as hell achive anarchy through agorist means.
-If there were a candidate like Hitler who had a good chance of winning. I would probably vote against that person. But then again, if there were such a candidate, everything would be lost already.
Apart from that, I will never waste my time in party politics.
(The Swiss system is slightly different but that’s just the simple version of it.)
What I will do, however, is engage in the referendums, which are put to a vote quite frequently in Switzerland. I think a real direct democracy is not really distinguishable from a libertarian society. Of course, Switzerland is by no means a real direct democracy. But as long as I can directly alter the course the politics here are taking, I will do that. I will always vote “More Liberty - Yes” and “Less Liberty - No”. I don’t see how that’s counterproductive in any sense. To refuse to vote on getting your finger cut off is not the same as saying that you don’t agree with any aggression towards yourself. So why not vote on getting your finger cut off instead of getting your head cut off? My problems with voting for a politician is not a moral one but a pragmatic one. I can’t delegate my needs and wants to anybody, so I would only vote for someone who promised to leave me alone. But I can express my actual needs and wants in a referendum.
What do you think about referendums?
Your second-to-last paragraph does not make much sense.
Brad, I announced my intentions to no longer vote in a post in my blog a couple of weeks ago. The post is here.
It’s a little bit rambling, as fits my blog’s name, but the gist is that voting is pointless. An organization as large as the US central government is ungovernable in any meaningful sense. Even if we could get a LP member elected President*, I don’t think things would change much. It would take every member of the federal government to become libertatian, an unlikely prospect. Even if that were possible, having that many libertarians around would make political office unnecessary.
I believe that you and I are in agreement that what we need to do is to proclaim our message and demonstrate that it is truly possible to live free.
-Presto
———————–
*This is very unlikely given the current campaign finance system, and legal/structural issues that favor the current dominant parties.
Matt,
I don’t know about how things are in Switzerland, but here in Washington State in the USA, the government has a habit of ignoring and overturning referendums and initatives. I worked on an campaign to defeat the measure financing Safeco Field in Seattle. We won, but the stadium was built anyway under an “emergency” declaration. We voted to limit car tab licence fees to $30 TWICE, and the voters were sued by the government and the initative was overturned by the courts!
In addition, the initative process has been corrupted by powerful business interests. No independent group has any chance to out-propogandize the corporate machine. We simply do not have the money.
In short, voting in the USA against having your head cut off would be pointless. If the government wanted to do so, it would find a way regardless of the outcome.
This is terrific. How about refashioning this into a new MLL pamphlet in time for the November elections?
presto,
“We won, but the stadium was built anyway under an ‘emergency’ declaration.”
That would be impossible in Switzerland. The Swiss majority has the last word on a great deal of issues. One of the few cool things here. The downside to it is just that it turns out to be the dictatorship of the majority instead of the dictatorhip of a minority.
“In addition, the initative process has been corrupted by powerful business interests. No independent group has any chance to out-propogandize the corporate machine. We simply do not have the money.”
That’s the same in Switzerland, of course.
Yes! Libertarians shouldn’t form a part of the illness, but a part of the remedy.
WTF @ the government being able to sue someone…
WTF @ the government being able to sue someone…
WTF indeed. With that in mind, it makes ya wonder how the government would respond if people (however unlikely it actually is) were to ever elect a 3rd party candidate for President. Methinks the government would step in and make sure that someone different winds up being inauguated come January.
One of the biggest illusions haunting mankind is the notion that the government represents the people and that you and I actually have an influence.
Two more examples of votes being overturned:
1. Washington had a blanket primary allowing voters to vote for any candidate in the primary without having to declare a party preference. You could vote for a Democrat in one office, Republican in another, Libertarian in another, etc. This measure was passed in 1935 as Initative 2. This was in effect until 2003, when the 9th circuit court threw out the blanket primary.
In 2004, Washington voters passed Initative 872 by a 60% margin, creating a “Top Two” primary to comply with the 9th circuit decision and the US Supreme court decision throwing out the California blanket primary. In this system, the top two vote getters in the primary, regardless of party, went on to the general election ballot. The parties sued, and in July of 2005 US District Judge Thomas Zilly threw out initative 872. Appeals continue to languish in the courts so far as I know.
2. In 1993, Washington voters passed Initative 601, limiting tax increases to the rate of inflation. Any tax increase beyond that limit, required a 60% supermajority in the legislature to pass. The state legislature passed an “emergency” measure, Senate Bill 6078 in 2005, overriding the will of the voters and restoring the simple majority requirement. This emergency provision blocks any voter challenge to the bill. When the Washingtom Farm Bureau tried to file an referendum petition to overturn the bill, Secretary of State Sam Reed refused to accept the filing, due to the Legislature’s “emergency” provision.
The Farm Bureau sued, and on July 14, 2005, the state Supreme Court essentially said that the legislature can essentially declare anything an emergency. Justice Charles Johnson wrote in the decision that “The Washington State Constitution and our jurisprudence dictate that the Legislature may suspend the right of the people to order a referendum on a bill where the bill is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or in support of state government and its existing public institutions.”
In his dissent, Justice Richard B. Sanders stated, “The majority betrays the sacred trust the people of this state place in this court to preserve inviolate their constitutional right to veto unwanted legislation through referendum. A legislature determined to inoculate itself from referendum, a secretary of state determined to violate his statutory and constitutional duty to allow a referendum petition to at least circulate, combined with a supreme court openly hostile to the people’s check on the legislature, brews a potent poison to the people’s constitutional role in the legislative process.”
Essentially, in the two cases the state Supreme Court said that the people have no real rights. The voters do not rule, the parties and the politicans do. I have given up any hope for change through conventional politics. Regardless of whatever view that I might have had on any particular bill*, I thought that when the voters spoke, that was supposed to be the end of the issue. The government was supposed to respect “the will of the people” as expressed by the vote. The above shows why that is not so.
-Presto
————————-
*For instance, I wanted to throw out the primary election altogether. Why should taxpayers subsidize the parties’ nominating process?