Why I don’t vote, part three million
Posted on December 5th, 2006 by Jackie Danicki
From Elisée Reclus, quoted in Jean Maitron’s le mouvement anarchiste en France II: de 1914 à nos jours (Antoine translated this precisely, from the original French, for me):
To vote is to abdicate. Either it is the elected who submits to the will of the elector, in which case, he is no longer free and he is at the full disposal of the electoral body that has become his master, or the representative only cares about his personal interests, and therefore those who delegated him have ceased, in their turn, to be free.
I’m not an anarchist, but not all their ideas are wrong.
Filed under: Individuality vs Collectivism, Law, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend
Fair enough and I wouldn’t want to compel you to vote, nor to send your child to a school. It occurs to me that if everybody made the same choices as you about voting and schooling the outcome would be worse for everybody.
Why do you think that, Jon?
and why is it always when someone expresses his/her opinion concerning his/her private actions, the usual response is “If everybody will do like you, …”?
Sign of drummed-in collectivist thinking.
What if you presume, Jon, that everyone has his or her own mind and do how he/she finds fit?
So people in China or Cuba are freer than people in the U.S. and Europe? They can’t delegate squat.
Or is having the choice to lose our freedom what makes us freer?
Or is it not so much that the anarchists are right as that they may be on to something.
So people in China or Cuba are freer than people in the U.S. and Europe?
Er, interesting logic, but it’s all yours - nothing remotely close to anything I quoted.
Drummed in collectiveist thinking…
Did I say anything about right or wrong?
anyway…
delegation is not abdication.
I’m quite happy to *delegate* making decisions about road maintenance and speeches about refuse collection and so on to elected representatives - I wouldn’t want to do it myself.
That anarchist is committing the logical error of setting up a false dichotomy - there is plenty of possible middle groung between either the elector being the slave of the elected and the elected being the slave of the elector.
if the sensible people stop voting we’re all in a pickle though - cos that’ll just leave extremist nutters - BNP, greens, communists deciding who makes the decisions most of us can’t really be bothered with.
—-
wrt homeschooling - I’m pretty dubious from what I’ve seen of it, though that’s neither here nor there cos I won’t have seen a representative cross section or anything.
though mindful of Adam Smiths pin factory illustration - is it really worthwhile for someone who could be earning a full time income to be a full time teacher for their children instead?
Jon D,
I didn’t say anything about right or wrong either.
It’s your super-easy bridging “she opined” with “what if everybody will take her position” that is the mark of collectivist reasoning.
As you yourself said, there is a lot of middle ground - or even, I’ll add, completely different takes on any issue that people might come up with, from sewage to voting, there is no reason to generalise like you just did and asign Jackie’s position to everybody of the voting age.
We are individuals.
What is suitable for Jackie is not suitable for you, etc etc.
It doesn’t follow that if someone doesn’t vote, “we are all in a pickle”, if only because there is no “we”.
Except in collectivist mind.
Hope I filled in enough blanks?
Rule #1 in the politics-obsessed Shotrock family: If you don’t vote, you can’t whinge about the result. Push a button - any button you want, from Greens to Republicans - and you have earned the right to bitch. Otherwise, even if we agree with you about How (Insert Party/Movement/Individual Politician Here) Have Totally Effed It Up, we’ll dismiss your input at the Annual Family Political Caucus & Debate Festival, which I believe the Vatican calls “Christmas.”
Shotrock, you know I have hearted you for years, but the whole “if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain” line is one of the most dangerous and wrong-headed ideas I have ever encountered. Hell, I used to believe it. To quote from a letter to the editor I sent to my hometown Ohio newspaper, whose editor loves to trot out that line every election season (sorry for pasting, but it’s late and I’m lazy):
Until there is a standard “None of the above” option on ballots, many millions of people who do not support any candidate or party will continue not to vote. This is as valid a form of activism as any banner-waving or sloganeering. Indeed, it is just this sort of activism outside of the established political system that brings about real change in the world. It is dangerous, reckless, and just plain incorrect to teach individuals - adults and children - that the government’s political system is the only place, or indeed the most important place, where change can be wrought. Spare a thought for the likes of Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others who rejected this claim wholeheartedly - in word and in deed.
Would it help if I said ‘every single solitary individual is’ instead of ‘we are’? Anyway there may be some logical arguments against voting… But that anarchist’s quote wasn’t making any of them.
You know I heart you back! And thanks for the excerpt from your letter. What I’ve found, however, is that those who don’t vote generally aren’t politically active in any other way, either — unlike Parks, King, Mandela and frankly, yourself. (The family members I referenced would be in that bunch; if any one of them could name their Congressperson I’d faint).
For Parks, King, and others (Mandela comes to mind), one of the civil rights they fought tooth and nail for was the vote. I am equally fed up with “the system” most of the time and have skipped voting for a few offices here and there when I didn’t like any of the candidates - your “none of the above” option - but I also know that as a white middle-class American, the choice has always been mine to make. Someone who experienced the wrong side of Soviet socialism or racism would probably have a completely different take on the value of voting. Like the song says, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone - and we’ve never experienced it “gone.”
Actually, one of my best friends grew up under Communism in Eastern Europe, and she shares my views. I’ll ask her to blog about it, as she can explain it from her perspective.
> if the sensible people stop voting we’re all in a pickle though - cos that’ll just leave extremist nutters
You’re failing to take into account why the sensible people might stop voting. If their reason is that there’s no-one worth voting for, then that creates a gap in the market for new politicians that they would like to vote for. And then they start voting again.
Aside from that, your point appears to be that we should vote for terrible candidates who’ll wreck the country, because at least they’re not extremists. Hmm.