Abstentionism vs electoralism

[Young Master Smeet]

ALB wrote:

how our candidates in elections should answer the "Acacia Avenue Question", 

With the same answer as the Schleswig Holstein question: only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.

[Young Master Smeet]

Back to the motion before conference: it does not seek to set up abstentionism as a principle, but a tactic: one which can be changed at any point, I think the main thing is to prevent a lone councillor or anything of that sort.  Once we get to a stage where we could be a significant minority, or a practical majority on any particular body, we can change the tactic.  There is no benefit to the working class in being outvoted in the chamber.

[Anonymous]

twc wrote:

The distinction should be clear to socialists.For example, the WSP of Australia always took the occasion to register a vote for World Socialism, to which all capitalist issues are subservient, and find their resolution.In the absence of (1) a world socialist candidate or (2) a referendum/plebicite on world socialism, write           WORLD SOCIALISM across your ballot paper.    “If you ain’t going to vote for it,     You ain’t going to fight for it,     It ain’t going to happen.”

What about the absence of a Socialist Party?  The Companion Parties of the WSM only exist in a few countries, and they carry the name of the countries where they exist, such as Great Britain, Canada, USA, Australia, and India. What about all of them calling themselves as Socialist Party, or World Socialist Movement? 

[twc]

Unless registered, the name “Socialist Party” gets hijacked by the big boys of the capitalist left.  That happened in Australia.All companion parties (adding New Zealand to the list) do assert belonging to the “World Socialist Movement”.Hence, don’t abstain, but write “World Socialism”—or, as you imply, “World Socialist Movement”—across the ballot paper.  That’s our sole political stance, to which all else in politics, like imagined “capitalist concessions” such as bike lanes, are essentially inconsequential, no matter how passionately desired.Should bike lanes ever become a political object of desire above World Socialism—or misconceived as a concessionary political precursor to World Socialism—the universal rule of “return on investment”, i.e. of capital, smiles condescendingly in political triumph over World Socialism.

[twc]

ajj wrote:

Italy makes a spoiled paper a crime.

Surely not in the act?  I thought, in the act, it was a secret ballot.

[alanjjohnstone]

TWC, well spotted.  i was even more incorrect due to my misreading. Spoiling your ballot is not crime at all in ItalyBut i still await an answer to what we will do when the ballot paper and pencil is done away with and from what i see, the only alternaative with electronic voting being proposed is a None Of The Above option.

[ALB]

We've had this doscussion before. If there's is no provision to not vote for any of the parties or candidates, then the only alternative is to "spoil" the voting machine, i.e., start the process of voting and walk away without completing it.  The polling clerk will then have to do something before anyone else can use that machine. I can add that when I voted in Belgium once they did have a provision to cast a blank vote (and to do that in either French or Dutch).

[alanjjohnstone]

If they did introduce such a system of machine voting, ALB, i'd imagine Parliament would have a period of consultation and invite opinions. Isn't that the usual approach to such things?Should the Party formally make a submission that such a measure as a facility for a blank vote is included in the technology, in your view as a member of the election committee involved directly in such affairs?Or would that be succumbing to reformism, which may be the conclusion of some members…we would be guilty of petitioning the State for an improvement in bourgeois democracy?

[ALB]

In 2003 a pilot scheme for electronic voting took place in ten councils, including Norwich. At the time we wrote to the authorities protesting that there was no provision to not vote for any of the candidates. The correspondence must be somewhere at Head Office. In any event, the upshot was that e-voting was not proceded with.Here's an extract from amusing account of how a comrade in Australia struggled with electronic voting with no option to not to vote for anyone  and where voting is compulsory:

Quote:

This informal voter subsequently wrote to the Federal Electoral Commissioner of the AEC asking what provision was there, in the Federal Electoral Act Regulations pertaining to electronic voting, for a deliberate informal vote. I will not bore the reader by dwelling on the reply I received from the Electoral Commissar, suffice to say that like a non-vote, it was a non-answer; however the last paragraph of the letter contains an eye opener for it says – that if an elector made an informal vote by not selecting any candidates or by not allocating preferences to all candidates, then the electronic voting system alerts the elector that the necessary number of selections have not been made. So potential informalites be warned that unless you express a vote for a candidate on the electronic device, you will be stuck in a quarrel with a machine telling you that 'your vote is invalid, please try again'. (No doubt after three attempts the Polling Station electronic device will start flashing a light to alert Electoral Office Rottweilers to the fact that there is an un-Australian in their midst and they should take appropriate action!).

