United States | News & Politics

What's really funny, is that this is something both the ancient greeks knew (that voting is nothing more than a popularity contest / theatre piece, since the only people able to fund their campaigns come from the upper classes), and that Marxists in the 1800s rediscovered when they dealt their own theoretical death blows to liberalism.

Upper-class USonians love their reality TV show elections, but most people are smarter than them, and have realized that voting has never improved their lives, or taken war off the menu.

I don't generally care how you vote. The idea that your vote, as an individual, matters at all, is a construct intended to disempower you. Turn you into an individualistic lever pull that can be counted on regardless of how many horrific things they do.

If you care how you vote, you should be getting organized with likeminded people to create a voting block that makes demands. "Move in our direction or we will vote for you, otherwise we won't". This is literally the only way you could ever have meaninfulg voting power. If you are a reliable voter for X party, literally nobody cares about your positions anymore, and certainly not as an individual. Political party X just tries to get you to turn out and to turn you into a donor. You could also try to take over the party from a grassroots level, but you will quickly find that they will ruthlessly oppose you and would rather lose forever than give up their party positions.

But the latter point leads to my actual suggestion, which is to understand that your voting power is incredibly limited and constrained under bourgeois electoralism (like the American system). They will never, ever let us win through their political system. We may make very slow gains in a few arenas, largely reflecting social changes that do not threaten the interests of those at the top of the core economic system. Those changes are valuable. But they hit a hard limit pretty quickly because everything is tied to the economic system. And backslides are also possible so long as the economic interests at the top aren't threatened. So sure, vote, but don't let electoralism dominate your political activity. It takes a few minutes to hours to vote per year. Spemn the rest of your political energy on building non-electoral power.

To build Non-Electoral power, we must spread political education (theory, history, geopolitics) and organizing skills (engaging in action, recruitment, support). To help with that process, you must become politically educated yourself - politically educated in mass political power and identifying the economic forces we are up against - and gain organizing skills yourself. Both are facilitated by joining a socialist organization, though it is also 100% A-Okay to just start reading and questioning and gaining skills in thought. I usually recommend that people start with media criticism and (re)learning history. For example, start perusing FAIR.org and read A People's History of The United States.

Now, keeping in mind that I don't care very much how you vote, to answer your question about what to do when the "Democratic" system gives you two options (chosen by the ruling class, not you, by the way)...

If you care about voting, work to form the aforementioned voting bloc and develop political discipline that lasts beyond single elections. If you succeed, your bloc will mean the "lesser evil" (try measuring the evil, is it even always lesser?) loses an election. But then you will have established power as a bloc, a set of votes that must be won. And you will learn something very important from the result. One option is that you will be cut off from the party you are most trying to influence. They will be declaring that they would rather lose than make the change(s) you care about. Like not doing genocide, Christ. Then you will know you cannot win through their system, or at least that party, and can change your effort. Try (and still probably fail) at a third party. Or focus your efforts on non-electoral political work. The other possible outcome is that they relent. Then congratulations! Keep making demands and start voting strategically for them until they inevitably balk, rinse and repeat until they consistently refuse (this will happen).

Or you can skip the process if realizing the bourgeous electoral system is an expression of the ruling class's power and begin working against it. End the thought process of thinking you can somehow have a lesser evil genocider, mass murderer, country destroyer, child impoverished, Jim Crower. Engage in the political education and organization I mentioned before and give up agonizing over your meaningless solitary vote.