On Oct 6, 2012, at 2:08 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> On 10/06/2012 11:25 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>> You are correct that elections are not about choice. They are about
>> 'voting' that is voicing affirmation. No, not the candidates, but
>> the
>> process and the community defined by it. They are are like religious
>> rituals,
>
> Sorta. But the religious rituals are much to be preferred. They are,
> after all, frankly rituals; whereas elections falsely purport to
> have an instrumental character, to enable the voter to make things
> happen in the world.
That's preponderantly true of American national elections. But there are some fairly spectacular current (in the four months to tomorrow) events indicating that even in a capitalist state elections can make important things happen in the world:
--The entire capitalist world mobilized all its resources to deny SYRIZA a government-forming plurality in June's Greek election. Would Greek rejection of the already agreed (and now worsened) austerity package have been unimportant?
--Last month the voters of Quebec threw out a deeply entrenched Liberal government and elected autonomists who promptly vindicated the demands of the student-led mass movement that Cherest had expected to drown in an election ritual. Abolition of tuition for higher education is not unimportant to any student in Quebec.
--Tomorrow the voters in Venezuela choose whether to elect Chavez or Capriles. Can you imagine the joy throughout the boardrooms and editorial chambers, among all the libertals, fascists, and tutti quanti, were Chavez to *lose*?
--President Hollande, having unseated Sarkozy on his promise not to ratify the EU austerity Fiscal Compact unless it were renegotiated to prioritize growth, has announced it would be pushed, unchanged and unrenegotiated, through Parliament with the UMP providing his majority. The Left is demanding that it be put to a referendum instead. They won't prevail (because it would be roundly defeated by the voters), but wouldn't it be important if they did?
Finally on American National Elections. The capitalist establishment is determined to present them exactly as Wojtek does--as a ritual religious spectacle that makes no difference to anything important. And that is exactly what they are to them. But the populist movements (from Debs to Nader and Stein) have always, rightly, seen them in a very different way: as an opportunity that the rulers are forced, against their will, to have access (as limited as they can make it) to a national forum in which to present our critiques of, and alternatives to, their policies and their powers--and so lay the groundwork for a majority movement that can really challenge them. For us, that in itself is important; and denigrating our effort to do so, as Wojtek does at every opportunity, is not exactly a positive contribution to American political life.
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures.
Herakleitos of Ephesos