[lbo-talk] Nation roundtable on Venezuela

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Mon Dec 17 13:19:00 PST 2007


Eric wrote:


> What about the
> "positive" refusal of voting? Why isn't abstention considered a
> political statement rather than a sign of confusion or apathy?

As a vocal anarchist who campaigns against voting, I follow this stuff closely.

I think the main reason is a paradigm problem. People, especially Americans who are indoctrinated into believing that voting is a good thing, can't comprehend that many people refuse to vote for political reasons. Voting abstention for political reasons is quite common in the U.S., but liberal and progressive intellectuals will go to great lengths to explain it away as apathy or something else.

What I find hilarious are the campaigns to move voting to weekends or to allow online voting. The fools who promote this shit really think that people don't vote because it's not convenient enough. It's fucking easy to vote in the U.S. Polling places are all over the place and newspapers always list where people can vote. Registration is easy and in your face.

Some people need to face up to the fact that many people don't vote for political reasons.

Chuck0 ***********

I agree, but not that many. In Australia, almost everyone votes ($50 fine, if you don't and you're registered), although the conservatives would like to see that stopped in the name of "liberty". The real issue, at least for me, is class consciousness. The fact that almost everyone votes in Australia and still you get the relatively mild, even conservative results that you do demonstrates Marx's observation that the ruling ideas of any era are ever the ideas of the ruling class. Those ideas weigh "like and alp" on the politcal consciousness of the workers. I'd say that if voting were more voluntary in Australia, like it is in the USA, more conservatives (and fewer Greens and Labor types) would be elected. Still, Capital would remain the dominant social relation and the proles who didn't vote would be divided into those who didn't vote because they'd rather watch reality TV (the majority) and many who did not vote because they were consciously making a protest against this vacuous, harmful, destructive, ecocidal system of production.

Mike B)

"Would you have freedom from wage-slavery.." Joe Hill "http://iamawobbly.multiply.com/

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