Voting Nader or Abstaining: What to do on Election Day

Voting Nader or Abstaining: What to do on Election Day
by Ben Grosscup
benmalone [at] aol.com


For the last few months I have been in an ethical crisis. I have been trying to decide what to do on November 7, 2000, election day. I have not once considered voting for either Al Gore or George Bush. I cringe at the thought of this because it legitimizes the U.S. political system which is a manifestation of the corporate elite class. Incidentally, voting for Nader, or anyone, legitimizes the basic system of the U.S. government, an institution to which I am fundamentally opposed. As an anarchist, I believe government stands in the way of creating a world of social justice, peace and cooperation.
However, despite the tremendous structural limitations (not character limitations --these exist in everybody) of what a vote for Nader or even a victory for Nader could possibly mean for fundamental social change, a vote for Nader still is, compared to where \"mainstream society\" stands, in the direction of justice and peace. Voting for Bush or Gore on the other hand runs counter to meaningful social change. If one really doesn\'t want meaningful change, wants to maintain the status quo (except insignificant policy improvements on things like abortion rights and environmental protections), one might as well vote for Gore. The best hope is that the government under Gore will not wage as rough of a class war against working people as under Bush. I\'m finished dissuading people from voting for Gore or Bush. However, I\'m not suggesting that Nader voters abstain nor am I suggesting that abstaining activists vote for Nader, because I\'m currently considering both options. My purpose here is to discuss issues relevant to this choice for me and foster greater clarity regarding the choice.

Nader is speaking out on issues that are profoundly important to me. He challenges corporate globalization, nuclear power, biotechnology, embargoes on other countries(especially Iraq and Cuba), military aid to other nation states (especially Colombia), and he fights for livable wages, energy conservation, and universal health care. If society doesn\'t address these issues, I think we\'re doomed as a planet. The Nader campaign has said that its goal is not just winning the presidency, but building a broad based progressive social movement with an emphasis on party-based political action.

A common anarchist critique of voting contends that each political party or statist (Castro\'s and Guevara\'s revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks, the German Greens who supported the 1999 NATO bombings, Mao, etc.), after it took power betrayed the people for whom it claimed it was fighting. One might conclude that voting and party politics is useless because none of the historical examples led to a just society devoid of government and corporations. I generally agree with the analysis about political parties, but I\'m undecided about whether a vote for Ralph Nader is totally useless for promoting my vision for society.

I think the phenomenon of corruption in political parties is best explained as the corrupting influence of governmental structure on humans, not the corrupting influence of \"human nature\" on government. Furthermore, I not only oppose the state, but I also oppose capitalism. I believe the two institutions are inseparably intertwined and that doing away with just one or the other incompletely dismantles the social oppression.
This path leaves us either with communism as expressed by communist states like Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China, or laissez-faire capitalism where corporations are totally free of any state review or regulation. If we dismantle either system partly, we get the welfare state or \"free trade\" with \"compassionate conservatism,\" or some other misleadingly named system.

Nobody has ever had the secret key to social change. With this sense of humbleness, I try to understand people with diverse social change analyses. Nonetheless, my bias on strategy is towards alternative parallel structure and direct action. Parallel structures exist outside the dominant system and usually in opposition to it while trying to more effectively meet needs the dominant system neglects. My goal is to build parallel structures like free health clinics, houses of hospitality, and independent media. Direct action is an act that directly confronts, challenges, or resists an unjust or oppressive system outside that system\'s channels of redress. I would like to see groups autonomously, thoughtfully, and preferably nonviolently confronting injustice in their communities and the world. Tactics in a direct action strategy that I support include blockading meetings of corporate enterprise and military advancements, damaging genetically engineered crops and nuclear weapons, and occupying and defending threatened forest land and working class neighborhoods.
These complimentary strategies are intricately connected to the world I envision. I want to live in a world with
decentralized sustainable communities and local direct democracy instead of centralized government. When the powers refuse, their oppressive nature is exposed.
My goal is to help deplete their legitimacy and eliminate their power without recreating the statist structures I oppose.

