>Most of the bourgeois political scientists say people don't vote because they are contented. Discontent drives people to the polls to vote for change ("throw the bums out").
Andrew English
Which "bourgeois" poli sci 'ers? Walter Dean Burnham, Sam Popkin, Benjamin Page? From sporadic reading of those three long ago, and from usually futile attempts to get non-voters at just above minimum wage jobs to vote, I suspect that most non-voters, esp. at lower income levels, despair at any ability of collective or individual action to change their lives. I'll let Jason Schulman on another list make my point: http://www.egroups.com/message/marxist/2135
The problem with Jose's analysis is that this disconnection by millions of US workers from bourgeois politics would be positive IF AND ONLY IF those millions were actively involved in their own politics, against those of the corporate politicians. This is not the case. Most people who don't vote, while disproportionally working class, have very similar political attitudes to those who do vote. Numerous voting behavior studies have indicated that non voters are more cynical and more likely to opt out of ANY sort of politics -- which, of course, includes the collective-action-from-below we socialists want to see. These folks are not usually more radical _at this moment_.
The reason's why politicized lefties might drop out of the electoral game, are far different from those that underlie most non-voters.
Michael Pugliese