Hark! Elections darken the fragile horizon. At least here in CanMerica they do. A few months ago I’d begun to descend into that cold fire of anxiety that curdles my flesh and transforms me into a being of the purest ranker and dyspepsia. My thoughts plummeted inwards as the word I was cradling in my hands turned to dust and the motes, weightless, exploded from my bony fingers.
Below you will find a book review, but before we get there, I want to do some accounting of my socio-economic positionality. To get the a better sense of this, please take a look at my current land acknowledgement. The important thing to note is that I am far from most at risk from a bad outcome of an upcoming election. I am white, and pass as a cis man, and my family is well off enough that I have so much safety net that I don’t fear publishing this under my own name. That said, I will, of course, be voting in all the elections I am eligible for because of the real harms a bad outcome will bring about for my friends and comrades who are considerably more vulnerable than I am (this is definitionally a virtue signal, in case you’re not aware).
It was an episode of Canadaland that had me feeling particularly miserable (here it is, if you’re a masochist) and I was smothered in its miasma for weeks. Canadaland usually features liberals and democratic socialists, but very rarely a socialist-proper (let alone an anarchist or something). That said, I have noticed that they’ve had an awful lot of conservative guests on of late. Their coverage of the pending Canadian Federal Election (setting aside the Provincial Elections and that big one South of the border) is very outspoken in its reliance on polls, which say, “Pierre Poilievre is on track to be our next Prime Minister.”
There was a reckoning about polls after the 2016 US election (Wikipedia entry on polling for the 2016 US election; Pew breaking this down), I thought, like the other reckonings in journalism about how to cover and resist fascism, but, well, did they learn anything? I’m not so sure. In an ominous toot from prominent Canadian Mastodonian, @LALegault@newsie.social, she said that she knew a journalist who was looking into “Canadian polling firms skewing their results to create voter suppression and they are receiving so many death threats I think they are going to abandon their project.” I can’t of course, determine the veracity of this claim (without doing more work than is merited by this book review), but regardless of the potential motives for polls to skew elections in various ways, I think our reliance on them dooms the process. Reading mainstream political news in Canada these days, you’d be forgiven for assuming the election had already happened, and the fascist con got the job.
Speaking of the process, however, I think in election times especially it is important to think about ways the world is being and can be changed beyond them. Accordingly, I present you with the following book review:
Though I’ve read many anarchists, have worked in anarchist and anarchist-adjacent circles for years, and would (if duress required me to slap a political theoretical label on myself) probably refer to myself as a “libertarian socialist” aka, an anarchist, the whole not voting thing seemed off to me. I had read and generally subscribed to the notion of voting as harm reduction (see my note on my positionality above), even if it isn’t particularly effective (and may actually be a damaging misdirection). There’s also the old slogan, “if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” which is awfully easy to perforate: those in power often do try to make voting illegal for certain demographics by way of voter suppression. There are good reasons not to vote that I knew quite well, for example, the Haudenosaunee rejection of voting makes perfect sense, but as a white settler, it doesn’t really apply to me. So why, then, have so many white settler anarchists argued so vociferously against voting. After all, on the day itself, it only takes like maximum an hour (where I live). I’m still going to vote, and I am inclined to suggest you do the same, dear white settler reader (everybody else, obviously, I’m not gonna tell you what to do), but this book, in its meticulous but somehow fabulously entertaining history of the anarchist movement in Europe and the US, showed me the how and the why this argument would have came about, and I get it.
In reading Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States by Zoe Baker, my head cleared, and by god, it cured my depression (kidding, I use pills and therapy for that).
Means and Ends takes on the gargantuan task of “rationally reconstructing” the ideas and “revolutionary strategies of anarchism within Europe and the United States between 1868 and 1939” (3). It is meticulous, and in my humble opinion, succeeds in its goal to contribute “a small fragment [geographically, linguistically, temporally, ontologically, epistemologically, etc.]” of a truly global history of anarchism (3).
The book is not about elections, or the debate about voting, but I think focusing on this very brief part of the book provides an excellent rationale for why you ought to read the rest of it, anarchists and nonanarchists alike (if you’re a Marxist if fact, I deem this required reading). Allow me to quote Baker at length on the whole elections thing here to demonstrate the breadth of her research and the brilliance with which she weaves together thoughts that manifest throughout movement histories:
[Errico] Malatesta explained in his 1897 interview that “as a rule, we always support reforms that, more than the others, highlight the conflict between property-owners and proletarians, rulers and ruled, and therefore are apt to foster a conscious feeling of rebellion that will explode into the definitive, final revolution.” He rejected “false reforms” that “tend to distract the masses from the struggle against authority and capitalism” and instead “serve to paralyze their actions and make them hope that something can be attained through the kindness of the exploiters and governments.” One reform that mass anarchists consistently opposed was universal suffrage within existing capitalist states. In 1873, [Mikhail Alexandrovich] Bakunin argued against struggling to achieve the vote, because it would legitimize the state by giving it the “false appearance of popular government” and thereby provide the economic ruling classes “with a stronger and more reliable guarantee of their peaceful and intensive exploitation of the people’s labor.” This opposition to struggling for universal suffrage included women’s suffrage, which [Emma] Goldman argued against in 1910, on the grounds that it would not further the emancipation of women.” (237)
Is this argument fully relevant today after sevenish decades of more or less “universal suffrage within existing capitalist states” (assuming you’re not imprisoned, under 18-years-old, have citizenship, and meet a lot of other criteria that take that ever-deceptive and typically violent word “universal” to task)? Yes and no. On the one hand, look around you and tell me if you think we live in a profoundly more democratic and liberated society than we did 70 years ago? Then tell me if you think the base structures of that society are changed in a way that makes them more democratic and more liberatory? If the answer to the first question is a tepid affirmative, the second is surely an icy no. Take a look at the state’s response to campus anti-war protests in the 60’s and now, for example. On the other hand, to argue that women’s suffrage was a bad idea and should be overturned is and should be considered abhorrent, just like voter suppression. But this is because we are working in a rights-based framework where states can determine what freedoms individuals have and ought not have. This brings me to the absolute necessity of a book like Means and Ends right now, at this precipice.
