While anarchists reject electioneering and voting, it does not mean that we are politically apathetic. Indeed, part of the reason why anarchists reject voting is because we think that voting is not part of the solution, its part of the problem. This is because it endorses an unjust and unfree political system and makes us look to others to fight our battles for us. It blocks constructive self-activity and direct action. It stops the building of alternatives in our communities and workplaces. Voting breeds apathy and apathy is our worse enemy.
Given that we have had universal suffrage for well over 50 years in many countries and we have seen the rise of Labour and Radical parties aiming to use that system to effect change in a socialistic manner, it seems strange that we are probably further away from socialism than when they started. The simple fact is that these parties have spent so much time trying to win elections that they have stopped even thinking about creating socialist alternatives in our communities and workplaces. That is in itself enough to prove that electioneering, far from eliminating apathy, in fact helps to create it.
So, because of this, anarchists argue that the only way to not waste your vote is to spoil it! We are the only political movement who argue that nothing will change unless you act for yourself, take back the power and fight the system directly. Only direct action breaks down apathy and gets results — and its the first steps towards real freedom, towards a free and just society.
Therefore anarchists are the first to point out that not voting is not enough — we need to actively struggle for an alternative to both voting and the current system. Just as the right to vote was won after a long series of struggles, so the creation of a free, decentralised, self-managed, libertarian socialist society will be the product of social struggle.
Anarchists are the last people to deny the importance of political liberties or the importance in wining the right to vote. The question we must ask is whether it is a more a fitting tribute to the millions of people who used direct action, fought and suffered for the right to vote to use that victory to endorse a deeply unfair and undemocratic system or to use other means (indeed the means they used to win the vote) to create a system based upon true popular self-government? If we are true to our (and their) desire for a real, meaningful democracy, we would have to reject political action in favour of direct action. So, if we desire a truly libertarian and democratic society then its clear that the vote will not achieve it (and indeed put back the struggle for such a society).
This obviously gives an idea of what anarchists do instead of voting, we agitate, organise and educate. While we will discuss the various alternatives anarchists propose and attempt to organise in more detail in section J.5 ( What alternative social organisations do anarchists create?) it is useful to give a brief introduction to anarchist activity here, activity which bases itself on the two broad strategies of encouraging direct action and building alternatives where we live and work.
Taking the first strategy, anarchists say that by using direct action we can force politicians to respect the wishes of the people. For example, if a government or boss tries to limit free speech, then anarchists would try to encourage a free speech fight to break the laws in question until such time as they were revoked. If a government or landlord refuses to limit rent increases or improve safety requirements for accommodation, anarchists would organise squats and rent strikes. In the case of environmental destruction, anarchists would support and encourage attempts at halting the damage by mass trespassing on sites, blocking the routes of developments, organising strikes and so on. If a boss refuses to introduce an 8 hour day, then workers should form a union and go on strike or stop working after 8 hours. Unlike laws, the boss cannot ignore direct action (and if such action is successful, the state will hurry to pass a law about it).
Similarly, strikes combined with social protest would be effective means of stopping authoritarian laws being passed. For example anti-union laws would be best fought by strike action and community boycotts (and given the utterly ineffectual defence pursued by pro-labour parties using political action to stop anti-union laws who can seriously say that the anarchist way would be any worse?). And of course collective non-payment of taxes would ensure the end of unpopular government decisions. The example of the poll tax rebellion in the UK in the late 1980s shows the power of such direct action. The government could happily handle hours of speeches by opposition politicians but they could not ignore social protest (and we must add that the Labour Party which claimed to oppose the tax happily let the councils controlled by them introduce the tax and arrest non-payers).
As Noam Chomsky argues, "[w]ithin the constraints of existing state institutions, policies will be determined by people representing centres of concentrated power in the private economy, people who, in their institutional roles, will not be swayed by moral appeals but by the costs consequent upon the decisions they make — not because they are 'bad people,' but because that is what the institutional roles demands." He continues by arguing that "[t]hose who own and manage the society want a disciplined, apathetic and submissive public that will not challenge their privilege and the orderly world in which it thrives. The ordinary citizen need not grant them this gift. Enhancing the Crisis of Democracy by organisation and political engagement is itself a threat to power, a reason to undertake it quite apart from its crucial importance in itself as an essential step towards social change." [Turning the Tide, pp. 251-2]
In this way, by encouraging social protest, any government would think twice before pursuing authoritarian, destructive and unpopular policies. In the final analysis, governments can and will ignore the talk of opposition politicians, but they cannot ignore social action for very long. In the words of a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, anarchists
"do not ask for any concessions from the government. Our mission and our duty is to impose from the streets that which ministers and deputies are incapable of realising in parliament." [quoted by Graham Kelsey, Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 79]
The second strategy of building alternatives flows naturally from the first. Any form of campaign requires organisation and by organising in an anarchist manner we build organisations that "bear in them the living seed of the new society which is replace the old world" (to use Bakunin's words). In organising strikes in the workplace and community we can create a network of activists and union members who can encourage a spirit of revolt against authority. By creating assemblies where we live and work we can create an effective countering power to the state and capital. Such a union, as the anarchists in Spain and Italy proved, can be the focal point for recreating self-managed schools, social centres and so on. In this way the local community can ensure that it has sufficient independent, self-managed resources available to educate its members. Also, combined with credit unions (or mutual banks), co-operative workplaces and stores, a self-managed infrastructure could be created which would ensure that people can directly provide for their own needs without having to rely on capitalists or governments.
In other words, an essential part of anarchist activity is (in the words of a C.N.T. militant):
"We must create that part of libertarian communism which can be created within bourgeois society and do so precisely to combat that society with our own special weapons." [quoted Op. Cit., p. 79]
So, far from doing nothing, by not voting the anarchist actively encourages alternatives. As the British anarchist John Turner argued, anarchists "have a line to work upon, to teach the people self-reliance, to urge them to take part in non-political [i.e. non-electoral] movements directly started by themselves for themselves. . . as soon as people learn to rely upon themselves they will act for themselves. . . We teach the people to place their faith in themselves, we go on the lines of self-help. We teach them to form their own committees of management, to repudiate their masters, to despise the laws of the country. . ." [quoted by John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse, p. 87] In this way we encourage self-activity, self-organisation and self-help — the opposite of apathy and doing nothing.
But what about government policies which actually do help people? While anarchists would "hesitate to condemn those measures taken by governments which obviously benefited the people, unless we saw the immediate possibility of people carrying them out for themselves. This would not inhibit us from declaring at the same time that what initiatives governments take would be more successfully taken by the people themselves if they put their minds to the same problems. . . to build up a hospital service or a transport system, for instance, from local needs into a national organisation, by agreement and consent at all levels is surely more economical as well as efficient than one which is conceived at top level [by the state]. . . where Treasury, political and other pressures, not necessarily connected with what we would describe as needs, influence the shaping of policies." [The Raven, no. 14, p. 179]
Ultimately, what the state and capital gives, they can also take away. What we build by our own self-activity can last as long as we want it to and act to protect it. And anarchists are convinced that:
"The future belongs to those who continue daringly, consistently, to fight power and governmental authority. The future belongs to us and to our social philosophy. For it is the only social ideal that teaches independent thinking and direct participation of the workers in their economic struggle [and working class people in their social struggles, we may add]. For it is only through he organised economic [and social] strength of the masses that they can and will do away with the capitalist system and all the wrongs and injustices it contains. Any diversion from this stand will only retard our movement and make it a stepping stone for political climbers." [Emma Goldman, Vision on Fire, p. 92]