Probably not, no.

Anarchists have long maintained a principled critique of representative ‘democracy’ and all of the periphery systems and ideas that it entails considering it simply inadequate to the question of autonomy and free association whilst simultaneously being overwhelmingly rooted in Capitalist relationships of production. Put simply, the choice in representative democracy is one between which specific brand of Capitalism the individual would like and many of the differences are window dressing that have little relationship to the wider social property relations which Anarchists critique.

So, why do people think Anarchists should vote? Generally they fall into one of two camps. Firstly they are those that think voting can be a good form of damage control against a particularly loathsome candidate or party (voting for Macron against Le Pen in France for example or for HRC against Trump in the United States). And the others argue that voting more left wing candidates into office or even giving them more exposure may force the public discourse leftwards and allow more people to give exposure to Anarchist ideas within the framework of ‘acceptable discourse’. Neither of these positions are mutually exclusive and can be used simultaneously but we will deal with them each in turn.

Firstly, the argument of lesser evilism. This is generally used when a candidate that is seen to have an extremely loathsome attitude towards one section of society or another (the working class, Jewish people, African Americans, Latinx people, LGBT+ people etc) or a combination of them. The line of argument generally goes that in order to protect these groups people have a moral duty to vote in the other candidate (generally representative systems are a two horse race). The issue comes with closer examination of the wider systems and the two candidates relationship with them. HRC is famously noted for calling young African American men ‘super predators’, her support for prison slavery and the Democrats at large happily funding ICE with Obama racking up an inordinate amount of deportations in his time as President. Whilst Trump is no doubt an unrepentant bigot and the Republican Party is no doubt an incredibly reactionary force in politics, the Democrats tacitly support many of the same institutions and even further than that, relationships through their policy positions. Take for example the recent end to the government shutdown in the United States, this end to the shutdown was achieved by the Democrats working with the Republicans to approve funding for some of the border wall and for ICE. This is a clear example of a ‘lesser evil’ having a tangible stake in the continuation of policies which are to the detriment of already oppressed people. Its also not unique to the United States, in France a similar farce played out between Le Pen (of the Front National) and Macron (a centrist technocrat) and whilst Macron won has this stopped the racist Parisian police? Has this stopped Macron’s anti-working class policies? Or him telling African nations to just ‘let go’ of the centuries of colonial exploitation by Europe? No, it has not done any of those things. This has happened repeatedly and often enough that it is absolutely no coincidence and why most Anarchists are tied to the idea of No War But Class War and the representative democratic institutions are decidedly favoured on the side of the owning classes and their class warfare against the dispossessed.

The other main reason given is the movement of the overton window leftwards (essentially the range of acceptable discourse trending leftwards). This is a much more tricky to quantify than any actual tangible thing such as the relationship between the supposed lesser evil and the alleged evil and how their politics inform one another but there is some definitive way to answer this question. The general argument goes like this; get ‘left wing’ people or parties elected, they push the debate leftwards and more genuinely anti-capitalist frameworks and analyses can become involved in the public discourse. There is simply two glaring issues with this idea. Firstly, these same people tend to gatekeep more radical voices and provide a more ‘legitimate’ bulwark to them, they essentially neuter any radical movement before they ever really get off the ground and co-opt more radical movements back into their own campaign therefore confusing the message. We saw this with AOC in the United States with her calls to abolish ICE but its replacement with another organisation that would deal with the enforcement of immigration law whereas the more grassroots elements of the movement were calling for the complete abolition of all immigration enforcement (AOC then went on to vote to fund ICE anyway). The other main issue is the dubious claim that they themselves are the ones that push the debate leftwards. This is completely devoid of a real materialist analysis. Sanders has been a sitting senator since 2007 in that time we have only really seen a more polarisation of politics, not a general trending leftwards. Corbyn has been a sitting MP since 1983 and similarly we have only seen a trending rightwards until recently in broader UK politics. The fact of the matter is that they themselves as elected officials have had very little to do with and sort of leftward shift that may have occurred and whats far more likely is that the financial crash of 2007–2008 is the reason for any sort of leftward shift (but I would argue that it has resulted in more polarisation than any sort of meaningful leftward trend in general but that is an essay for another time).

More broadly speaking, politicians are doomed as a vehicle for meaningful change. The systems they are completely invested in dominate their attempts at change and hinder them at every opportunity. This is not a bug of the system at all; conversely, representative democracies function this way intentionally. They are designed so as to maintain the Capitalist relationships of production and consumption by the propertied classes. This in essence makes them poor battlegrounds to conduct class warfare on, giving the propertied classes a home field advantage as the very institutions were set up with their rule in mind and work in their favour. Even if any changes are conducted which positively impact the dispossessed classes they are always open to attack by successive governments which is exactly what has happened in the vast majority of countries where the Social Democracies of the post-war years implemented them (never mind that these vast nationalisation campaigns were regularly set up using the spoils of Imperialism in these European nations). Any sort of meaningful change has to come from the dispossessed working classes and in the places we live and work.

So we come back to where we started, principally with the Anarchist critique of the methods of representative democracy and its relationship with the existing power structures and social property relations. Emma Goldman is famously quoted as saying ‘if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal’ and this is often used to suggest an offhanded dismissal of the systems of democracy. Rather, its speaks to a base understanding that is further than it initially appears and runs the entire length of Anarchist thought from Proudhon to Bonnano. This understanding is that the propertied classes will not cede any concessions through the democratic institutions formed in their favour. Rather, any and all concessions do not come from getting any candidates elected and rather are the result of direct action undertaken by the dispossessed in society. The 8 hour work day, weekends and even the universal healthcare celebrated by western Social Democrats as being the result of elected officials were more thought of in response to the increased militancy of the workers movement and the ever present threat of a revolution. Its also why we have seen these benefits slowly chipped away at since the militancy of the workers movements has dissipated. These are the keys to meaningful change, not participating in the charade of ‘representative democracy’ but rather agitation, education and organisation by the dispossessed classes on behalf of themselves and direct action levelled squarely at the organs of Capital and the State.

The question of voting or not voting is one that personally doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t vote but I don’t particularly care if other people do. What I find more of an issue is the participation in these institutions by people who are supposedly anti-capitalists. Their call is that by organising the more radical elements of the parties they will be able to meaningfully change things in the short term whilst also building for long term success. This is not the case. The parties themselves push to win elections and after they win elections they seek to defend their position. This necessarily will a) take up the bulk of time organising and b) want to stop the parties themselves ‘alienating’ their allies in the Capitalist class. Particularly in the case of Corbyn in the UK where they are on a ‘constant General Election footing’ this is pertinent. People only have limited time and energy and the parties will monopolise both of them and steer them directly back into their own apparatus. This is time and energy that could be used to create radical institutions and organisations that directly challenge the State and Capital. When the inevitable ‘bust’ of the boom bust cycle comes under one of these allegedly ‘left’ parties it will be blamed on Socialism and used as a pretext to undo all of the gains made in the meantime. Without any radical alternatives all of these gains are open to attack which begs the question; were they ever really gains if they can be removed so easily? We urgently need to build genuinely radical alternatives to political parties. Unions focused on class warfare and not cutting deals with management, mutual aid networks organised to reach out to vulnerable people and communities built upon solidarity are all meaningful alternatives that we are squandering the chance to build by being recaptured and redirected into political parties that are ultimately not designed to change anything meaningfully. Class warfare on the bosses terms is doomed to failure.