Over the years I’ve come to appreciate what many anarchists have known for a long time: parliament is an extremely useful tool for defusing democracy and channelling real struggles into safe dead-ends.
Many Last Straw readers know the score. They know that on Saturday in New Zealand’s General Election the vote they have represents an extremely limited form of democracy.
They generally know, sub-consciously or consciously, that parliament is a hierachical institution and that no matter what their diverse views may be on how society should be run, many of those views will never be represented by the political and economic elite, if for no other reason that investors and speculators (fat cats) bankroll many politicians and ultimately hold a veto over any general election, by threat of pulling their money out of the country. It’s a democracy, but there’s only one right answer.
So, it’s a long shot, voting, but if you’re going to do it there is just one party that demonstrates seriousness, vision and pragmatism about the future we all face and and that’s the Green Party. You need only compare their policies with the policies of other parties (or the lack thereof) to realise this. There is also an aspect of the Greens that goes a little way to helping me overcome my aversion to parliamentary democracy.
Appropriate Decision-making:
For the implementation of ecological wisdom and social responsibility, decisions will be made directly at the appropriate level by those affected.
This is one of four items of the founding document of the Green Party and, the way I read it, means the eventual dismantling of parliament with new participatory economic and political institutions taking its place. Cher.
So, if you’re going to vote on Saturday, remember your actions have consequences. If you want to live in a New Zealand where its people will be at war with each other; a country where you can open the paper each day and feel the bigotry and resentment flow then you need to vote National or NZ First.
If you’re not up for voting against your interests, or the interests of coming generations, then give your party vote to the Greens. Or you might like to follow Matt McCarten’s advice in September 11th’s The Herald on Sunday, explaining how to vote tactically for a centre-left Government:
There is no doubt that this election is close and no one wants to waste their vote. I’m constantly asked by people how they should use their two votes to ensure a centre-left government. In the partisan interest of helping the centre-left I offer the following tactical guide to killing the right at this election.
Obviously Labour needs to get over 40 per cent of the party vote to have any chance to govern. From their point of view they would like to get to 45 per cent. You can add Jim Anderton to their number. But they will still need the Greens. As I say to soft Green supporters who are thinking of voting Labour, if Labour gets 44 per cent of the party vote and the Greens get 5 per cent of the party vote, that equals 49 per cent. That means that with Anderton they can govern. But if Labour gets 44.1 per cent and the Greens get 4.9 per cent, that equals 44.1 per cent. Let me spell it out even clearer: If the Greens go under 5 per cent they get no seats in parliament at all and Brash becomes Prime Minister. So if you’re a soft Green or an independent and want a Labour-Green government, you should give your party vote to the Greens. If you’re a die-hard Labourite then, of course, vote Labour.
More worryingly for the centre-left, Winston has been trying to come back into the game in the past few days. Winston’s position is that he will support either National or Labour on the basis of which of them gets the most seats. This is music to National’s ears and validates their election strategy to go for broke to win the entire centre-right bloc’s party vote. It meant killing Act, but it’s not like Act supporters have anyone else to vote for. The National campaign is now to get more party votes than Labour. If they achieve this, Brash gets Peter Dunne and New Zealand First and that’s enough to govern on current polling.
Therefore, it would be a dangerous thing now for National to tell Epsom voters to swing in behind Rodney Hide. If they do, then Act sympathisers who are currently supporting National outside Epsom will realise their party vote won’t be wasted. They will see that if Rodney wins Epsom they can swing back to Act who could then get 3-4 per cent of the party vote. But all of that vote comes directly off National in the all-important party vote. Winston and Dunne then are duty bound to support Labour in Government. So, sorry, Rodney, if National wants to win, it means you are history.
Normally the electorate vote has no meaning, but it does in this election. Tariana Turia, Anderton, Dunne and Peters all hold seats and if they win, all their party votes will count and their supporters may well determine the outcome.
So this is how you vote to keep out the right if you are a voter in the following electorates.
Wigram: Labour needs Anderton to win his seat so give him your electorate vote. But his Progressive Party isn’t rating more than 0.5 per cent, so any party vote for his party is wasted. Give it to either Labour or the Greens.
Tauranga: Winston will back Brash if he gets back and National gets more votes. Even if he backs Labour he’ll stop any progressive policy being advanced. If Winston loses the seat and NZ First goes under 5 per cent in the party vote, then Winston and all his MPs go down. Therefore, you hold your nose and give your electorate vote to the National candidate so Winston loses Tauranga.
Epsom: If Hide can’t win this seat then Act is finished. Labour needs to let their supporters tactically vote for Richard Worth.
