On Voting for Establishment Parties

Imagine you have a political establishment that is hostile to the rule of the masses. Not hard to imagine, is it? Some in this establishment may believe that elite rule is for the benefit of the lower orders, others may believe that the poor must be kept weak or there will be revolution. On both sides of this divide, the establishment seeks to empower itself and the main mode of power in society is the control of wealth. I shall call that establishment the “Decile”.

Now imagine that a country begins as a republic or constitutional monarchy with a limited franchise. This guarantees the rule of the Decile, but over time the Decile is forced to extend the franchise to maintain its legitimacy. Under the famous oligarchic principle of “if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change” the franchise becomes extended by steps to universal suffrage of all adults.

The Decile comes to lead two political parties. One party (“Team A”) broadly follows the principle of controlling paternalism. They believe that they are benevolent to the masses but do not think the masses capable of ruling themselves. Team A also represents a number of oligarchs who believe that their own interests are best served by limiting public discontent. The other party (“Team B”) believes in exerting power over the masses and keeping them weak. Many of them, perhaps a majority, simply believe that their self-interest lies in using the levers of power to take as much wealth as they can from those below them.

Of those eligible electors outside of the Decile, the total of 90% is divided as follows: 30 to 60% will not vote for either party because their interests are not represented; 15-30% will vote for Team A; and roughly the same for Team B. The Decile themselves lean towards Team B, but not decisively.

Team B always governs against the interests of the people but secures support through lies and deception, appealing to indoctrinated irrational motives (racism, nationalism etc.); offering relative privilege to some at the expense of others, or occasionally providing real material benefits to a minority. Team A always campaigns as a party of change and progress, but its real style of government is to embed the practices of Team B through moderation. When they win office they do not make radical change, no matter how radical the previous office-holder was. Instead they soften the impacts and thus ensure that the policies they claim to hate become permanently entrenched.

In the past Team A has mollified the masses with genuine reform, but in the current circumstances Team A eschews meaningful reform of the disenfranchisement, exploitation, and outright criminality of Team B.

The lack of real reform can be put down to several causes. One is that the coercive and surveillance apparatus of the state has raised the level of mobilisation needed for a credible insurrection. The second is likely to stem from a fear that a tipping point of authoritarianism has already passed. Once a regime generates sufficient resentment from those who feel completely alienated from power then reform ceases to anaesthetise the masses and instead empowers their demands. That is a simplification, but it is a general enough historical rule that it will be on the minds of some of the Decile’s intelligentsia. It is important to note that these rational causes may be less than half of the story. The third and most important reason for the end of reform is a growing collective narcissism among the Decile who believe that controlling discourse is the same thing as controlling reality. As they become more effete and overtly aristocratic the Decile lose sight of actual reality and believe that selling people boots that look sturdy but are actually cardboard has the same net affect as selling people sturdy boots. Once they have the cash they don’t concern themselves with the anger they have sown because they are completely contemptuous of ordinary people. Without the current imbalance of real power they would not indulge this delusion, but it is still a delusion.

Of those who vote for Team A, some will benefit from policies and others are deluded into believing the rhetoric. The bulk, though, vote for Team A because Team B is always credibly worse. This has become a very abusive relationship. In the exact manner of a serious abuser Team A, under the clear guidance of its Decile-dominated upper leadership, demands that voters accept their own powerlessness, demands that they accede to things that they oppose and should be able to oppose politically. Because there is no credible party of the people (“Team C”), the cruel calculus forces people to go against their own interests.

The essence of divide and rule is to create subgroups that cannot withstand the coherent power of the ruler, but that is only the beginning. The next step is to use your advantage to force others to give up some of their strength, piece by piece until ultimately they are enslaved or dead. Each time you use your superior power to make an equation where the cost of resistance is or quickly becomes far higher that the immediate coat of acquiescence. This is how you rule an empire. This is how you cleanse a continent and replace its people. This is how you induce people to board the trains to the ghettos, the trains to the concentration camps, the trains to the death camps. You leverage your power to ensure that resistance is dispersed and manageable. At the centre of this practice is the abuser mentality of coercing a hollow form of assent.

The good news for voters is that voting does not have to disempower. People have long allowed the act of voting to tie them to some imagined common purpose, but really that is nothing more than a strange delusion that choosing between masters is a form of democracy. Democracy is the exercise of power by the people and ticking a box is not a substantive exercise of power. No democratic legitimacy is conveyed in an election where obedience to the will of the people is not a possible outcome. We neither consent by voting nor assent by not voting, and none of us belongs to Team A or Team B except if we choose that madness.

In the current circumstances it makes a lot of sense for people to vote for Team A, but it must be done in order to work towards building Team C and not allowing it to be co-opted by the Decile. Sacrifices have to be made for change, but there is no point expecting that people will do so with art election time. Ballot boxes are, by nature, atomising. They make it trivially easy to rule by division, so the real democracy has to occur in the community long before it can show on a voting paper.

Readers are likely to think that this is entirely about the US and its midterms, but it is far more general. Theirs is simply a cleaner, more blatant version of the undemocratic nature of liberal states. In Aotearoa we face the constant struggle of trying to drag the Green Party into Team C and keep them there. Ours is only one of many impending elections and I can only advise voting as much to the left as is practicable. The work doesn’t begin nor end with the election. This is true of the US where the Democrats (who are not a political party as the rest of the world knows it) have the Democratic Socialists of America acting as a sub-party within them.

In the long run, I suspect that what needs to happen in the US is that the left have to break away from the Democrats altogether. For now, though, holding your nose and voting for them in the mid-terms could empower the left in the party. Unlike their last election the campaign has not been run in such a way that a vote for the Democrats is an endorsement of genocide. In fact the currents of politics have made it such that a vote for Democrats is currently more likely to be taken as an endorsement of Zohran Mamdani’s politics. Whatever their flaws, the DSA could form a core of a genuine left alternative. That too will mean further struggle, but struggle is inescapable and at least the contended ground will shift significantly. You might think that the Democrats are too powerful for this to happen, but bear in mind that their power does not extend to popular support. Neoliberal politics (which covers all Western establishment parties) are strong on communications but weak on actual politics. Contrary to political orthodoxy, decades of empty promises count for something in the minds of the electorate.

The Decile works on the principle that There Is No Alternative. That is why the electoral system is a political ratchet, capable of moving only to the right and in the process creating more inequality, social degradation, economic dysfunction, and a slowly environmental disaster with multiple facets. It truly is a polycrisis that cannot be confronted without radical change. There will come a time when ordinary people will reject the hopeless inertia of fake democracy and choose another path. It may involve terrible loss, or may mean on the loss of chains. Either way, we know it will end because the people in charge are detached from reality.