ALB
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Out of interest does any of the SPGB members on this think there ever was, or hypothetically could be, a situation where the “lesser evil” actually is?
How about this for not doing that — that even if a lesser evil can be identified that is not a reason for voting for them since, as they will fail, this will provide a chance for the greater evil to win next time?
”The disillusionment that follows the election of a ‘lesser evil’ prepares fertile soil for the rise of the next populist demagogue. A vote for a ‘lesser evil’ is therefore – indirectly – also a vote for a ‘greater evil.’“
Or as Robbo just out it:
”Lesser evils ALWAYS prepare the ground for greater evils to emerge in due course and vice versa. That is the nature of capitalist politics: it is cyclical. That is because all capitalist politicians will inevitably fail to serve the interests of the working class and will inevitably disillusion and disenchant their supporters. You can’t operate capitalism in any other way.”
Just remembered that a former member of our party wrote a book on this subject of why people vote, that was even turned into a play;
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263749343_How_Voters_Feel_by_Stephen_Coleman
“An interesting aside on American behavioural motivators when it comes to voting habits.“In one of the study samples, altruism accounts for 44% of the underlying motivation and personal duty accounts for 23%. Meanwhile, selfish motives account for only 13%. Individuals explain their voting motives as centered on doing well by others and their causes and by their own ethical commitments—their selfish consumption concerns play a very minor role.”
I thought the article was going to be about what motivated people to vote in a particular way but it’s actually about why people (say) they vote. A quite different matter.
If 44% say they voted the way they did — Democrat or Republican or whatever— to benefit others rather than themselves there must a lot of hypocrites around ! Most people will vote out for a particular party because they believe that it will benefit them. Nothing wrong with that (except that their belief is mistaken). In fact, that is why we are expecting workers to vote for socialism in the end — because it’s in their personal interest.
On the other hand, I can’t think of why 13% would go and vote for a selfish reason. A few might because they are the candidate or because they have been bribed or to curry favour with somebody. In countries like Australia where voting is compulsory fear of being fined for not voting would be another, but that doesn’t apply in the US.
All the same, the question of why people bother to vote is worth investigating. In Tuesday’s election two-thirds of the electorate are estimated to have voted; which means that two-thirds didn’t — more than voted for either Biden or Trump. In fact “none of the above” won (as in frequently the case).
Most of these will be people who have learned from experience that whoever gets in makes no difference to them and have concluded that “they are all the same” and “that changing governments changes nothing”. Correctly, as this is the case.
The problem, then, is why do two-thirds bother to vote in face of the fact that the outcome doesn’t make any difference to them? Some might do so to express their view that voting is the best way to settle arguments and that if you don’t vote then this risks being taken away. (Incidentally, we are in this category as we insist on going to vote even if we don’t cast a valid ballot, to show that the vote could be used as an “instrument of emancipation”.) I suppose this could be classed as voting out of “duty” or “civic responsibility” and is understandable, even praise-worthy.
The argument that you should vote (whichever way) because the right to vote is something workers and other groups struggled to obtain is a valid one. But I still don’t see where altruism comes into it.
“plucking the capitalist bird one feather at a time“ makes a gradualist strategy sound easier than the more accurate analogy of “removing the capitalist tiger’s teeth one by one”.
Rosa Luxemburg had this to say why “self determination for nations” was impossible in that part of the world. She pointed out that the only practical solution was administrative autonomy at the local level:
“Another outstanding example of the difficulties encountered by the problem of nationality autonomy in practice is to be found in the Caucasus. No corner of the earth presents such a picture of nationality intermixture in one territory as the Caucasus, the ancient historical trail of the great migrations of peoples between Asia and Europe, strewn with fragments and splinters of these peoples (…)
The territorial distribution of the largest nationalities involved is as follows: The Russians, who constitute the most numerous group in the whole Caucasus, are concentrated in the north, in the Kuban and Black Sea districts and in the northwest part of Tersk. Moving southward, in the western part of the Caucasus the Kartvelians are located; they occupy the Kutai and the south-eastern part of the Tiflis gubernias. Still further south, the central territory is occupied by the Armenians in the southern portion of the Tiflis, the eastern portion of the Kars and the northern portion of the Erivan gubernias, squeezed between the Georgians in the north, the Turks in the west and the Tatars in the east and south, in the Baku, Elizabetpol and Erivan gubernias. In the east and in the mountains are located mountain tribes, while other minor groups such as Jews and Germans live, intermingled with the autochthonous population, mainly in the cities. The complexity of the nationality problem appears particularly in the linguistic conditions because in the Caucasus there exist, besides Russian, Ossetian, and Armenian, about a half-dozen languages, four Lezgin dialects, several Chechen, several Circassian, Mingrel, Georgian, Sudanese, and a number of others. And these are by no means dialects, but mostly independent languages incomprehensible to the rest of the population. (…)
Thus, the drawing of a boundary between the main nationalities of the Caucasus is an insoluble task.(…)
[T]he only method of settling the nationality question in the Caucasus, in the democratic spirit, securing to all nationalities freedom of cultural existence without any among them dominating the remaining ones, and at the same time meeting the recognized need for modern development, is to disregard ethnographic boundaries, and to introduce broad local self-government – communal, urban, district, and provincial – without a definite nationality character, that is, giving no privileges to any nationality. Only such a self-government will make it possible to unite various nationalities to jointly take care of the local economic and social interests, and on the other hand, to take into consideration in a natural way the different proportions of the nationalities in each county and each commune.
