Gary Rumor’s Anti-Entropic Continuum

I have been criticized by anarchist friends for writing to my congress persons and for participating in electoral politics. But I find direct action to be limiting and ultimately ineffective. What started out as a tactic to use in lieu of access to power through the electoral process has been fetishzed into becoming the only acceptable method of action on the body politic for anarchists?
That is one of the reasons why I am afraid that anarchists are painting themselves into a theoretical corner by such notions. By negating the electoral process entirely they have essentially decided to start from scratch to reinvent the wheel of political process. That may be all fine and well for a sociological experiment but in the world of real power, which is simply shooting your self in the foot. Why would you deny yourself the most readily available method of access to power, simply because it has been corrupted by some?
Is it corrupt on every level? Are we to not participate in any representative process? What about union elections? What about the ballot initiative process that we have in California? Simply because an election is based on majority rule instead of consensus is not a reason to not participate.
I think many anarchists refuse to participate simply because it would blur their sense of identity. Part of what they cling to as a method of defining themselves is this whole fetishistic belief that elections are bad. Consensus is good. Group thing good, majority rule is dictatorial. But is it? Is this oversimplification simply a reaction? I think it is. I think it is an emotional reaction that reflects some immaturity among anarchists. We can and do participate in the politics of our world one way or another, either by giving our power to someone else by refusing to participate, or by using the rather blunt instrument of direct action, which although effective on the level that it costs the power elite money and they have to deploy some of those forces of security, it ultimately has all been incorporated into their methodology of control. What anarchists do in effect is participate in the training exercises for security forces, in anticipation of the real event, an uncontrolled riot where real social forces are released and not the theatrical play of so called direct action on the part of professional anarchists, full time or part time.
No I say we need to take direct action to be what it is, a tactic. We need to act on all levels including that of the ballot, in the majority rule system, either a winner take all as we have in the USA or in a proportional system as we have in most of the rest of the world. We don’t have to become boosters of a party, but we don’t have to refuse to participate at all. But that is again an individual choice. But as others have said before, what if all the anarchists got together and took over a town, say Santa Cruz, California, there should be enough of us to mob that city council. Would you do it? Or would you refuse on principal? Anarchists have only faced that situation on a few occasions, such as in Spain. It is unfortunate that because of the exceptional situation of 1936 Spain that many anarchists have drawn the lesson that participation in government is inherently wrong. I would take the opposite position; to not participate would have been morally reprehensible. I leave it at that.

Tags: Anarchists Participation in Political Process, Anarchists Vote

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 7:37 am and is filed under History, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.