is it really so wrong for me not to vote?

[Mr. Tea]

Great post, @wild greens. I agree that this thing of rather performatively "rejecting the system" doesn't achieve much beyond giving the person doing it a sense of superiority.

 

[DannyL]

Dude, just for the record I was counting myself in the above points. I just get Third's cynicism and I appreciate it. I like the fact he has a different perspective which I'm 100% sure reflects a different class and race background to the other posters here.
I'm still a Labour voter though much more to the centre than most others here, I'm just fairly cynical about what it will achieve and think electoral strategy should go with the tried and tested. (Off topic point - I'd be happy to be proven wrong here . but to do so I'd like to be told how Labour will win in Tory seats that not just that a left wing candidate pushed the vote share higher).

You make some really good points and I actually agree with most of what you've written but you miss what I'm pointing at - the way that hatred of the Tories is a kinda high, and that leaves the people so locked into that perspective with a total inability to understand why someone would vote Tory. I can't see circumstances where I'd vote for them but I don't think the people who do vote for them do so 'cos they're fucking thick which is the rhetoric you hear all the time on the Left. The way we talk about Brexit voters is the same.

 

[DannyL]

I should probably add the current bunch of Tories are a particularly extreme bunch as we all know. They've booted out all the moderates but there is a a tradition of less insane and cuntish Tory politicians, the old patrician Conservatives.

 

[thirdform]

Dismissing the only clear route to societal change as a fallacy based around a concept of a "tory country" is an easy way to assume moral or intellectual superiority whilst allowing the current incumbents to run roughshod over the basic human rights of this supposedly "free" capitalist society. I understand the appeal of assuming you know better than the proletariat- oh I won't vote it's pointless, I am intellectually superior- but it's an indicator of a victim's mentality. It's subjugation rather than a supposed radical viewpoint.

Hang on, I don't think you clearly thought about what I said here. Because what you said here ironically weakens your own case. It is not even I know better than the proletariat. A good 30-40% of proletarian votes go to the tories. It is the labourites who are morally superior about this, entirely ignoring working class conservatism. What it is incumbent upon hard anti-tories to do is understand the appeal of working class conservatism, which they cannot do, because they have a concept of wanting to be governed, which we all do to an extent, but rather than accepting it as a necessary stage in the development of human societies, they shamelessly identify with it. this identification also exists in the working class conservative, so the labourite is unable to step outside of it to conduct a thoroughgoing investigation. I am not an anarchist, if you want to vote, by all means do so. I'm just illustrating the inherent limitation of politics, I'm more Nietzsche than Thomas Hardy on this. You can bash yer head against a wall and wonder why your investment yields relatively little, or you can subject your own whims and desires to scrutiny.

As for free capitalist country, this has never been the case in Britain and never will, just like ideal capitalism will never exist as an abstraction, it will always have to relate to form of xyz material configurations.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Tories are definitely cleverer than Labouroids: the Tory manifesto always has fewer mistakes in it, among other things.

 

[WashYourHands]

Polish your musket, nothing worse than a poorly maintained weapon

 

[thirdform]

If you want to argue that working class tories are voting to get pillaged, vis-a-vis labour then you can do so but it's not really an argument I care to have, it's circular, and weirdly elitist.

 

[thirdform]

My dad was from a working class conservative background. The desire for upward mobility is at its weakest in the comfortable middle classes. When you're working 14-16 hours in a felt factory you want to get out of there as soon as possible. My dad wasn't hostile to social democracy per se, he was merely unimpressed with the ownership of industry being transfered to the state. And I think this is an aspect that people in England tend to miss, because of the outsourcing of a lot of manual labour to the third world.

 

[thirdform]

You make some really good points and I actually agree with most of what you've written but you miss what I'm pointing at - the way that hatred of the Tories is a kinda high, and that leaves the people so locked into that perspective with a total inability to understand why someone would vote Tory. I can't see circumstances where I'd vote for them but I don't think the people who do vote for them do so 'cos they're fucking thick which is the rhetoric you hear all the time on the Left. The way we talk about Brexit voters is the same.