Ohariu-Belmont: Dunne is safe here, but if he has no other MPs after the election then he will be able to be ignored. Don’t vote for United Future as they will go with National if they can.
Te Tai Haururu: Tariana Turia is safe here. Current polling suggests the Maori Party can nationally get only one or two MPs off their party list, but given that they will win four electorates, at least, all their party votes will be wasted. The Maori Party will not support National and recent polls show that Labour may well need the Maori Party. Maori seat voters should give their electorate vote to the Maori Party electorate candidate. That way the Maori Party will win all seven seats and lock Brash out of government. Maori voters should give their party vote to the Greens. after all, if the Greens get back they will be in government. Having an ally around the cabinet table would be a good thing.
If the left votes strategically then they should win, even it’s tight.
I blogged on this very question recently. Here it is:
With all the sound and fury of our political process, it manages to happen that no one ever seriously addresses the most pressing problems of our age. We fight endlessly over how to manage those problems, but rarely give even lip-service to solving them. And when we do give lip-service, that’s the end of it. (Talk is usually intended to replace action, because within our political culture they are generally interchangable.)
Though I have some power as a citizen over political outcomes through the electoral process, voting provides no leverage whatsoever over the political culture itself, which is deeply flawed and fundamentally non-democratic. If no viable candidate is proposing real solutions to our most pressing problems, and anyone who does is completely marginalized by the political culture, then our system denies me the only options I would consider worth voting for. Meanwhile, if I get drawn into the fractious fray of politics-as-usual I allow myself to get distracted by the hubbub and lend my support, at least in principle, to the charade.
The classic objection to this line of reasoning argues that if people with important ideas and powerful solutions don’t participate in the electoral process, things will only get worse, not better. But this argument overlooks a key fact: the system itself is heavily biased against solving the world’s most pressing problems. At best, we will become more adept at managing those problems, but we will never seriously approach solving them.
This is true for the simple reason that elites (who, by definition, have most of the power) have organized our system to maintain their own hold on power. Solving the most pressing problems directly threatens their hold on power. Predictably, elites will do (and have done) everything they can to resist and subvert those kinds of solutions. Of course, this line of logic scathingly condemns our system as, at best, a poor cousin to real democracy–and, so, runs counter to the mythology we have relentlessly drummed into our heads since childhood.
What are the most pressing problems? To keep it simple, I reduce it to three (though this is quite an over-simplification, of course): poverty (sharp disparities of wealth), war (epidemic violence), and ecological negligence. No one in power in this country has spoken seriously about solving the problem of poverty, ending war, or radically reducing our impacts on the environment. Anyone who does is considered some kind of fruitcake and is immediately dismissed (if ever acknowledged in the first place).
Nevertheless, the price of not solving these problems continues to rise, and has become perilous. It is entirely reasonable to worry that our failure to solve these probelms, and soon, will spell the collapse of human civilization. At the very least, it’s pure folly to pretend we are at no serious risk. But never mind, the political culture that serves our elites continues to churn away, as we remain oblivious to the tsunami of troubles mounting at our backs.
In this context, my power as a citizen to choose politicians who have no intention of solving these problems, or to choose well-meaning but ineffectual candidates, fails to impress. Instead, I am choosing to remain above the fray. My message to you (and to power, were they listening (they’re not)): we don’t need smarter politicians or better initiatives, we need a different system, one that solves key problems and subverts the accumulation of power into the hands of relatively small and unfailingly greedy elites.
The problem is that while the solutions look easy to many uneducated citizens they are not simple. Taking a simple action like let’s say giving morphine to people in pain results in unintended consequences like people selling it to others to get them high.
For example the most workable solutions to environmental damage would be at the cost of the poor (take for example petrol tax which is hugely regressive) and would thus increase poverty. Alsao almost any drastic change to how the economy works would result in poverty as the system adjusted.
Similarly a extremely progressive tax system (for example one that resulted in us all earning the same wage plus or minus 30%) would result in certain types of people going overseas and others not coming here unless you could force your neighbors to have similar tax policies. NZ doesn’t have much chance of being directly involved in a war but that is in a large part because we have strong allies and buffer states (and quite a bit of water). But in he wider scheme of things one needs some sort of system that prevents war from being profitable and that comes down to other countries being willing to go to war if required.
> It is entirely reasonable to worry that our failure to solve these problems, and soon, will spell the collapse of human civilization.
I can see how the war option might cause this. It would seem to depend on one of two things
1) The invention of a new super weapon and that weapon falling into the hands of someone very nasty.
2) China deciding it wanted to annex the USA or equivalent
I don’t think the poverty one can cause that problem and the environmental damage probably can’t either because at worst we would just have to wear various things to protect us from the results of the pollution.