An Important Question for Those Who Vote

Aydin Areta

Over the past few days I have emphasised several points. Today, after briefly reviewing them, I want in the final part of these writings on the election to ask the most important question of my compatriots who have decided to vote and who regard voting as the only genuinely realistic possibility for change. But to reach that question, I first need briefly to summarise what has already been said.

1) What matters is our social solidarity

Whether we vote or boycott, this election is only one part of our civil action and resistance for change. Voting and not voting must not become a rupture within the part of society that seeks change. Creating such a rupture and estranging either side of this choice will break society’s power and create a destructive fault line in the continuation of our social struggle. For change to prevail in a society, we need internal solidarity and the creation of an idea and discourse capable of producing the “maximum possible solidarity” alongside the “maximum acceptance of social differences.” The boundary of this acceptance is not political, religious or cultural belief. Its boundary is the willingness of people with different beliefs to live socially alongside others within a free and democratic structure, because this is the true shape of our society: diverse and colourful.
If the discourse seeking change cannot, or is incapable of, transforming this diversity into solidarity through a foundation of acceptance of the other, its final outcome will be no better than what we experience today.

2) What we should say Yes to, and what we should say No to

A person who says no to the election can transform that boycott into a liberating act only if they have already given a clear “Yes” to thinking and living freely, and if their “No” is directed at the “methods of despotism,” not merely at the “body of despotism,” because those methods can be recreated within any body.

Likewise, the person who believes in the election as an act for change and says yes to it is sincere in what they are doing only if, after voting, they are prepared to choose an action that is more important and more difficult: saying “No” to despotism in the way they live. Otherwise their vote is nothing more than a great act of self-deception—self-deception on the path of a false hope that, according to the testimony of history, will never be realised.

If a person who votes is not prepared to say “No” to despotism, they should also know with certainty that whoever their elected representative may be, that representative will never move one step further than they themselves have moved in saying no to despotism—especially within a structure in which, despite all the despotism flowing through it, we are willing to call a minimal choice an “elected” representative.

3) The reform-seeking citizen and the political reformist movement

There are major differences between a “citizen seeking reform” and the “political reformist movement.” Many people who favour gradual reform in society have chosen this position for reasons and concerns fundamentally different from those of the reformists. It is important for this distinction to become clearer and more widely understood so that the concept of social reformism is not reduced to an intra-governmental political current. Failure to understand this difference, and rejection of the very concept of reformism, serves only to intensify the polarisation of the forces seeking change.

Rejecting belief in reformist methods and excluding a large part of society produces nothing but the polarisation of the “movement for change”: a condition in which each current accuses the others of being insufficiently revolutionary. Does this not sound familiar? Totalitarian methods always produce the same outcome.

To make the transition toward a mature society capable of accepting diversity, society needs to redefine the concept of reformism. The political reformist current that arose from within the body of the ruling structure has made the concept of “reformism” synonymous with its own political current. It is the task of intellectuals and activists in society to reclaim this valuable concept from them and return it to the heart of civil struggle.

4) Boycott as a strategy for victory, or as an ethical act

- In my view, not voting is a choice that can be made through a commitment to the fundamental values of freedom and “respect for the concept of choice,” and is therefore fundamentally a choice grounded in ethical values selected by the individual.

The belief that this choice always and necessarily produces a better outcome is neither demonstrable nor defensible. For precisely this reason, imposing it on others who think and act differently is fundamentally a despotic method that attempts to impose its norms and beliefs on others through threat, denunciation and humiliation. The same applies to those who want to turn voting into a moral position and pressure those who favour boycott from that perspective.

This text was published in three posts: post/page one (1/3)