GUEST – Not A Party

Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist magazine in 1982.

Act Responsibly: Don’t Vote! That’s not a bumper sticker you’re likely to see in coming weeks. Instead the ballot will be revered like a religious object and voting will be declared a duty. But what if the ballot is just one more government form to fill out? What if the most politically powerful act is to say “no” by tearing the form in half?

This November, most people won’t “do it” in the voting booth despite attempts to shame them. They will spend the time on activities that enrich their lives: buying groceries, playing with children, catching up on work. Even the recent primary, which was supposed to reflect a galvanized and outraged Democratic Party, drew only about 11.4 percent of those eligible to vote. The Republican primary fared worse with a record low turnout of about 6.6 percent.

If war itself can’t motivate people to put a checkmark in a box, it is time to consider non-voting from a radically different perspective. Maybe non-voters are right. After all, if most people refuse to buy a product with which they’re acquainted, do you blame them or the product? Politicians have only themselves to blame if people are not buying what they sell.

The knee-jerk response is to accuse non-buyers of apathy. In many cases, this may be true but it isn’t the non-voter’s fault if he thinks a ballot is irrelevant to his life. Gerrymandered voting districts that almost ensure results, preppy and prepped candidates, a two-party system that restricts access to alternate voices, candidates in debt to corporate sponsors and lobbyists, campaign promises that dissolve, corrupt procedures which make many believe Al Gore is the rightfully-elected President. The notoriously corrupt New York politician Boss Tweed once said, “You may elect whatever candidates you please to office, if you will allow me to select the candidates.” In short, by the time names are on the ballot, the fix is in. And apathy becomes a reasonable response.

Non-voting is a gauge of how deeply alienated the average person is from the political establishment. Sometimes political disgust converts non-voting from an act of indifference to one of protest through which people express a word that all politicians fear: “no.” Not just “no” to them but to the entire process.

Everyone who chuckles at the old joke, “Don’t vote, it only encourages them,” connects on some level with the idea of making a statement through consciously not voting. But, for most non-voters, such protest if it exists at all is on an emotional level. That is, a sense of disgust or disillusionment with the system makes them shy away from participating in it.

Those for whom non-voting is conscious statement of protest generally argue as follows:

The check mark or the punched chad on a ballot means “yes” it is the consent you give to the electoral process by virtue of participating. No wonder all candidates agree on one point: you should vote. They are like religious leaders who urge you to worship at the church of your choice. First and foremost, politicians want you to sanction the process by which they acquire power and money because, without that sanction, they have no legitimacy.

It is commonly said, “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome.” The opposite is true. By playing the game, voters agree to the rules. Only those who don’t play and withhold their consent have a right to complain about the outcome, especially since the winner will have his hand in the non-voter’s pocket.

Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician’s ear: “You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.”

Non-voting has a rich and long history through which the dissenting electorate has expressed everything from religious convictions to political cynicism. That history has been conspicuously ignored. If people truly believe voting is important, they should use their mouths to do more than insult non-voters and utter election slogans. They should discuss and debate the issue with those who disagree.

Act Responsibly: Don’t Vote!

Larken Rose is an anarchist author best known for challenging the IRS to answer questions about the federal tax liability of citizens, and being put in prison with no questions answered.

Most people believe that “government” is necessary, though they also acknowledge that “authority” often leads to corruption and abuse. They know that “government” can be inefficient, unfair, unreasonable and oppressive, but they still believe that “authority” can be a force for good. What they fail to realize is that the problem is not just that “government” produces inferior results, or that “authority” is often abused. The problem is that the concept itself is utterly irrational and self-contradictory. It is nothing but a superstition, devoid of any logical or evidentiary support, which people hold only as a result of constant cult-like indoctrination designed to hide the logical absurdity of the concept, It is not a matter of degree, or how it is used; the truth is that “authority” does not and cannot exist at all, and failure to recognize that fact has led billions of people to believe things and do things that are horrendously destructive. There can be no such thing as good “authority”– in fact, there is no such thing as “authority” at all. As strange as that may sound, it can easily be proven.

In short, government does not exist. It never has and it never will. The politicians are real, the soldiers and police who enforce the politicians’ will are real, the buildings they inhabit are real, the weapons they wield are very real, but their supposed “authority” is not. And without that “authority,” without the right to do what they do, they are nothing but a gang of thugs. The term “government” implies legitimacy – it means the exercise of “authority” over a certain people or place. The way people speak of those in power, calling their commands “laws,” referring to disobedience to them as a “crime,” and so on, implies the right of” government” to rule, and a corresponding obligation on the part of its subjects to obey. Without the right to rule (”authority”), there is no reason to call the entity “government,” and all of the politicians and their mercenaries become utterly indistinguishable from a giant organized crime syndicate, their “laws” no more valid than the threats of muggers and carjackers. And that, in reality, is what every “government” is: an illegitimate gang of thugs, thieves and murderers, masquerading as a rightful ruling body.

(The reason the terms “government” and “authority” appear inside quotation marks throughout this book is because there is never a legitimate right to rule, so government and authority never actually exist. In this book such terms refer only to the people and gangs erroneously imagined to have the right to rule.)

All mainstream political discussion – all debate about what should be “legal” and “illegal,” who should be put into power, what “national policy” should be, how “government” should handle various issues – all of it is utterly irrational and a complete waste of time, as it is all based upon the false premise that one person can have the right to rule another, that “authority” can even exist. The entire debate about how “authority” should be used, and what “government” should do, is exactly as useful as debating how Santa Claus should handle Christmas. But it is infinitely more dangerous. On the bright side, removing that danger – the biggest threat that humanity has ever faced, in fact – does not require changing the fundamental nature of man, or converting all hatred to love, or performing any other drastic alteration to the state of the universe. Instead, it requires only that people recognize and then let go of one particular superstition, one irrational lie that almost everyone has been taught to believe. In one sense, most of the world’s problems could be solved overnight if everyone did something akin to giving up the belief in Santa Claus.

Any idea or proposed solution to a problem that depends upon the existence of “government,” and that includes absolutely everything within the realm of politics, is inherently invalid. To use an analogy, two people could engage in a useful, rational discussion about whether nuclear power or hydroelectric dams are the better way to produce electricity for their town. But if someone suggested that a better option would be to generate electricity using magic pixie dust, his comments would be and should be dismissed as ridiculous, because real problems cannot be solved by mythical entities, Yet almost all modem discussion of societal problems is nothing but an argument about which type of magic pixie dust will save humanity. All political discussion rests upon an unquestioned but false assumption, which everyone takes on faith simply because they see and hear everyone else repeating the myth: the notion that there can be such a thing as legitimate “government.”

The problem with popular misconceptions is just that: they are popular. When any belief – even the most ridiculous, illogical belief – is held by most people, it will not feel unreasonable to the believers. Continuing in the belief will feel easy and safe, while questioning it will be uncomfortable and very difficult, if not impossible. Even abundant evidence of the horrendously destructive power of the myth of “authority,” on a nearly incomprehensible level and stretching back for thousands of years, has not been enough to make more than a handful of people even begin to question the fundamental concept. And so, believing themselves to be enlightened and wise, human beings continue to stumble into one colossal disaster after another, as a result of their inability to shake off the most dangerous superstition: the belief in “authority.”

The Most Dangerous Superstition