My Argument Against Voting and Political Activism Redux

The most obvious problem with traditional conceptions of "democracy" is of course the problem of majoritarianism; it reduces to "might makes right" or "superior numbers make right" and inherently is prone to oppress minorities. So proponents of the principle of majoritarian democracy inevitably bump into the problem of having to justify communitarian transgressions against individual rights. And one important thing to point out about this kind of "democracy" is that it is completely open-ended in terms of what it can potentially justify; any form of authoritarianism can theoretically be justified on the basis of majoritarianism. It follows that if one is concerned about individual rights, it doesn't make much sense to endorse or participate in a process that tends to rub up against them at the whim of majorities. Whether or not one is in a majority of minority is irrelevant in this sense.

But one important fact to consider is that "the democratic process" actually isn't purely majoritarian - it's a matter of "numerical majorities" (and there's a territorial element), which need not be an actual majority and excludes all those who do not participate in the voting process (who are nonetheless effected anyways). Everyone is effected regaurdless of whether or not they vote or who/what they vote for. Before such voting takes place, one's options are limited through a primary process and whittled down to two canidates from two parties that already are in power and linked together in the same institution. Moreover, so-called "representation" is incredibly indirect, and in actual fact the state is still an oligarchy in "democracies". So the reality is that "numerical majorities" sway the outcome of which narrow group controls an oligarchy. Hence, so-called "democratic" change is not systematic change, it is only a game of musical chairs within an oligarchy.

Taking all of this into account reveals voting as the rather meaningless mechanism that it is. The oppurtunity cost of voting and political activism is the time and resources that could have been used to directly address the issues oneself. The power that a single vote has is negligable when one takes into account all of the preceding "rules of the game" and active power strucutres before one even gets a chance to play. The voter and non-voter alike are alienated from the decision-making process itself when it comes down to it. The institutional structure of the state and its incentives are self-perpetuating and the democratic process functions to counteract the forces of individual initiative and any sort of competition with the institution itself. Political democracy is a means of transitioning decision-making power within an oligarchy through a process that is only nominally inclusive, which serves the function of providing the illusion of legitimacy by consent.

This is all basically a review or summary (with a little bit of elaboration) of the position that I took in my old essay from last year on this issue and other blogposts that I've written along similar lines. I basically don't think that it's possible to use the democratic process to create systematic change precisely because it is the system. I don't think that elections and voting really address fundamental issues or ever result in meaningful overall structural reductions, and that it tends to distract people away from more personal initiatives and prospects. The deck is fairly stacked and exclusive before the democratic process even takes place and everyone is presented with package deals and false dichotomies to "choose" from. And radical movements are prone to get watered down or even co-opted the more that they entrench themselves in party politics and media-driven politics. In fact, my view is essentially that the Libertarian Party is already fairly co-opted by the American conservative movement.

I suppose that for me, rather than providing an argument along the lines of "the act of voting violates the non-aggression principle", the emphasis is on the impractical nature of the political process and pointing out the sense in which "democracy" is a lie or illusion; a mere tool of ideological legitimacy. My emphasis is on the fact that what's called "democracy" is a joke in light of the more anarchist definition of "democracy" in terms of voluntary consensus as a principle of decision-making. As soon as an institution becomes "truly democratic" in this sense, it ceases to be a state; at the same time, a state qua state cannot possibly be "truly democratic" in this sense precisely because of the monopolistic, heirarchical nature of the state (particularly if we use something along the lines of Max Weber's definition of the state). In my view, no state qua state has ever consistently been established and sustained on the basis of voluntary consensus - voluntary consensus internal to the oligarchy perhaps, but not in terms of the average person.