Exactly. I'm not supportive of the tories, heavens no. I just don't try and treat it as a kind of drugged up intoxication. At the end of the day corruption comes with the territory, and it is defeat for which you must learn to prepare for, as they used to say in the old martial arts films.

 

[thirdform]

My dad was from a working class conservative background. The desire for upward mobility is at its weakest in the comfortable middle classes. When you're working 14-16 hours in a felt factory you want to get out of there as soon as possible. My dad wasn't hostile to social democracy per se, he was merely unimpressed with the ownership of industry being transfered to the state. And I think this is an aspect that people in England tend to miss, because of the outsourcing of a lot of manual labour to the third world.

There is this danger, in a lot of intelligentsia leftism where solidarity is treated as this feeling of unity and togetherness when it's actually more mundane than that, it's about economic forces compelling people to combine. In the politico imaginary solidarity takes on a form of discrimination by demonising those who don't solidarise. It becomes tawdry. Adorno warned against this, capital can even commodify your feelings.

 

[thirdform]

Now- voter turnout where I lived before this gaff was less than 40% in the local elections we were there for. Tory council. So in this scenario, a conservative led system has managed to convince 60% of the borough that voting is pointless and the councillors drew a wage and did very little to uplift the area at all. Ignoring his deep gabber knowledge, a lot of people in that area clearly had the same mentality as third and where did it get them. Personally, I earn a decent wage, had an alright house, there was no direct problem for me there really. But half a mile down the road was a fucking mess. It is allowed to happen.

So- to vote Tory in that area for the directly affected was effectively acting to fuck yourself over, as was abstention. The evidence is on your doorstep that the incumbents have done you no favours, you continue to allow yourself to be fucked, and then theoretically type on the internet that you are aware of the situation but we are all powerless to stop it so why bother. How radical. If you are attempting to do something outside of the system then crack on. But it's all talk isn't it.

Yes but your fallacy here is to see the anti-voting attitude emanate from the tories. Perhaps it didn't? Perhaps more than the tories, it is labour and its false promises which have made people suspicious of voting? Perhaps the corruption of politics worldwide, perhaps a deep and abiding gut feeling (of being disappointed time after time after time) of the spectacle that is parliamentary process, and consulting local mps/their total disinterest in their constituents? How do you explain Haringey's labour council selling off nearly all of its social housing? You are really not giving those people half a mile away any credit... and then:

Personally, I earn a decent wage, had an alright house, there was no direct problem for me there really. But half a mile down the road was a fucking mess. It is allowed to happen.

So schadenfreude - 'I told you so?' No offence but that's even more pathetic than the internet dweller. What you're essentially saying is politics matters very little to me, which is precisely why I can invest in it so much more, in the same way that the best nationalists are foreigners to the country they proselytise for. And there I think is an uncomfortable truth for you to face up to, that you can only maintain this intoxication of being righteously anti-tory at the expense of others suffering. It is true that I am not individually changing the status quo (I mean, heck, I'm unemployed) it's also true that I'm bitchy and curmudgeonly, but I try (to the best of my ability/don't always get it right) not to climb on to the troubles of others.

 

[thirdform]

i think a lot of people are under the impression my views are saying totally disengage from politics, when in fact I'm arguing the opposite, that only through a necessary epistemic distance can one fully engage with it, in essence I'm saying more people need to become analysts. Which, granted is not consoling, but it's not a victim mentality either. The reason why people find my approach hard to understand is because it involves the reversal of the root cause. So instead of looking at things in terms of politics>policy, it's economics>policy>final (post-hoc) political justification. I don't consider politics to be autonomous from the conditions of the people making it. For me politics is the conclusion, not the motor cause.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Tories are definitely cleverer than Labouroids: the Tory manifesto always has fewer mistakes in it, among other things.

Right, because the average voter A) reads manifestos and B) judges them mainly on the correct use of apostrophes...

