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Title: Electoral Insubordination Author: Miguel AmorĂłs Date: June 4, 2014 Language: en Topics: Spain, democracy, Elections Source: Retrieved on 11th May 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/electoral-insubordination-%E2%80%93-miguel-amor%C3%B3s Notes: (Written as part of an attempt to dissuade a comrade from participating in the poll supervisor position to which she was assigned.) Translated in August 2014 from the Spanish text provided by the author.
“What we maintain is that universal suffrage, considered in itself and
applied in a society based on economic and social inequality, will be
nothing but a swindle and snare for the people; nothing but an odious
lie of the bourgeois-democrats, the surest way to consolidate under the
mantle of liberalism and justice the permanent domination of the people
by the owning classes, to the detriment of popular liberty.”
Mikhail Bakunin
Although these words were written in 1870, that is, a century and a half
ago, they have never been more true than they are today. What was known
to be true at the dawn of bourgeois society, is only more certainly true
in its last stage. We shall avail ourselves of this opportunity to bury
an error based on certain interests and to make it clear that when you
hear the word “democracy”, what they are really talking about is
parliamentarism, the political form best adapted to the dominance of
oligarchic interests. The multiplication of elections to the various
parliaments has only served to perfect the instruments by means of which
the masses are led to cooperate in the construction of their own prison.
The parliaments, far from representing the popular will, actually
represent the legitimization of political corruption and economic and
financial despotism. The popular will is a pure entelechy, a phantom
that is incapable of materializing in any form other than a political
caste associated with private group interests.
Political fantasy, however, is a food that never fills you up. You could
call parliamentarism either democracy or dictatorship because it
possesses attributes of both; what is certain is that it by no means
corresponds to the popular will. The latter can only emerge from
freedom, from spaces of free discussion, not from media monopolies, from
indifference, from conformism or submission. How else can a parliament
be recognized if not as the legislative leash of oppression? The best
parliament is the one that does not exist. Therefore, if a real popular
will were to be capable of expressing itself, it would not do so in
parliaments. We have never had less need of parliaments than today—not
to speak of politics—and never before have parliaments tyrannized over
us as much as they do today.
Parliaments are not the solution; they are the problem. They only
represent the ruling minority. The pseudo-democratic rituals that
legitimate them, elections, are a farce. No one who has not been
resigned to faits accomplis by force, by capitalist violence, can
recognize himself in them: dignity, reason and justice prevent such a
person from doing so. Such a person cannot abandon his conscience and
his integrity in favor of the law, because such conduct is not befitting
of objective and unbiased persons; moreover, were such a person
nonetheless do so, he would be collaborating with injustice and
oppression. The real interest of oppressed society morally compels
disobedience.
Our rejection of parliamentarism must not be understood as a rejection
of democracy. What we abominate is the state and its main tentacles, not
the anti-state, horizontal, assembly-based democracy, the one that
really protects us. The parliamentary state, far from protecting us,
simply threatens us, terrorizes us, and imposes submissive ways of life
on us. It permits us to exist under conditions that are entirely of its
own making.
“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we
endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall
we transgress them at once?”
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau, the father of civil disobedience, opted for the latter choice.
It is obvious that a law that reaffirms the rule of the ruling class is
a spurious law, drafted by spurious committees and promulgated by
spurious parliaments. And it is also obvious that, due to that law’s
profoundly arbitrary nature and its debatable and dubious character, it
constitutes an assault on the conscience of those who seek to rule their
lives in accordance with ethical considerations, appealing to liberty
and the common good. The illegitimate law must first clash with the
right to the defense of one’s own convictions, and therefore with the
duty to disobey it. But the constitutions spawned by the parliaments do
not recognize, for obvious reasons, either conscientious objection or
disobedience. It is precisely their illegitimate character that causes
the legislators to defend the legal farce with exemplary punishments.
Otherwise it would offer easy opportunities to unmask it.
The electoral law does not prohibit abstention, since the latter would
not affect the results; it does, however, mandate that those who are
unilaterally appointed to act as polling supervisors must comply with
their responsibilities, or else face fines and imprisonment. It does not
take into consideration the possible conflict between the electoral
norms and the moral principles of individuals. We thus have a right that
is violated by the juridical norms, the right to resist the mandates of
authority—which are always usurpatory—that violate one’s moral
convictions; in short, the natural right to resist political tyranny.
The majority is not everyone. Despite the fact that a large part of the
population, due to a lack of consciousness, due to habit, maybe because
they derive some benefit from it, or for some other reason,
irresponsibly accepts the state authority that emanates from the
parliaments—an authority that consolidates the social inequality and the
rule of a class that has a firm grip on politics and finance—there is
nonetheless a minority that is nauseated by the idea of collaborating
with injustice, and which refuses for reasons of conscience to comply
with the dominant order with regard to elections. It feels that at the
very least its right to disagree has been violated and that its opinion
has not been taken into consideration, which is why it has resort to
insubordination, confronting the laws that regulate servitude.
Electoral insubordination, even more than abstention, is a peaceful form
of dissidence that follows logically upon the personal non-recognition
of the parties, parliamentarism and the state, entities in which the
dissident does not feel that he is represented. It is the concrete
rejection of an odious and iniquitous norm that violates the free
convictions of the one who chooses. The insubordinate person, by way of
his refusal to participate in anything that politically legalizes
domination, opposes his conscience to the disastrous legislative order,
and decides to face the consequences of his insubordination rather than
take a single step towards infamy and inequality. Insubordination is the
obverse of the voluntary servitude typical of the sheep-like majority.
Oppressive tyranny would not last a single second if no one would
consent to endure its yoke. By ceasing to accept tyranny, without even
needing to struggle, everyone would recover freedom. But individuals
wallow in the mud of submission, they are satisfied with living as they
were when they were born, without demanding any other right than the
ones that have been granted to them. Nonetheless, despite the efforts
made by the leaders to corrupt everyone, there are always those who do
not enthusiastically comply with laws that others in the past only
complied with because they were forced to do so, and who try to recover
at least a little of the freedom that has been stolen from them. To
these insubordinate persons, the words of Etienne de La Boëtie, uttered
when the armies of Henry II were sowing terror throughout France, must
sound familiar: “Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I
do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but
simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a
great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own
weight and break in pieces.”