Communal, district, provincial self-government will make it possible for each nationality, by means of a majority decision in the organs of local administration, to establish its schools and cultural institutions in those districts or communes where it possesses numerical preponderance.”
Just listened to Trump claim that the Democratic Party had rigged the election through fraudulent postal votes. He also claimed, in true populist style, to be the party of workers against Big Money, Big Media and Big Tech. He said he was going to challenge the results in the courts right up to the Supreme Court.
On the other hand:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/04/california-election-voters-prop-22-uber-lyft
Incidentally, I have been following events on CNN and am surprised how partisan it is. It makes no pretence that it is opposed to Trump denouncing him on every occasion as an anti-democrat. Not used to this sort of thing from tv stations here in UK.
Here is Richard Wolff’s comment on the election. Notice that there’s no talk of any “fascist coup” and how he’s taken over our quip of “the evil of two lessers”.
The truth is the United States lost.
What won was a constricted politics defined by the range between the GOP and Democrats, Trump and Biden. Voters chose between two similar fantasies differentiated by two names: a return to “greatness” vs a return to “normal.” How ironic that Trump’s greatness and Biden’s normal both name the recent history that drove the US to its current scary conditions. In the ever more hyped blame game that this election was, US politics truly became “the evil of two lessers.”
Fundamental questions actually confront the US now. Is US capitalism in terminal decline amid China’s ascendance? How do we do better than capitalism as our economic system given its inequalities, instabilities, and gross failures to safeguard public health? How can we best undo capitalism’s environmental damage? What can really overcome the centuries of damage done to African-Americans and other indigenous and people of color via white supremacy? On such basic questions, this election’s major parties and candidates offered no engagement, let alone answers.
The 2020 presidential election teaches, yet again, a basic lesson. Any real political choice requires competition (real dialogue and debate) among multiple parties with genuinely different positions on US capitalism and its relation to the fundamental questions. Only then can such questions and the parties’ alternative answers to them become inescapable centerpieces of US politics and subject to democratic decisions.
Neither the establishments controlling the GOP and Democrats, nor the Trumps and Bidens among them, want real political party competition. They seek to retain their 2-party monopoly and keep sharing power 100% between them.
They are all integral parts of a declining system, one we must move beyond
On the other hand, here is how the Libertatian Party candidate did. They appear to be noting that they might have prevented Trump from winning in some key swing states (though Trump can hardly be seen as a “libertarian” on any sense).
I can’t remember which thread we were discussing fascism on but here’s a criticism of the tactics espoused by antifa;
https://www.eurozine.com/why-street-fighting-is-no-way-to-resist-fascism/
As you said, confirmed by this, if the decision goes to the House of Representatives it is not every Representative that gets a a vote as they vote by state delegation.
And, apparently, the Republicans control 26 of the 50 State delegations. So they could chose Trump. As we have seen, the US constitution is bizarre from a democratic point of view. Who got the most individual votes doesn’t come into it anywhere.
I was just about to say the same as Matt that, if Sanders had been the Democrat candidate, the result would have been even worse for them that it has been but he beat me to it.
It would have been another Corbyn-like suicide mission with the same outcome. I don’t know why you seem to share the leftist illusion on this — that left or left-leaning parties (if the Democrats can be called that) lose because their programme was not radical enough.
What swung the election (slightly) in favour of the Democrats was the suburban vote, resulting from a demographic change as more and more people move to these areas and tend to want a “normal” capitalism that we have in Europe. Which is why there will never be another Trump. The demographic basis for “Trumpism”is declining all the time. And why, incidentally, he would never have been able to sustain a dictatorship (not of course that this was ever his intention).
Even so he nearly pulled it off and probably would have done had it not been for the coronavirus crisis and him playing the fool about it.
The Democrats won the presidency but that’s about all. They didn’t win control of the Senate and I think they even lost seats in the House of Representatives. What will “progressives” and “Left Democrats” do? Stay in the Democratic Party of course and continue to support this party of capitalism.
More on Einstein and Socialism from the January 1931 Socialist Standard. The article hints that he was a supporter of the Labour Party which was then in government:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/01/einstein-discusses-socialism-1931.html
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Einstein to go off the rails, as this snippet from the December 1950 Socialist Standard “Sense and Nonsense” column shows:
Einstein out of his Depth
“The intelligence and character of the masses are unquestionably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.”
“We should not make the mistake of blaming Capitalism for all existing social and political evils. . . . Socialism . . . might more easily lead to wars than Capitalism because it represents a still greater concentration of power.”
(From “Out of my Later Years” by Albert Einstein, Quoted in Daily Mail, 13/11/50.)
Forgot to add that he would not be required to leave the White House and hand over power until 20 January. Whatever the result of the poll today to elect the states’ members of the Electoral College and whatever the college decides on 14 December, he remains the President constitutionally until 20 January even if as a “lame duck”.
