Criticisms of electoralism
Encyclopedia
Although highly controversial at various points in history, representative democracy
(and electoral systems in general) has become the modern civics
global-standard. Nevertheless, criticisms of electoral politics continue to come from both within the Western world
and the developing world. In the Global North, criticism comes primarily from the anarchist, revolutionary
communist, and left-libertarian ends of the political spectrum
.
provides a historical analysis of electoral politics as a corporate statist (not his term) mechanism for co-opting grass-roots action and organizing, which primarily has been engendered by discontent with the social effects of disproportionate disposition of economic benefit and risk.
typically argue against the legitimacy of political representation although most libertarians accept the concept of delegation
. This is primarily due to their belief that majority rule
voting systems will erode the liberty
of social and political minorities. Libertarians argue that any truly just
political system must include voluntary association
to prevent the oppressive
enforcement of law. Additionally, libertarians argue that the election of representatives creates a priest-class of political administrators while disempowering and alienating
the general public, for which voting is a highly mediated form of political engagement that diverts energy away from more effective means of political and social reform (or, for some anarchists, revolution
in the form of Direct Action
). Some libertarians argue that representation is philosophically impossible due to the unique nature of each individual, distinct from social, political, and economic class
interests.
Social anarchists
support consensus-based direct democracy
as an alternative to an electoral system, and direct action
as a means to implement decisions made individually or collectively.
Autonomism
, horizontalism
, and "topless federation" are related concepts. There also exists a non-elective procedure for electing a democratic representation
called sortition
, in which representatives are drawn at random from the citizen population.
as being, at best, insufficient for revolutionary
change, and at worst as diverting the personal, economic, and mental resources of the working class
individual towards dead end
politics when that same energy could be used to foment a communist revolution
and create a proletarian dictatorship. Communists see the global-standard status of elections in the current world as clear evidence that market society has entrenched itself and been, for the moment, completely victorious over armed struggle and other truly grassroots
forms of change. For Marxists, the overthrow
of the entire ruling class
means not just a seizure of their state power
, but the establishment of an entirely different sort of state, one structured to protect working class
control of production
-- such a fundamental change, it is usually argued, cannot take place within the electoral system of a state designed foremost for the protection of private property
.
This is not, however, a critique of elections in general, and most communists hold that elections of some sort are compatible or even necessary for workers' democracy. Friedrich Engels
argued that a Communist society could only exist with a representative constitution. Election of leaders at the local level and, in turn, for wider leadership on the global level, would to a communist undoubtedly make fully participatory
elections absolutely necessary. However, the difference under such circumstances as compared to capitalism would be that communist elections would reject the representative democracy
model as a residual of capitalism; that model, in the view of communists, would make it more likely for the new society to revert back to profit
and the market
if fully participatory democracy
were not pursued.
It is also not the case that Marxists necessarily shun capitalist elections altogether. The question of whether fighting for reforms is worthwhile and, if so, how much energy should be devoted to them has been an ongoing debate within Marxism from the beginning, and a broad spectrum of positions has resulted. Communists may consider some reforms within capitalism to be tactically important—a civil rights
struggle, for instance, may help to overcome divisions that hurt and weaken all workers. In the most extreme cases of "reformism", a party may actively work to curb more "revolutionary" activity, whether out of momentary caution or genuine commitment to other methods—during the 1968 General Strike of France, Marxist and Communist Parties urged workers to return to their jobs, and express their dissatisfaction with the power of voting. On the other hand, groups such as the Progressive Labor Party make a point of abstaining completely from elections. Finally, many Marxist parties run candidates without regard to their chances of winning, purely as a means of disseminating their message.
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
(and electoral systems in general) has become the modern civics
Civics
Civics is the study of rights and duties of citizenship. In other words, it is the study of government with attention to the role of citizens ― as opposed to external factors ― in the operation and oversight of government....
global-standard. Nevertheless, criticisms of electoral politics continue to come from both within the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
and the developing world. In the Global North, criticism comes primarily from the anarchist, revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
communist, and left-libertarian ends of the political spectrum
Political spectrum
A political spectrum is a way of modeling different political positions by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolizing independent political dimensions....
.
Scholarship
A People's History of the United States, 1492 to Present by Howard ZinnHoward Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
provides a historical analysis of electoral politics as a corporate statist (not his term) mechanism for co-opting grass-roots action and organizing, which primarily has been engendered by discontent with the social effects of disproportionate disposition of economic benefit and risk.
Libertarian criticism
Anarchists and some other libertariansLibertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
typically argue against the legitimacy of political representation although most libertarians accept the concept of delegation
Delegation
Delegation is the assignment of authority and responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities. However the person who delegated the work remains accountable for the outcome of the delegated work. Delegation empowers a subordinate to make decisions, i.e...
