Katha Pollitt on Nader

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Fri Jul 21 17:11:59 PDT 2000


Katha Pollitt:
> > > ...
> > > I just think there are some things you can get from electoral
> > > politics, and some you can't. rolling back capitalism is not
> > > something voting is going to get you.
> > > ...

Gordon wrote:
> >People continue to talk as if voting "gets you" something like
> >an outcome (e.g. "Democrats move to the left.") But it doesn't.
> >In any election larger than a village, any single vote has a
> >vanishingly small material effect; yet one constantly speaks
> >hereabouts as if it mattered greatly, so much, indeed, that
> >crafty compromises and cost-benefit analyses of candidates
> >are warranted. Even Katha is doing it. Would anyone care to
> >explore this mysticism? What does your vote _actually_ get
> >you? I'm especially interested in those who are prepared
> >to vote for a candidate they concede is repugnant.

Yoshie Furuhashi:
> Simply put, the reason why most of us don't agree with you is
> probably that few of us are anarchists, so we don't think of voting
> as a matter of "an individual" casting "a single vote" this way or
> that in separation from everything else. It's a question of
> political _campaigns_ & how to use them. Even those who may not vote
> for any candidate might still have a reason to try to _organize
> votes_ to beat down a right-wing direct referendum initiative, for
> instance. So, you'll never convince all leftists to look askance at
> voting _altogether_.

My question doesn't reflect anarchism (at least not directly). An anarchist may vote, and a believer in the State, even a liberal, might choose not to. I'm asking (you all) what _your_ vote gets _you_. In your response above, you slide from the singular vote to a mighty political campaign, but in fact your singular vote is the only one you control and, unless you're unusually persuasive or wealthy, is in fact the only vote you are likely to affect. And this is the way people usually talk and, I guess, think. Yet an extremely close national election would be one where the difference between the candidates was something like 100,000 votes. Probably, even Bill Gates couldn't buy 100,000 votes with any degree of reliability.

Now, I can see people going down to the polls to experience a kind of democratic communion with the rest of the electorate, or as a sort or religious or moral observance, or to register a protest -- I can understand that: they're getting something directly out of the act. What I don't understand is someone plotting and planning to use their infinitesimal vote as if it was a powerful counter, as for example by voting for a thug like Gore so that _maybe_ the unions will be treated better than they will be by the other thug. That doesn't make any sense to me. If you're going out on Mystical Road, why not go for broke? See what I mean?

By the way, when I say "thug", I'm not speaking metaphorically. Gore, as a Drug Warrior and an imperialist, is literally and materially responsible for killing thousands of innocent, harmless people and putting hundreds of thousands in prison. The political valence of such a person is not merely venal or vacuous; it carries a pretty serious moral taint (if you believe in such things). Connection with it seems like a high price to pay for some illusion about helping set national policy.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list