Do you vote?

Voting isn't just choice it's consent. Do you consent, in practice, regardless of how you vote, give support to the victors of the election? In the UK we have HM Loyal Opposition, that is rather the point of elections.

Of course people often raise the example of Hitler & the Nazis winning the Reichstag elections in 1933 (42% of the vote) & argue that to go out and vote against Hitler would have been the only ethical position. The truth is however that only action by the German working class would have stopped Hitler & too many of them were communists and social democrats reluctant to take to the streets where the real decision would be taken. Too long with the discipline of the factory and the theories of Marx!

I was out of the country for the last election so I didn't bother. I voted for KEn Livingstone as mayor first time around. I wouldn't bother voting now, although I did vote for a local councillor last time around because it was a guy tha I'd met at a no2ID meeting and he seemed very sound.

The only reason I'd vote is because local councillors are all chisellers, I'd rather have someone who could at least abuse the photocopying privileges or something.

Didn't bother registering last time round, they;re less sharpish charging you council tax if you're not on the electoral roll. Plus i culdn't be asked and the two candidates were a libdem student and some new labour shit who was on the NHS executive.
I went to the election count though to see some guys i knew who were running as independents (basic low key protest vote campaign) were doing, it was awful.

Oh and whether you as an individual vote or not makes no difference to how legitmate bourgeois democracy is, snatching on failing voting figures as if they make the anarchist movment legitimate is pretty pointless.

Different points. Falling voting figures do show disillusionment with electoral politics and a recognition that there is no real choice. The problem cantdo was talking about is that anarchists tend to take this as a victory, when in fact it has nothing to do with anarchists.

it's stupid to claim it a victory and in many ways it's the product of systematic defeat of previous workers struggles and increased atomisation but we need know where we are and see possible lines of flight, and as such I think the deeping cynicism whilst in many ways represents the explusion of any "alternatives" from mainstream politics ie that politics is increasingly about managing circumstances rather than changing them, this also provides potentialities that can go beyond social democracy and other leftists bullshit.

No apathy implies that voting is "doing something". I think apathy is far too judgemental and generalising.

but jef, apathy implies people don't care - people i know do care about these things but don't do anything about it, so where 'cynicism' and 'passivity' might be appropriate, 'apathy' really isn't.

i suppose its got something to do with the lack of passed-down experience of successful collective action after the defeats of the last two decades, so the idea of collective action simply doesn't occur to many people.

who is this mythical "average person"? if i ever found them i'd pay them well to join me in a great adventure to locate "the masses" as well.

tell me how much have you fought back in your job or community/ I'll be honest, beyond a few anti fascist things and handing out leaflets, i cna't say i've been involved in any real social struggle in my everyday life. But hey if we can project onto others, if we can pin the blame on the mythical "masses" or "average person', then I suppouse we can exhalt ourselves.

it was at jef.

he is extremely loose with his language, he had to totter off from the thread about abortion and IVF before he implicated himself in Nazi war crimes.

p.s the fact i quoted him should have told you that. You fucking neurotic narcissistic numpty.

Self disgust is self obsession honey.

I am an average man, although a much better one than you , so I have done very little. When I say average man I mean people I have met who are not politicos. Eugenics was a pre-war policy and was never considered a war crime. It also continued in the United States after the war and in Sweden up until the 70s.

By any means nessersary and if that means voting why not?

if my vote means stoping BNP scum I will use it as such.
but I do not belive that any change of any real value can
be made at the ballot box, but never the less while I still
have one I will use it. will you?.
after all we are not free yet and must at least try to create
some kind of future for tomorrow.
My nightmare is a democaticly elected fachist goverment
( we dont have one as yet belive me!) whatever we can do to hold back the right is justified. It would be foolhardy to
give the bastards any help by being a stick in the mud.

I don't think you're going to stop the BNP by voting against them.

If a (more so than Labour) nationalist party did get into office, I think the way to oppose them would be through concerted civil disobedience and physical confrontation with their policies/people.

To vote is an act of consent for the political system as it exists at present. So, whilst you might not get a BNP government, you might (and probably will) get a Conservative one, which you have tacitly supported.

Personally, I view voting as a contribution to liberal democracy. As I don't want to live under liberal democracy, I try to limit my contributions to it as much as possible.

Whilst civil liberties, etc., might be better than no civil liberties, I still don't want to support a political system that constitutes a systematic refusal of many other liberties.

I get your point John but even if it appears as if I am
supporting the status quo I most cirtianly dont.
But untill the "great leap forward" I will and do use
any means. Yes grass roots orginiseation is what we need
but you and I must face the reality of our current
position. I would much prefer to petrol bomb mr griffin
out of south wales and into his grave but 15 years in
prison will only hurt me. The establishment can rot in
hell but fustration can get the better of me so I end
up putting a x in a box. sad aint it.

They haven't done anything because they have not had the opportunity. They are shits none the less.