I
It is commonly known that the right of suffrage is one of, if not the shining hallmark of democracy. Its most famous dictum, after all, is that it’s “for the people, by the people.” And with the next presidential election coming just around the corner, the same, usual, discourse about the importance of voting inevitably looms around: countless voter education seminars and social media posts are being conducted to reinforce the supposed importance to the public. Voting is a heavy responsibility for it will dictate the next six years of the country’s status. Or say they say.
For some, the “importance” plays little to no significance to why they vote – they simply vote for the candidate they like without having to check their track record or competency for the position they are running in. This is the most basic characteristic of populist politics, and this is why we need rigid voter’s education programs. But something about the nature of voter’s education doesn’t sit right. Why the need for voter education? It, of course, fits the old narrative that the more educated the voters, the less likely a country will elect incompetent leaders. But the question of why they are uneducated in the first place seems to either buzz over everyone’s head, or is deliberately avoided.
Let’s take a simple phrase that’s widely propagated in liberal democracies: “If you don’t vote, you’re not a responsible citizen.” It’s simple to understand, as I’ve written above: your vote is equal to the next six years of not only your life. But are we not in a “democratic” society? That voting is merely a right, not a responsibility? Isn’t refraining from voting a form of expression in a democratic society? What if there is no candidate worthy to vote? Then how did the stigma of not voting come to be?
We must interrogate the nature and concept of democracy, and if democracy even is possible in a capitalist setting, from a materialist perspective. It is through this, I think, that we can trace the idea of the responsibilisation of voting to the people.
II
Let’s begin with the basic materialist assumption that all ideas are formed by the social conditions of man.[1] In contrast to the idealist view, it does not treat things and even values as eternal or possessing an infinite nature. Man is not inherently greedy, as idealist philosophers and economists have assumed; they are greedy because they have lived in social conditions that thrives and propagates self-preservation and accumulation of wealth. We can infer from this that all ideas are basically conceived in a certain social class. It would be wrong to think that some ideas transcend class and social condition; they are, inevitably, representative of the class that propagates that idea. Philosophers are in the world, not outside of it.[2]
Hence, it follows that the bourgeoisie and the working class have different ideas and conceptions of history. One of the characteristics of bourgeois philosophy is its idealism of eternal truth, freedom, and democracy. Take for example the American Revolution: most people are taught that the US broke free from the British through the revolutionary ideals of the so-called Founding Fathers. But seeing as how these same propagators of freedom, equality, and democracy are slave-owning landlords that have used the ideas of liberalism for launching massacres of Native Americans and eventual imperialism under the guise of “manifest destiny”, we can see that such ideas only serve them, and not all persons, despite them writing that “all men are created equal”. Engels wrote it best:
“We know today that this realm of reason was nothing more than the idealized realm of the bourgeoisie; that eternal justice found its realization in bourgeois justice; that equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the most essential rights of man…”[3]
We can say the same thing about democracy. There are many definitions of democracy, but it’s most famous dictum is what I’ve written in the beginning: that it is a system “for the people, by the people.” The question is, for whom and by whom? Atillio Boron in his article The Truth About Capitalist Democracy outlined three main points as to why democracy cannot be fully realized in a capitalist setting: 1) Democracy cannot and will not thrive in a system that propagates economic inequality, for it must presuppose a system that is socially, economically, and politically equal; 2) The ideals of democracy cannot be properly exercised when the dominant class owns the systems that condemn people from acquiring education, healthcare, and other services and protection and; 3) The supposed “uncertainty” of elections is an erroneous concept, for we have seen that time and time again, winners of elections are usually expected.[4] It is also worth wondering how there is no general election or plebiscite when it comes to other economic alternatives beside capitalism; or perhaps there are none?[5]
True democracy in a capitalist setting, most especially in the semi-colonial and semi-feudal Philippines, is nothing but an illusion. It is for the ruling class, and by the ruling class.
III
Capitalism does a very good job of enforcing responsibility to the individual in order to divert them from pinpointing the actual causes of their suffering. Mark Fisher wrote that even mental illnesses are considered as purely internal problems, and that the only solution is to buy expensive medication from pharmaceutical companies, without ever questioning the causation of said illnesses, often springing from the failures of capitalism.[6] By the same idea, voting and elections enforce the responsibility to the people, so they get to be blamed when all goes to hell. Funnily enough, the same, contradictory, liberal ideas are what enabled the vile and reactionary to occupy seats in power. They allow them for the simple reason that they have the right and ability to do so. And yet, it’s still the people’s fault for voting for them.
This isn’t to say that there is no more hope for democracy. Democracy does and will work once it won’t be confined to the interest of the ruling class. The more we speak of abstract concepts like freedom of expression and the “equality” of men, the more we isolate ourselves from the true, material conditions of the country that has suffered long and hard at the hands of the ruling elite and those who enable them. There is no sense in stigmatizing, or even in the general idea that “not voting is bad”, when the very people who are voting are not given an opportunity to present who they actually want to vote (most likely one that legitimately represents them), and are forced to choose from a selection of candidates, usually belonging from the ruling class, that the Commission on Elections deliberately allowed to run. Elections have worked in favor of capitalism, in maintaining the status quo, and of course, the ruling class.
To conclude, not voting is an act of expression of opinion; it carries the same idea with voting. Not voting is better than voting the so-called “lesser evil.” Not voting is better than voting anyone who only represents the interests of the ruling class. When you are handed with candidates that you did not choose, would that still count as free and democratic?
References
[1] Georges Politzer, Elementary Principles of Philosophy, Foundations #17 (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021).
[2] Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 4th ed. (New York: International Publishers, 1978).
[3] Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, First Edition. (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), 40.
[4] Atilio Boron, “The Truth about Capitalist Democracy,” Socialist Register 42 (2006), accessed February 24, 2022, https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5842.
[5] Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester, U.K.: Zero Books, 2009).
[6] Mark Fisher, “Good For Nothing,” The Occupied Times, 2014, accessed February 24, 2022, https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=12841.