185. THE TONE OF OUR OPPRESSION - On Why This Anarchist Votes

If you’re interested in hearing what anarchist election punditry sounds like, I’ll be on the panel for Freedom’s live election results watch along from about 12:30am on Friday July 5th: https://www.youtube.com/@freedom9763?si=8kLyrMuUH0Ul8xge

Many ask me, given that I am an anarchist, why I vote.

I have voted in every election for which I am eligible ever since I turned eighteen. As a citizen of both countries, I vote in the UK and in the US. Always have done, and intend to keep doing so. But given that a central tenet of anarchism is the belief that government is illegitimate and that we would be better off without one, it seems a reasonable question to ask why I bother. After all - many anarchists don’t. They see voting in an illegitimate system as giving that system your consent. Not to mention the fact that they find none of the limited range of politicians on offer coming anywhere close to representing their actual political views. Some don’t vote as a form of protest, others feel they can’t vote because there is no one there they can vote for. There are many seemingly good reasons for an anarchist not to vote.

But others, like me, still dutifully put our cross in the box each time an election is called and add our voice to be counted amongst those who actually believe in the system we oppose. Other anarchists might have their own reason for doing so, but for me my reason for doing so comes down to one thing: the tone of our oppression.

While it might be true that, under the current system of political power, I believe that we are all being oppressed, and that voting within that system can’t fundamentally change the oppressive system itself, it remains clear that there remains important differences between the rhetoric of the different political parties competing for our votes, and that these differences in rhetoric create important, life-affecting, differences in the tone of our oppression. Because those tonal differences then actively impact the lives of those around us by the way they embolden, or constrain, policy, I feel morally obliged to do whatever small thing I can to improve the tone of our oppression (by voting) rather than opt out of that opportunity for some future ideal world that does not yet exist.

To explain what I mean by ‘the tone of our oppression’ consider the following: whoever wins the election on July 4th - Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, even those racist monsters Reform - none of them will, or want to, make the UK an anarchist nation. None will be dismantling hierarchical power and the capitalist economic system. It’s not on any mainstream political agenda and there is no public mood for it. So of course no vote I could cast gives me the possibility of the sort of anarchist utopia I actually want to live in. But, importantly, not voting doesn’t lead to the anarchist utopia either. Anarchism won’t come through the ballot any time soon. However - while waking up on July 5th to a Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem or even (God forbid) Reform government won’t affect the prospects for living in an anarchist utopia either way, the political party given the keys to Downing Street on Friday will make an actual difference to the real lives of real people in their day-to-day existence. And that difference, to me, is one of tone: do the government of the day speak in the rhetoric of togetherness, of helping the vulnerable, of protecting minority rights, of welfare and compassion, or do they speak in the rhetoric of division, of blame and hatred, finger-pointing and bitterness, of scapegoating and discrimination, of privilege and power?

Keir Starmer is a man far from my own personal political beliefs and, yes, Jeremy Corbyn was far closer to aligning with my own personal values. Starmer has intentionally eradicated that Corbynite influence from the Labour Party that once appealed to voters like me and the Labour Party on offer to be a potential next government is a very changed party from the party I actually became a member of during the Corbyn years. I liked the tone much better under Corbyn. But, though what Starmer’s changed Labour Party offers is not my ideal, what is being offered by Labour is a rhetoric that is more caring for those most vulnerable in society than that of their opponents in the Conservative Party. A rhetoric of helping those in need. Of compassion for working people’s everyday struggles. This is a highly important tonal difference from the performative cruelty of the incumbent Conservative Party and their fourteen year track record of actively attacking those most vulnerable in our society and consistently promoting divisive us and them and the rhetoric of a culture war.

We know that all politicians lie. This is one of the reasons anarchists like me reject the authenticity of the so-called democracies we inhabit and recognise their democratic deficit in the first place. But the tone of those lies still create a narrative expectation to which the politicians remain publicly accountable. For a party who openly sows the seeds of hatred and division, enacting policies of hatred and division comes easy. Whereas for a party who trade on rhetoric of care and compassion, even when they enact policies of hatred and division by the back door, they cannot do so as brazenly, and are constrained by the tone of their public rhetoric. They can be, and are, held to account: you said you would help us, yet your policies hurt us. Why?

There is no such accountability for the political party who openly told you they would hurt you to begin with and asked you to vote for them anyway.

Once we accept that the tone of the political rhetoric sets the tone for the next term of our oppression, and that this tone can either make certain people’s lives easier or harder, I think we have to accept that it is a moral obligation to make an effort to do whatever we can to pick the best tone of our collective oppression available from all the tones on offer.

And ‘best’ here includes thinking about the tone most likely to yield actual results in our deeply flawed first-past-the-post electoral system. Hence a vote for Keir Starmer’s disappointing, centrist, Labour Party rather than a more idealistic vote for something like the Green Party makes much more sense within a system that makes a Green victory unlikely. If the choice is, in all reality, reduced to either Labour or Conservative, then whatever is most likely to end the threat of five more years of the Tory tone becomes the vote we are morally obligated to make, even if it isn’t a vote that entirely aligns with your personal politics. As an anarchist I have already accepted that no one running within this flawed, pseudo-democratic system actually aligns with my own personal politics because if they did, they wouldn’t be running. So a vote stops being a vote to symbolically reflect my individual personal politics and becomes, instead, a moral act of solidarity with those whose lives I have the limited power to make better by casting a vote for a better overall tone of our collective oppression.

It is because I am an anarchist, and care beyond my own atomised, individual self to the wider community in which I am inextricably linked that I am free to reject the narrative so useful to those in power that voting ought to merely be an expression of personal belief and vote, instead, as an expression of collective solidarity with those who will be the inevitable victims of five more years of performative cruelty, divisive rhetoric, ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ abandonment of responsibility, and culture war poison if we don’t vote for a kinder and more compassionate tone of our oppression. It is because I am an anarchist, that I will still be voting within a system I don’t believe in for whatever limited, but vital, changes I can bring within that system, to make life better for those it oppresses the most.

Author: DaN McKee (he/him)

My book, ANARCHIST ATHEIST PUNK ROCK TEACHER, is out everywhere now on paperback and eBook. You can order it direct from the publisher or from places like Amazon.

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