Criticisms of electoralism

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Although highly controversial at various points in history, representative democracy (and electoral systems in general) have become the modern civics global-standard. Nevertheless, criticisms of electoralism continue to come from both within the Western world and the developing world. In the Global North, criticism comes primarily from the anarchist, revolutionary communist, and left-libertarian ends of the political spectrum.

[edit] Libertarian socialist criticism

Anarchists and libertarian socialists typically argue against the legitimacy of political representation although most libertarians accept the concept of delegation. This is primarily due to their belief that majority rule voting systems will erode the liberty of social and political minorities. Libertarians argue that any truly just political system must include voluntary association to prevent the oppressive enforcement of law. Additionally, libertarians argue that the election of representatives creates a priest-class of political administrators while disempowering and alienating the general public, for which voting is a highly mediated form of political engagement that diverts energy away from more effective means of political and social reform (or revolution). Some libertarians argue that representation is philosophically impossible due to the unique nature of each individual, distinct from social, political, and economic class interests.

Most libertarians support consensus-based direct democracy as an alternative to an electoral system, and direct action as a means to implement decisions made individually or collectively. Autonomism, horizontalism, and topless federation are related concepts. There also exists a non-elective procedure for electing a democratic representation called sortition, in which representatives are drawn at random from the citizen population.

[edit] Communist criticism

Revolutionary communists generally argue against elections under capitalism as being, at best, insufficient for revolutionary change, and at worst as diverting the personal, economic, and mental resources of the working class individual towards dead end politics when that same energy could be used to foment a communist revolution and create a proletarian dictatorship. Communists see the global-standard status of elections in the current world as clear evidence that market society has entrenched itself and been, for the moment, completely victorious over armed struggle and other truly grassroots forms of change. As self-proclaimed agents of the latter, communists generally see their task as anathema to elections, since the revolutionary task involves physical overthrow of the entire ruling class, seizure of their state power, and the forcible establishment of an entirely different form of society where the working class controls production.

However, communists are not necessarily opposed to elections under the revolutionary communist society once the latter has emerged and been consolidated. Election of leaders at the local level and, in turn, for wider leadership on the global level, would to a communist undoubtedly make fully participatory elections absolutely necessary. However, the difference under such circumstances as compared to capitalism would be that communist elections would reject the representative democracy model as a residual of capitalism; that model, in the view of communists, would make it more likely for the new society to revert back to profit and the market if fully participatory democracy were not pursued.

[edit] External links

• Elections...or, Cheering for the State - from Mark Valenti's Liberty Page