ALB
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As DJP pointed out earlier: If you think something is a “lesser evil” then you must also think it is an “evil” and presumably you won’t be surprised when it does “evil” things.
Lesser-evilism reduces political action not even to trying to improve things gradually but merely to trying to stop them getting as worse as they might be. It’s the politics of defeatism.
As the link I gave above puts it:
”the lesser evil calculus – the proposition that one must choose the candidate most likely to win who will do the least harm – continues to exert its pull. ‘Vote for me,’ says the ‘cholera’ candidate, ‘not because I have good policies but because I’m not the other guy, and the other guy, well, just look at him! You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, now would you?’ The pitch is as old as politics itself and a constant source of frustration to those who see the need for more than just piecemeal change. It is an appeal to fear, and a brake on real progress. ‘Don’t waste your vote on a principle,’ say the cholerites; ‘Don’t risk a bout of plague.’
There are a number of arguments that can and should be made against this kind of political blackmail. For one thing it leads to apathy and resignation; the lesser evil is still evil, after all, so in agreeing to support the cholera candidate one is sanctioning a view of politics as an essentially tragic and futile process – a deeply conservative sentiment.”
Statement from Maoists for Biden on his electoral victory that looks to have come from the planet Zanussi.
More on the choice between cholera and the plague.
It’s come up twice in France this century in the second round of presidential elections in France. The context of the first is well-explained in this article:
”When Lionel Jospin, the Socialist Party candidate for the 2002 French Presidential election, unexpectedly finished in third place in the initial round of voting – behind the Gaullist conservative Jacques Chirac (first) and the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen (second) – progressive and leftwing voters in France were presented with a stark choice: should they support Chirac in the run-off or should they abstain from voting at all and risk a (still unlikely) victory for the Front National. Characterising the decision as a choice between ‘cholera and plague’, most progressives took the first option, often demonstrating their unhappiness by turning up to vote in rubber gloves and nose-pegs. One group of activists even set up a symbolic shower in a Paris square and invited Chirac voters to pass through it after voting.”
If Chomsky and the others who urged a vote for cholera had done this when they went to vote for it, then we might have a little more respect for them. But they didn’t out of fear that some people might not want cholera or were indifferent between dying of that and dying of the plague. So they played down the effects of cholera and exaggerated the effects of the plague (likely fascist coup).
Here’s a newspaper headline from 2002. The issue came up again in 2017 when the run-off was between the current French President Macron and Le Pen’s daughter Marine.
As has been pointed out, Leon, we do not say “Don’t Vote”. What we say is “Don’t Vote for Any Candidate who stands for Capitalism”. Nor do we say “Never Vote” (we are not anarchists). We say, where there is a genuine Socialist candidate, if you want socialism vote for that candidate and, where there is not, go and cast a write-in vote for socialism.
You say that that position makes us “Trumpers” because it implied not voting for your chosen anti-Trump candidate, that of the openly pro-capitalist Democratic Party, Biden.
So your position was not go and vote but go and vote for a particular candidate. It was “Don’t Vote for anyone except Biden”. It implies that anyone who campaigned for any other candidate, such as the Green Party’s, are also “Trumpers”. I don’t know if you do go that far but the logic of your position is that anyone who didn’t vote for Biden is a trumper, even, since you think Trump was a fascist, a fascist.
Anyway, you’ve got your man into the White House and there’s dancing in the streets. He will fail to live up to his supporters’ expectations, not because he’s incompetent or insincere or not radical enough or doesn’t have a cooperative Congress, but because it’s capitalism not who is president that determines what will happen. The difference will only be of style. Instead of an uncouth loudmouth US capitalism’s CEO will be a smooth-talking professional politician.
But don’t just take our word for it. Wait and see and learn by experience that capitalism can never be made to work in the interests of the majority.
“Meanwhile, they can never name the ideal guy either.”
You just don’t get it, do you? There is no ideal leader !
Leaders can‘t do anything for the workers. To establish socialism what workers require is socialist understanding and democratic self-organisation not to put their trust in some “good” leader to do something for them.
So you have replaced an uncouth loudmouth by a devout Roman Catholic. You think it will make a difference. Wait and see what another four years of capitalism will bring.
More positive news. Ok it’s nuclear fusion again:
You are right, DJP, the situation will be different when there are more than a handful of socialists like today and when there are enough to elect a minority of socialist MPs.
As you know, our position is that such a minority should be prepared to vote for any measure, proposed by others, judged to be in the interest of workers under capitalism or to further the cause of socialism. Obviously in your hypothetical situation of a proposed law to outlaw socialist activity (unlikely as it would be if the stage had been reached where a minority of socialist MPs could be elected) the socialist MPs would vote against it. That’s a no-brainier.
