Anarchists & Elections
A brief response to this whole drama around Bij1 and the different statements.
What would be of anarchist space if drama wouldn't overflow every single time there are elections?
And of course, The Netherlands couldn't be an exception. Okay, let's go down to the mud-battle.
This whole discussion shouldn't be this passionate and hard, seriously. Parliaments live for around 4 years, that's grossly 1460 days between a national election and the following. And voting takes around 10 minutes, at least there in NL.
Does voting changes anything? Positively? Little things, very little ones. Negatively? Not so many neither, if you are doing your job right.
Here's the reasoning. Voting for the most extermist far-left party you can find that takes a vote in parliament, is a seat less for the fascists and the capitalist sitting in >open< power. Voting for those reformists parties has the highest economical impact on the pockets of those elected...and their trusted man that will get a salary as advisors or some crap like that.
For the rest? For the common and the people? Very little, some tiny more protection here, some progressive tax form there and that's it. No revolution, utopia or whatsoever.
But hear me well, those tiny little things, those insufficient changes and improvals for the workers and the commons is in the end a few people suffering less, not dying due to absolute poverty and so on.
Bear with me, out of 1460 days, out of the 10 minutes that takes to vote, a few more people >might< live a bit better and most likely a fewer fascists will have a platform where to spit their bile. I wouldn't say no to that, honestly. I can't show pride in saying out loud that I'm not using a tool that avoids my same kind to suffer.
But, and here comes the big BUT.
When those leftists/social-democrats parties reach power we all know what happens next: people tend to relax. This applies to both those leftist that engage openly with the parliamentary system, the ones that do it for practical reasons and those who don't. And we all know why this happens: the critique on a leftist goverment is harder, the problem can vary from seeing such goverment as your goverment, seeing them as allies or simply because the difference gap is smaller and then, the dialectics needs to be more precise. So, it's harder to raise critique, it's harder to mobilize and push for further change, less people act and over time, tragedy arrives. The situation gets worse: leftists parties go in power with big promises, later on they betray the vast majority of them, people get tired of those magicians and kick them out of power at the next elections, the right wing gets back in power, people suffer their new cuts and repression laws, the radicals take the streets to defend ground and we pay a high price in blood and freedom.
And we've been in this dynamic for too long and the anarchists are not doing their/our part in avoiding it.
So, what then? The 1459 days start. Or if you preffer another approach, life goes on. Our duties to push and reach anarchist utopia is still there. Our duty for spreading our principals and "program" is still there. There's plenty of work to be done and insufficient hands for it...and the climate clock is ticking.
It's a matter of principle to convince people to mobilize, to take control of their lifes, to confront the opinions rising from the different sources of power, to make sacrificies and efforts (in their own capacities) that lead to a self-responsible society that's willing to take self-care of their own future and build a new form of society where no longer the different forms of opressions that we suffer today exist any more.
And the recipe for it ain't that hard. Words, principles and theories allow us to understand each other and help us in praxis. But it's known that the rest of the commons that are not with us yet will grip the most with our principles and practices by showing of good examples of our practices. And that's the hardest since it implies and huge amount of work that time over time is precise and correct. But that's the thing, it's our commiment/duty as active anarchist to do so, otherwise, we are simply destroying what our beloved word anarchy tends to represent for the most of us.
That's our day by day duty and that's what we should be using our energy on. Spitting to each other faces and accussing each other of whatever crap DOES NOT MAKES US WALK TOWARDS UTOPIA. Having heated discussions and draining our limited energies over a power system that we do not necessarily engage with is counter-productive. It's not so damn hard. Let's be smart about this shit for once and let's move on.
Or even seeing from other way around, wasting so much energy on something that for us can, >at most<, represent a 10 minutes action over a course of 1460 days it's one of the most stupid things we can do, because the endless loop of discussion and hate-relation we have with parliaments and the different dynamics they produce won't get broken in this forum, but ulterly changing the society (by both word and action, but specially by action as explained before) into one that has the right soil to overcome opressions.
PS: sorry for the incorrect grammar and subordinate sentences abuse.