Your Guide To Voting

Some people believe that voting is a waste of time. Many of those people are anarchists.

I don't think that's true. One doesn't need to support the system or those within it to use it to effect whatever changes can be wrought. My goal is to see class consciousness grow within society because without it meaningful social revolution is impossible. Until that time voting is the only tool we have. This is important for one fundamental reason:

If we don't vote, the Tories remain in power (though of course there are no guarantees and a ton of caveats). It is a shit situation.

Class consciousness cannot rise while people are battered by Universal Credit, disarmed by WCA tests and generally atomised by the cruelty of deliberate and ideologically driven impoverishment. People are too busy trying to put food on their table to worry about structural problems. Who can blame them?

So if Jeremy Corbyn can ameliorate some conditions - why on earth would you not support that when it's plainly in our interest to do so? You don't have to believe he's the second coming, you just have to vote out the Tories. This is also important because it sends a message to society; it puts them, as a ruling class, on notice. They and the values they represent are not welcome.

So why would you not do this?

It makes no sense to me: if you're putting ideology above the working class then your ideology is just a pile of ashes and you're the smartest person in the workhouse.

I agree with the ideology, by the way. They will use our vote for their own ends. They will try and propagandise it. But what is the alternative - simple answer: another term under an increasingly and shockingly hard right Tory party led by the most self entitled and egregiously buffoonish clown I have ever seen. This guy's bullish stupidity makes Theresa Mayhem's standoffishness look like warm embrace from Santa fucking Claus!

That's the alternative. That's what not voting achieves. We are where we are and we cannot move forward with ideology alone. There isn't sufficient revolutionary impetus and, if all that's required (and certainly all that I ask) is that you take five minutes to cast a vote, is that really too much to ask?

Labour has a chequered history for sure. It also currently has some (not all) members in councils engaged in violently damaging policies of social cleansing and gentrification. This is awful. but ask yourself: is that more or less likely to continue under a renewed Tory government? There is a good reason to believe that, under a Corbyn Labour government, the ground for that kind of behaviour will be much less fertile. Again there are no guarantees, we just have to do the best we can.

But to argue that Labour is as bad as the Tories because of things like this, which I hear often, is just facile. Clearly and demonstrably false; simply compares policies. Labour has plenty, many of which are reasonable and tolerable improvements, if not ideal. Conservatives have...? So far nothing - though we know what will happen: welfare entitlement will continue to be strangled, the NHS will be sold to the private insurance market, likely the US (something they have sought to do for decades), and Brexit will impoverish our economy turning us into a one party state and a tax haven benefiting no one in the working class, despite what they have misguidedly chosen to believe (that's a discussion for another day).

This is a period of shit choices, but they are still choices. We can make them, we can use what little power we currently have as part of the struggle to move forward. While these are shit choices to us and far from ideal. However, to the ruling elite, that power is something they would want us not to have and would seek to diminish as much as possible - why else do they want to introduce voter ID?

Look I despise jingoism and the "poppy fascism" brand of vote propaganda. But we don't need to buy into that to use our power against them. That power is precious though, regardless of whether you believe in said propaganda. Use it or lose...everything.