An open message to Michael Malice and Larken Rose; Abstention does not work: Why anarchists and libertarians must vote as damage control
TO BE UPDATED
Part 1: Why libertarians must vote.
“Every election season is the same thing, you confuse the tactical discussion on how to fight the state with the ethical argument that politicians have no moral authority over anything.
The last one is a given for anyone with a brain, but politicians are holding me at gunpoint and simply ignoring them will get me in a cage. As Rothbard said, voting is not “consenting” to anything when the system is imposed on you by force and your only individual choice is to comply or die.
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Being a radical for anarchy means that anarchy is always the goal you advocate, always pushing towards it with ANY tactic that doesn’t directly violate the NAP. Sabotaging government enforcement, localized guerillas, cyber warfare, threatening war criminals in DC, ANYTHING that doesn’t target innocents is a viable tactic, including VOTING when appropriate
And guess what, NONE of these are mutually exclusive. You can use voting to defund some government operations, which in turn makes physical resistance easier.
What being a radical for anarchy does NOT mean is that you refuse to pursue tangible advances whenever it’s possible, that is insane.
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Ending prohibition for example, it’s entirely feasible under statism, and it means life and death for countless people. Dismissing marginal improvements is incredibly elitist, it’s easy to do it when YOU are not the one spending your life incarcerated for having a plant, which is something possible and not actually hard to change within the system. These are REAL people whose lives can be saved by marginal improvements.
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Being an abolitionist means I will never stop until slave masters have no power over anyone. It does not mean I forgo the opportunity to stop them from raping captured women if it's something that I can change. Prohibition is just an example, there are countless marginal improvements that can end real suffering by real people.“ - Ancap 2112.
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Even the anarcho-capitalist's prophet-saint, Murray Rothbard, had this to say about voting:
"Let's put it this way: Suppose we were slaves in the Old South, and that for some reason, each plantation had a system where the slaves were allowed to choose every four years between two alternative masters. Would it be evil, and sanctioning slavery, to participate in such a choice? Suppose one master was a monster who systematically tortured all the slaves, while the other one was kindly, enforced almost no work rules, freed one slave a year, or whatever. It would seem to me not only not aggression to vote for the kinder master but idiotic if we failed to do so. Of course, there might well be circumstances—say when both masters are similar—where the slaves would be better off not voting in order to make a visible protest—but this is a tactical not a moral consideration. Voting would not be evil but, in such a case, less effective than the protest. But if it is morally licit and nonaggressive for slaves to vote for a choice of masters, in the same way it is licit for us to vote for what we believe the lesser of two or more evils, and still more beneficial to vote for an avowedly libertarian candidates."
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Anarcho-capitalists opposing voting even though Murray Rothbard supported voting reminds me of 7: Are Modern Religions What Their Prophets Preached - Another 7 Taboo Questions About History and Society at 40:54, in which people ironically violate their own religion or philosophy in their attempts to follow it so purely.
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Part 2: A case for optimism & a voting guide.
The Four Trends of the 21st Century.
Part 3: Revolution.
Final Messages - pt 1 - How The Mandates End
How the Revolution Begins - Final Messages - Part 2
How to Overthrow Governments - The Color Revolution Formula - Final Messages Part 3