democracy

Anarchy Bang - Introducing Episode 40 – Democracy

This episode is going to be a bit meta. Anarchists have been critiquing the hell out of Democracy for about a decade, following in the footsteps of the best of the anti-state communist world. Peak critique was Crimethinc’s 10 part series on Democracy, The Party’s Over, which we'll refer to a lot for this weeks discussion. Despite being boring, it speaks around some interesting points. It’s all about police, presidents, and majorities whereas I hope this episode will be more about high-minded principles, concepts, and orders of operations. Do we still think in 20th century abstractions or has the internet, postmodernism, and social (media) reality make those discussions seem a little quaint? All this and more on Sunday at noon PST

A Workers’ Party and Elections or Class Struggle?

From zabalaza.net

The Question of State Power and the Anarchists’ Answer

The question of state government elections and running a Workers or Socialist political party continues to be raised in the working class movement and the Left globally. As we may know, there was excitement about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party in Britain, left political parties in certain parts of Europe and Latin America and, more recently, certain shifts to more centrist positions in the United States amongst a section of the Democratic Party calling themselves “Democratic Socialists”. In South Africa, many workers and some activists seem cautiously optimistic by NUMSA’s[1] formation of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party that will seek to participate in the 2019 general elections.

Do Anarchists Vote in State Elections?

It obviously depends on the individual anarchist whether or not they choose to participate in the political process, but I'm writing this piece to point out that the act of voting in state elections stands in direct contradiction with anarchy. If an anarchist chooses to vote, that action has nothing to do with furthering anarchy or anarchist principles. No anarchist worth their salt would pressure other anarchists into voting for their favorite politician.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - democracy