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Why do anarchists reject voting as a means for change?

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Renew Deal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-14-04 02:27 AM
Original message
Why do anarchists reject voting as a means for change?
Simply because electioneering does not work. History is littered with examples of radicals being voted into office only to become as, or even more, conservative than the politicians they replaced.

As we have discussed previously (see section B.2 and related sections) any government is under pressure from two sources of power, the state bureaucracy and big business. This ensures that any attempts at social change would be undermined and made hollow by vested interests, assuming they even reached that level of discussion to begin with (the de-radicalising effects of electioneering is discussed below in section J.2.6). Here we will highlight the power of vested interests within democratic government.

In section B.2 we only discussed the general nature of the state and what its role within society is (i.e. "the preservation of the economic 'status quo,' the protection of the economic privileges of the ruling class," in the words of Luigi Galleani). However, as the effectiveness of the vote to secure change is now the topic we will have to discuss how and why the state and capital restricts and controls political action.

Taking capital to begin with, if we assume that a relatively reformist government was elected it would soon find itself facing various economic pressures. Either capital would disinvest, so forcing the government to back down in the face of economic collapse, or the government in question would control capital leaving the country and so would soon be isolated from new investment and its currency would become worthless. Either way, the economy would be severely damaged and the promised "reforms" would be dead letters. In addition, this economic failure would soon result in popular revolt which in turn would lead to a more authoritarian state as "democracy" was protected from the people.
<snip>

http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secJ2.html
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JSJ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-14-04 02:31 AM
Response to Original message
1. why do voters reject anarchism as a means for change...
...especially in light of the voter fraud the US perennially faces?
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rooboy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-14-04 02:34 AM
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2. When democracy is subverted by lies, secrecy and propaganda...
the idea of voting becomes redundant. I guess sometimes people believe when the edifice is rotten, the only thing left to do is tear it down.
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orthogonal Donating Member (424 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-14-04 03:27 AM
Response to Original message
3. Most of them are under 18?
Damn kids.
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Laughing Mirror Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-14-04 05:32 AM
Response to Reply #3
5. Most of us are under 18?
Where did you get that statistic? A lot of us will never see 50 again.
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NoPasaran Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-14-04 05:29 AM
Response to Original message
4. Because the romantic idea of change
Is more appealing than the hard work of actually effecting change.
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