Though the Green Party is arguably autonomous from the mainstream electoral system, voting is never a parallel alternative structure nor is it a direct action. Voting is part of the dominant governmental system. It is an institutional mechanism by which people hand over the power that is inherently theirs to distant representatives.
Unfortunately, we make similar concessions to the statist capitalist system every time we buy goods and services from corporations, drive cars, use Nuclear, oil, or Hydroelectric power (Manitoba Hydro), or wear cloths from sweatshops. Gandhi always stressed the importance of unity between means and ends. He said, \"We must be the change we wish to see in the world.\" However, an absolutist interpretation of Gandhi\'s wise point may hurt social justice movements. For example, if we are fighting for an end to sanctions on Iraq and a shift from dependence of foreign oil, then using an oil burning car to get to an anti-sanctions demonstration is bit of a contradiction.
Realistically, that doesn\'t mean we shouldn\'t use cars, though I think it preferable to walk or use bikes. I see voting as a similar kind of contradiction with the anarchistic direct democracy world that I envision. Nonetheless, I\'m not saying voting is \"wrong.\"
By the way, if I vote, I\'ll walk to the polling station.

I\'m unsure whether the Nader/Laduke campaign is going to move us closer to meaningful social change because it is not direct action. I think working with the U.S.government to make the society it tries to govern based on a radical need-based system is near impossible because the big powers have class interests that are antithetical to that goal. I think the U.S. government is so deeply anti-democratic and pro-business that it can\'t be reformed to be an instrument of meaningful social change.
On the other hand, it can be reformed to be generally less destructive and more helpful in the few areas where it does supply needs such as Education, Health Care, social welfare, etc. I think this is a desirable situation for all working class people, whether reformists or revolutionaries. The Nader/Laduke campaign seems to be coming out of a grass roots movement as opposed to corporate sponsored business as usual. The people I\'ve seen working on the Nader/Laduke campaign in Minnesota, seem to do it with the best of intentions: to make meanigful change for justice.

Despite my concerns and bias, I may vote for Nader because I don\'t see much harm in voting for him at this point and I do see potential for challenging the destructive political norms of this country. Political action like voting, lobbying, and party building is not necessarily harmful or distracting to radical movements. However, if lobbying and electoral politics is the only thing that activist groups do, there is little chance for real change because that strategy is limited to working through the oppressive system\'s channels of redress.
If I vote for Nader, I\'ll to do so humbly and without expectations of much change. I\'m afraid that if Green Party activists\' goal is to make use the system\'s channels of redress as primary form of progressive political expression, it will likely become more like the Democrats and Republicans and more detached from its progressive ideas.
expect that as the Green Party gets more power in the United States Government, like all other \"progressive\" parties, it will become more corrupt and more like the system they are now trying to reform. I imagine how things would be if Nader were elected:unless someone had already assassinated him, before the inauguration, high level military officials would give Nader the codes for initiating nuclear war. He\'d become the commander in chief of the world\'s largest and best organized terrorist organization: the United States Military. This is horrifying, though it\'s nothing new for president elects. I think the Green Party\'s best chance to remain true to its vision is to ally itself with direct action movements and support them wherever possible. If it becomes a political force
separate from radical movements, it will get more out of touch with its base and the world while looking increasingly like the Republicratic Party.

If I vote, it will not be with great enthusiasm for the Green Party or Ralph Nader. To me, the Green Party activist\'s slogan, \"Vote your conscience not your fears\" is a farce because the voting system was never designed for people to vote their conscience.
One\'s choice in an election is always about some distant and abstract political dynamic and almost never about one\'s immediate life. I suspect that people voting for Bush and Gore are more aware of that than people voting for Nader. The main reason Gore voters say they are voting for Gore is so that Bush doesn\'t win. Similarly, many people voting for Bush do so to keep Gore out of office. They understand that politics is a game and has little to do with principles. I\'m afraid however, that Nader voters are losing sight of how that reality is also true of them. Ralph Nader said, \"Americans always have to vote for the least worst [candidate]. Both parties get worse if voters devote themselves to the least worse. If you want to have politics regenerated you have to give small seeds a chance to sprout.\" This seems to say that Nader is outside the \"lesser of a number of evils.\" I think that regardless of who does it, running for elected office puts oneself somewhere on each voter\'s spectrum of \"evil.\" I have little faith in electing representatives to improve my life and the world, though the myth of representational democracy puts great faith in this process.
Despite my critiques, and whether I vote or not, I am in solidarity with those who are
voting for Nader. I hope that their vote is guided by a sense of revolutionary love and a
desire for radical social change.