That's the point at which you walk away.

[Bijou Drains]

ALB wrote:

We've had this doscussion before. If there's is no provision to not vote for any of the parties or candidates, then the only alternative is to "spoil" the voting machine, i.e., start the process of voting and walk away without completing it.  The polling clerk will then have to do something before anyone else can use that machine. I can add that when I voted in Belgium once they did have a provision to cast a blank vote (and to do that in either French or Dutch).

Perhaps the answer is to despoil the voting machine, by pulling the curtains shut and having a little tom tit in the corner, that would get the message across, whatever the langauge.

[rodmanlewis]

ALB wrote:

That's not entirely true. There are a number of benefits than can be obtained for workers even under capitalism (not just by trade union action), e.g. health & safety laws. repeal of anti-union laws, less restrictions on meetings and publications, voting against a war. If world socialists elected to office, locally or nationally, are going to abstain on such issues, what's the difference between that and the "Sinn Fein" tactic of not taking their seat?

But why should we help workers who resolutely choose to continue to vote for the continuation of the conditions they later fight against? Of course, most workers haven't come across the socialist case, but those who do and reject it should have to learn to stew in their own juice.

[Anonymous]

rodmanlewis wrote:

But why should we help workers who resolutely choose to continue to vote for the continuation of the conditions they later fight against? Of course, most workers haven't come across the socialist case, but those who do and reject it should have to learn to stew in their own juice.

in solidarity with our class. Because we are workers ourselves, not set apart from the every day class struggle and not elitist arrogants.

[jondwhite]

For our own self interest as workers

[robbo203]

rodmanlewis wrote:

 But why should we help workers who resolutely choose to continue to vote for the continuation of the conditions they later fight against? Of course, most workers haven't come across the socialist case, but those who do and reject it should have to learn to stew in their own juice.

 Taking that attitude though is not going to encourage them to see the error of their ways.  I fully agree with ALB on this.  Socialists should contest elections solely on a socialist ticket but, in office and whilst still a minority, should consider voting in favour of certain  reforms on the basis of their merits in benefitting the workers, however temprarily.  Needless to say this does not mean advocating such reforms as per the old Second International's  minimum programme. History has decisively demonstrated that you cannot ultimately put forward both a mimum (reformist)  and maximum (revolutionary) programme and by the very nature of things the former will prevail at the expense of the latter

[twc]

robbo203 wrote:

Socialists…, in office and whilst still a minority, should consider voting in favour of certain reforms on the basis of their merits in benefitting the workers, however temporarily.  

Capitalism can’t be reformed to benefit workers without threatening its very own conditions of existence—capital acting as capital, i.e. private capitalist-class return on investment dominating all social practice,  i.e. dominating the working class.By what criterion can anyone judge that a “reform” will bring “benefit”, to the working class, when the entire social system reproduces itself by exploiting the working-class?Capital necessarily reproduces itself to the detriment, not to the benefit of the working class!The process of capitalist reproduction ensures that its conditions of continued repetitive existence are necessarily self-correcting, self adjusting, self adapting.In short, if you temporarily weaken capital, it systemically reacts and survives, because society must function and, under capital’s domination, society must function on its terms of existence, or not at all.And because capital adapts to its very own nature, any temporary “benefit” to its class enemy necessarily succumbs to capital’s own necessity.The class struggle, fought out under capitalist conditions, of capital simply acting out its very own inflating self—expanding itself through employing the working class—cannot permanently be won against it on a field it already controls.If working-class benefits, that threaten capital’s ability to expand itself, could be won under capitalist dominant conditions, why Socialism?

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