 

[wild greens]

Schadenfreude has nothing to do with it. Its quite obvious that large swathes of the country are just so apathetic the ruling class can do whatever they want. Statements like

you can only maintain this intoxication of being righteously anti-tory at the expense of others suffering

clearly aren't what I'm saying at all but you can take a run at the theory if you want.

The thrust of the argument running counter to mine is that voting is irrelevant, no? I'm saying that there are outer London, Kent and Essex areas that vote Tory, watch the area continue to be neglected, then vote them in anyway. If they pursued an alternative- if there was a decent alternative- then this would be a better place to live.

That problem is magnified throughout the country and its why its in such a terrible state.

I have no issue with people being socially conservative, people's perspective on the world differ and not everyone should necessarily be liberal- i would never consider myself to be far left or whatever. I am anti-tory, though, yes - the party is horrendous and without defence.

Being so detached from the system that you decline to be a part of it is deep apathy and that only helps them.

 

[wild greens]

Yes but your fallacy here is to see the anti-voting attitude emanate from the tories. Perhaps it didn't? Perhaps more than the tories, it is labour and its false promises which have made people suspicious of voting?

Well for one you have previously said in this thread that we live in Tory country and the supposed opposition is merely a reflection of this. So which one is it

Bit of a tory shout this if you ask me. Oh the country is in the shit, I won't vote- it must be Labour's fault..

 

[version]

Right, because the average voter A) reads manifestos...

I remember feeling guilty about not reading manifestos or researching candidates and actually trying to do so one year during some sort of local election and discovering none of the candidates had bothered to put any information out there. I couldn't even find what any of their policies were; all I had to go on were name and party affiliation.

 

[thirdform]

Schadenfreude has nothing to do with it. Its quite obvious that large swathes of the country are just so apathetic the ruling class can do whatever they want.

ok, but then answer why they are so apathetic. Apathy doesn't just spring magically from the heads of tories, if that were indeed the case then we would not be on here, and not debating either.

 

[Mr. Tea]

You make some really good points and I actually agree with most of what you've written but you miss what I'm pointing at - the way that hatred of the Tories is a kinda high, and that leaves the people so locked into that perspective with a total inability to understand why someone would vote Tory. I can't see circumstances where I'd vote for them but I don't think the people who do vote for them do so 'cos they're fucking thick which is the rhetoric you hear all the time on the Left. The way we talk about Brexit voters is the same.

Of course you do hear a lot of this sort of thing, and obviously nobody has every changed their mind (or their voting habits) because someone has called them stupid (or evil or racist or anything else). But I think you can distinguish intelligence per se from what you might call information level, or political sagacity, or whatever - or its inverse, call it gullibility or whatever. Because let's face it, a farmer or fisherman who voted Leave because they thought it would boost their business, or someone who voted Tory two years ago because they thought Boris Johnson was going to build dozens of new hospitals, was mistaken - or rather, misled. They were told a lie, and they believed it. That's not a moral failing, but it is an error of judgement. I don't see how you can sidestep that.

 

[thirdform]

Well for one you have previously said in this thread that we live in Tory country and the supposed opposition is merely a reflection of this. So which one is it

Bit of a tory shout this if you ask me. Oh the country is in the shit, I won't vote- it must be Labour's fault..

Again if I was going to vote it would be for labour, because social pressure obliges me to do so. That's all it is though. So cool off with this tory shout out stuff.

Secondly you seem to do what labour voters do and separate good pre-1979 labour from (bad) post 1997 labour. If that is indeed the case then people have every right to say that todays tories are better than the old patrician types. I think that's bollocks, but that's neither here nor there. And once again, whichever way you vote doesn't concern me. But do you expect people to be exacting their mps and councils after you've pressured them to cast their ballots? Because this ain't ancient greece.

 

[thirdform]

or let me put the question to you: since you're intent upon giving labour a chance, who do you want to replace Starmer? Raynor? I mean good luck with that, her whole appeal rests on 'I'm authentic, my colleagues are not.'