Regardless of your gut reaction to hearing that someone might not vote, or might use their vote in a way that you think isn’t helpful, learning about the ways that people throughout history have changed and tried to change the world around them beyond simply voting is vital. If all we can do is vote than we can then our fates are sealed in the ballot box once every few years and if our team loses, we are locked into four plus years of doom. But that’s just not the case. Organizers are organizing all the time, regardless of who is in power. Since our window for averting the worst ravages of climate change is quickly shrinking (faster than election cycles, if you can believe it), we must organize and get shit done regardless of what happens to the rich folks on TV, in the debates, and at the heads of the parties. If so-called “liberal democracies” were going to meaningfully address climate collapse, they would have done it in the 80s. Now it’s up to everybody else. Are elections a “distraction?” I don’t know, but they sure as hell are “distracting” and take a lot of peoples time and energy. Freedom, and the whole damn earth, is worth so much more effort than an election (on this, see this excellent panel discussion). And besides, it’s important to remember that even when we keep the overt fascists out of power, the liberals (or Liberals, in the case of Canadian federal politics) end up taking hard turns into fascism adjacent or enabling governance because all of their friends and rich corporations and right wing lobby groups convince them that it is in their best interest if they betray the people they purport to serve. Look no further than the Liberals’ latest about-face on immigration, or the BC NDP and Conservatives being aligned on LNG Pipelines (not to mention the Notley NDP in Alberta), or the Harris campaign’s celebration of Cheney endorsements (y’all remember that the Cheneys are as close to evil as exists on earth, right?). And don’t forget either about Harris’ gloating at the DNC about ensuring America will always have “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” during a largely US backed genocide.
In my previous review (of the excellent, Degrowth Manifesto by Kōhei Saitō), I echoed and cited Cory Doctorow’s favourite quote by historical menace Milton Friedman:
Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
-Milton Friedman, 1972 (Qtd. in Doctorow)
Since we live in a time of polycrisis, I think it’s vital that we share the things that we find that are useful as “ideas lying around,” so that when people find themselves backed into in a corner, they have a wide variety of tools at there disposal instead of just a hammer (or a machete, or an automatic rifle). Means and Ends is a massive library of tools and one I hope many many people access. I’ll give the final word to Baker’s Introduction:
Historians sometimes unearth old ideas from the past because they are an interesting way of gaining insight into a different time and place. This is not my principal motivation. I wrote this book because I want to live in a society in which everyone is free. I am convinced that, if we are to achieve this goal, it is important to know the history of previous attempts to do so. My hope is that, through learning about how workers in the past sought to emancipate themselves, workers alive today can learn valuable lessons and develop new ideas that build on the ideas of previous generations. (1)
P.S. if you’re looking for more Zoe Baker, as you ought to be, she has a supremely dry, informative, and hilarious YouTube channel @anarchopac and @anarcozoe where she posts video essays on subjects like those covered in the book and much more. She just also just started a shorts channel @microzoe. Check ’em out!
Bibliography
Baker, Zoe. Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States. AK Press, 2023.
Beyond the Ballot: The Left in a Time of Polycrisis. Directed by Haymarket Books, 2024. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN0O82HsP_g.
Camfield, David. “Is Voting Really ‘Harm Reduction’?” Briarpatch, 2 July 2019, https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/is-voting-really-harm-reduction.
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—. “Land Acknowledgement (Version 1.0) – Kostyn.Ca.” Kostyn.Ca, 7 Aug. 2023, https://kostyn.ca/land-acknowledgement-version-1-0/.
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“Nationwide Opinion Polling for the 2016 United States Presidential Election.” Wikipedia, 5 Oct. 2024. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election&oldid=1249548382#Post-election_analysis.
“Police in Riot Gear Use Flash-Bang Explosives to Clear Campus Protesters in Calgary.” CBC News, 10 May 2024. CBC.ca, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/university-calgary-palestinian-protest-police-removal-1.7199937.
Rudy. “Voting Is Not Harm Reduction – An Indigenous Perspective – Indigenous Action Media.” Indigenous Action, 5 Feb. 2020, https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/.
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Singh, Kanishka, and Humeyra Pamuk. “US Has ‘undeniable Complicity’ in Gaza War Killings, Say Former US Officials.” Reuters, 3 July 2024. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-has-undeniable-complicity-gaza-war-killings-say-former-us-officials-2024-07-03/.
Thurton, David. “Company Defends Rachel Notley’s Support for the Oilsands after Brian Jean Attacks NDP.” CBC News, 14 Sept. 2017. CBC.ca, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/jacos-japan-oilsands-rachel-notley-ndp-brian-jean-fort-mcmurray-1.4288637.
Turse, Nick. “What Kamala Harris Meant by ‘Most Lethal Fighting Force’ in Her DNC Speech.” The Intercept, 27 Aug. 2024, https://theintercept.com/2024/08/27/kamala-harris-dnc-military-lethal/.
“‘Voter Suppression Has a Long and Troubling History in the US,’ Expert Says.” Northwestern Now, 7 Oct. 2024, https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/10/voter-suppression-has-a-long-and-troubling-history-in-the-us-expert-says/.
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