. This is primarily due to their belief that majority rule
Majority rule
Majority rule is a decision rule that selects alternatives which have a majority, that is, more than half the votes. It is the binary decision rule used most often in influential decision-making bodies, including the legislatures of democratic nations...
voting systems will erode the liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
of social and political minorities. Libertarians argue that any truly just
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
political system must include voluntary association
Voluntary association
A voluntary association or union is a group of individuals who enter into an agreement as volunteers to form a body to accomplish a purpose.Strictly speaking, in many jurisdictions no formalities are necessary to start an association...
to prevent the oppressive
Oppression
Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...
enforcement of law. Additionally, libertarians argue that the election of representatives creates a priest-class of political administrators while disempowering and alienating
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
the general public, for which voting is a highly mediated form of political engagement that diverts energy away from more effective means of political and social reform (or, for some anarchists, revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
in the form of Direct Action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
). Some libertarians argue that representation is philosophically impossible due to the unique nature of each individual, distinct from social, political, and economic class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
interests.
Social anarchists
Social anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
support consensus-based direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
as an alternative to an electoral system, and direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
as a means to implement decisions made individually or collectively.
Autonomism
Autonomism
Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist communism...
, horizontalism
Horizontalidad
Horizontality or horizontalism is a social relationship that advocates the creation, development and maintenance of social structures for the equitable distribution of management power...
, and "topless federation" are related concepts. There also exists a non-elective procedure for electing a democratic representation
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
called sortition
Sortition
In politics, sortition is the selection of decision makers by lottery. The decision-makers are chosen as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates....
, in which representatives are drawn at random from the citizen population.
Revolutionary Marxist/Communist criticism
Revolutionary communists generally argue against elections under capitalismCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
as being, at best, insufficient for revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
change, and at worst as diverting the personal, economic, and mental resources of the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
individual towards dead end
Dead End
Dead End is a 1937 crime drama film. It is an adaptation of the Sidney Kingsley 1935 Broadway play of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Joel McCrea, and Sylvia Sidney...
politics when that same energy could be used to foment a communist revolution
Communist revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, typically with socialism as an intermediate stage...
and create a proletarian dictatorship. Communists see the global-standard status of elections in the current world as clear evidence that market society has entrenched itself and been, for the moment, completely victorious over armed struggle and other truly grassroots
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
forms of change. For Marxists, the overthrow
Overthrow
Overthrow may refer to:* Overthrow, a change in government, often achieved by force or through a coup.**The 5th October Overthrow, or Bulldozer Revolution, the events of 2000 that led to the downfall of Slobodan Milošević in the former Yugoslavia....
of the entire ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
means not just a seizure of their state power
State power
State power may refer to:*Police power, the capacity of a state to regulate behaviours and enforce order within its territory*Government force, state coercion to induce conforming social results* The extroverted concept of power in international relations...
, but the establishment of an entirely different sort of state, one structured to protect working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
control of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
-- such a fundamental change, it is usually argued, cannot take place within the electoral system of a state designed foremost for the protection of private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
.
This is not, however, a critique of elections in general, and most communists hold that elections of some sort are compatible or even necessary for workers' democracy. Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
argued that a Communist society could only exist with a representative constitution. Election of leaders at the local level and, in turn, for wider leadership on the global level, would to a communist undoubtedly make fully participatory
Participatory democracy
Participatory Democracy, also known as Deliberative Democracy, Direct Democracy and Real Democracy , is a process where political decisions are made directly by regular people...
elections absolutely necessary. However, the difference under such circumstances as compared to capitalism would be that communist elections would reject the representative democracy
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
model as a residual of capitalism; that model, in the view of communists, would make it more likely for the new society to revert back to profit
Profit (economics)
In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total opportunity costs of a venture to an entrepreneur or investor, whilst economic profit In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total...
and the market
Market economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
if fully participatory democracy
Participatory democracy
Participatory Democracy, also known as Deliberative Democracy, Direct Democracy and Real Democracy , is a process where political decisions are made directly by regular people...
were not pursued.
It is also not the case that Marxists necessarily shun capitalist elections altogether. The question of whether fighting for reforms is worthwhile and, if so, how much energy should be devoted to them has been an ongoing debate within Marxism from the beginning, and a broad spectrum of positions has resulted. Communists may consider some reforms within capitalism to be tactically important—a civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
struggle, for instance, may help to overcome divisions that hurt and weaken all workers. In the most extreme cases of "reformism", a party may actively work to curb more "revolutionary" activity, whether out of momentary caution or genuine commitment to other methods—during the 1968 General Strike of France, Marxist and Communist Parties urged workers to return to their jobs, and express their dissatisfaction with the power of voting. On the other hand, groups such as the Progressive Labor Party make a point of abstaining completely from elections. Finally, many Marxist parties run candidates without regard to their chances of winning, purely as a means of disseminating their message.
See also
- Non-votingNon-votingNon-voting is a strategy employed by various radical libertarians and anarchists who wish to promote a free society yet who view voting to be either unethical or impractical...
- Democracy: The God That FailedDemocracy: The God That FailedDemocracy: The God That Failed is a 2001 book by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, containing a series of thirteen essays on the subject of democracy and concluding with the belief that democracy is the primary cause of the decivilization sweeping the world since World War I, and that it must be delegitimized.He...
, a 2001 book by Hans-Hermann HoppeHans-Hermann HoppeHans-Hermann Hoppe is an Austrian School economist of the anarcho-capitalist tradition, and a Professor Emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.-Academic career:...
Further reading
- Valenti, Mark. Elections...or, Cheering for the State
- Larocque, Marc. On primary day, they'll elect to not vote. Boston Globe (February 3, 2008)