But we are nowhere near there yet. What is urgent now is to keep putting over the case for socialism and nothing else as a means of hastening the emergence of a mass socialist consciousness. Somebody needs to do this and that’s why we exist. Of course in the meantime — or “the mean time”, as ex-member Stephen Coleman used to call it — workers have to do what they can to survive under capitalism and we say that the best way is via trade unions and similar non-party-political party organisations.
We are not “indifferentists”. After all, we are workers ourselves who have to survive as best we can under capitalism while it lasts.
“In other words, there is nothing “ideal”, everything is relative.”
You are all over the place, Leon. One moment you are Leon Bernstein defending a gradualist policy to try to transform capitalism into socialism by incremental reforms. The next moment you are, as here, Leon Stalin using dialectics to try to justify contradictory policies. But either way you are not Leon Marx.
“For instance, in Poland abortion has just been made illegal, if a different party had won the election last time round it’s unlikely that would be the case now.“
Leaving aside the fact that this decision was made by judges rather than the government, which party are you suggesting people in Poland should have voted for and presumably should vote for next time? Precisely how should socialists there “get their hands dirty”?
I am sure that if there was a referendum on this issue our members would vote to legalise abortion — as they did as a matter of course in the referendum in Ireland on the matter. But would draw the line at voting for a reformist party that included this amongst its other promised reforms, especially since there’s likely to be more than one capitalist party making this promise.
“I think voting (and politics) isn’t just about expressing your ideals, it’s about trying to effect a change (however limited) in the here and now.“
Actually, for many people voting is about expressing your ideals. That’s what Labour voters do in safe Tory seats and vice versa. It’s what everybody who voted for the Green Party at the last general election in Britain did (except in one constituency). It’s what everybody who voted for the Brexit Party did. In fact it’s what everybody who refused “tactical voting” did,
Talking of which, that’s the logic of your position— that it’s better to vote for what you don’t want and get it than to vote for what you do want and not get it. An attitude rejected by millions of voters in all elections who vote to “express their ideals”. Are you saying that they shouldn’t?
“Do you not think there are marginal (and sometimes not so marginal) differences between how competing parties can / or would manage capitalism? And do you not think that marginal differences can actually be quite significant, especially to those on the margins.”
There are certainly difference between what competing parties say they will do but in practice, when elected, the party making the more attractive promises always ends up running capitalism in the only way it can — having to put profits first. They may initially passed some reforms that benefit some workers but these don’t last. In fact, they are often withdrawn by the same government a few years later. Two historical examples are the Wilson Labour government elected in Britain in 1964 which abolished prescription charges and then brought them back a couple of years later. The other is the leftwing Mitterrand government elected in 1981 in France that did the same thing.
Can you produce any counter examples?
Socialist Party members do participate in referendums sometimes voting for and sometimes voting against. In other words, we don’t always abstain so we are not “indifferent” to everything except socialism. But elections to a law-making body are elections about which class shall control the state and in such an election we can’t vote for capitalist rule to continue by voting for any party that is not against capitalism.
“If the members on this site have not realized that the practice of not voting is exactly what the far right what you to do, you will always be ruled by them.”
But that’s not your argument, is it? You are not saying that people should simply vote for whoever they want, You are saying that people should vote for the candidate with the best chance of beating the “greater evil”. In other words, that they should vote for some professional politician rather than, say, for the Greens or some other minority party— or even a genuine socialist party candidate.
We don’t say that people shouldn’t vote but that they shouldn’t vote for any candidate who stands for capitalism. If there’s a genuine socialist candidate standing they should for that candidate.
True, if there is no such candidate standing we do say that it is better not to vote than to vote for a candidate that stands for capitalism. As that amounts to voting for capitalism to continue and to legitimise capitalist rule.
“How about this: everything can be construed as evil; therefore, you should never vote?”
It’s capitalism that is the “evil” ( if you want to put it that way) as it can’t be refiorned to work in the interest of the majority class of wage workers. Choosing which group of professional politicians is to run its administrative side is a side show as none of them can make capitalism work other than as a profit-making system that puts profits before satisfy needs and has to. Because that’s the only way it can. The politicians fail not because they are insincere or incompetent or nasty but because what they have promised or been mandated to do is impossible.
Basically, the only relevant issue in any election is capitalism or socialism? If you vote for any politician or group of politicians on the grounds that they are the lesser evil what you are doing is legitimising the rule of the capitalist class.
Conclusion; if capitalism is the “evil” you should never vote for it. You should only vote for socialism as the common ownership of the means of production, with production directly to satisfy people’s needs and distribution on the basis of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”
