Click here to access article by Philip A. Farruggio from Dandelion Salad.
I am posting this article to introduce some of my views on voting. The article does a good job of clarifying the choices we have in the election process which is widely and falsely regarded as an essential indicator of democracy. The article begs the often expressed question among progressives: should we bother participating in elections?
I admit that I have gone round and round debating this question with myself. Here is where I am now on this question.
Think of voting in the context of a military strategy to be employed when an army needs to retreat from a particular battlefield when faced with overwhelming forces. It is a widely accepted fact that an organized retreat is far preferable to a disorganized rout in order to preserve your battle forces to fight again another day. I regard the strategy of voting for a "lesser evil" in the same way: as providing time to salvage and protect truly progressive forces.
This strategy requires that we accurately identify "lesser evils" among the candidates for the various offices. In my opinion, the ruling class will never allow us to vote for a candidate for President who will pursue any policy other than that of the ruling class. If, in the extremely unlikely event he/she were inclined to pursue some other polices, he/she would be removed one way or another. This is simply because the ruling class has invested so much power in the Executive branch of our government. So, don't bother to vote in Presidential elections regardless of the promises made by what is presented as a more liberal candidate. However, there are some candidates for Congressional offices that will impede the progress of our capitalist foes to wreck havoc on our lives. So, vote for these candidates after looking at their track record--not what they say in their campaign speeches.
But, simply voting must be the least important part of your strategy. Focus on what is needed to fight the next battles in order to defeat your oppressors. First, you need to become as best informed on the real issues as time allows. You need to select the best reliable sources of information. You need to link up with others of a like mind to share information, and then you need to organize around strategies to defeat your foe.
The main problem I see now with progressive people especially in the US is that they cannot even identify the foe. This is not because ordinary people or even progressive people are stupid. It is largely because our oppressors have almost total control over the ideas that are allowed to be transmitted by institutions of education and media. And, of course, most working people are so focused on merely surviving and raising their families that they have little time to educate themselves. But, we must find the time, we must fight to gain clarifying ideas, and to find ways of sharing these ideas with friends and neighbors.
Beside dis-informing us, our oppressors like to divide us, to have us fight against each other--you know, the old divide and conquer strategy. They excel with this strategy. They have had us divided by encouraging straights to fight against gays, to target immigrant workers as our enemy, or people on welfare assistance, Muslims, and foreign people who fight back against the Empire ("terrorists"), to encourage women and men to see each other as enemies, etc. We must stop wasting our energies fighting each other!
So, who or what show we fight against? If you have followed this blog at all, you know that I see the primary enemy as a system--capitalism, a system that benefits a small group of people called capitalists. I don't even see all of the latter as "the enemy" simply because many of them have been duped also by misinformation. It is the system itself that we must fight against, and I think the most effective way after gaining reliable information is to begin constructing a new system and alternative institutions to serve our real best interests--to live in peace with each other with the ecosystem that sustains all life.