Socialist Standard No. 1394 October 2020

[PartisanZ]

• Editorial: Beyond the false choice
• Pathfinders: Capitalism by gaslight
• US elections: The lesser-evil fallacy
• Cooking the Books
• Letters
• Socialism is not a Dream. It can be Reality. It’s up to You…
• Material World: Hair is big money
• Enough food for all
• US elections: capitalism or capitalism?
• Capitalism: incompatible with democracy
• Anti-imperialism is not anti-capitalism
• Conflicts in Hong Kong
• Proper Gander: Radio Ga-Ga
• Reviews
• 50 Years Ago: Black Power
• Meetings
• Rear View

[PartisanZ]

Naom Chomsky has replied to the criticism of him in this article:

“ Some truth to it, but wrongly put. I’ve never adopted the curious new concept of “lesser evil voting” and have argued strenuously that even raising the notion, as is done here, is a sellout to the establishment. For the left, politics is activism, daily. Every once in a while an event comes along called an “election.” A genuine leftist asks whether some candidate is so awful that it’s worth taking a few minutes to vote against them, and if it is, does so, and the goes back to work.”

[alanjjohnstone]

Kudos to RobertS who tries to e-mail those cited or quoted in SS articles. Chomsky’s reply arguing for the “lesser awful” is in response to RobertS

[ALB]

The Lesser Awful argument, I like it. Perhaps we should adopt it instead of the Lesser Evil so as to avoid any theological implications.

Actually, Chomsky’s argument here is not as straightforward as he is suggesting as it’s not just voting against the Most Awful candidate but voting for the one of the other awful candidates more likely to defeat him. In fact, voting for them even if there’s a candidate standing who you might not consider awful at all.

[Bijou Drains]

Also Chomsky does not include his encouraging others and campaiging for others to vote for the less or least awful candidate, which distracts from the “going back to work”

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