"On Lesser Evil Voting
Noam Chomsky's view of electoral politics is, I believe, a sensible one. In fact, it's not his; as he says, it's the "traditional left view," just one that we've lost clarity on.
People mistakenly assume that by saying "vote against Trump," Chomsky is putting too much stock in the power of voting and is insufficiently cynical about the Democratic Party.
In fact, it's completely the opposite: he puts very little stock in voting and is perhaps even more cynical about the Democrats than his critics, which is why he doesn't think it's surprising or interesting that Biden is offering the left almost nothing and the party is treating voters with contempt.
The "traditional left view" he talks about is, roughly: we need to participate in elections, when they happen, and vote for the least harmful candidate. That's common sense.
But we should not see elections as the domain where we express our deepest political values, or give them an outsized role in our understanding of what politics is. Instead, we need to be working the rest of the time for the betterment of our world in different ways.
Sometimes that involves running candidates in elections, and trying to improve the slate on offer - hence the Sanders campaign, AOC, the dozens of DSA elected officials around the country.
But that's only one part of what we do. We are also building institutions; unions, media organizations, pressure groups and political organizations. We are working slowly on building power, which cannot be done in general elections.
That's news to nobody, yet everyone's attention is still fixated on national presidential politics to an unhealthy degree, to the neglect especially of state, local, and international politics."
www.currentaffairs.org
that's summation at the end of a very long article
Here's the original Halle-Chomsky position on LEV:
chomsky.info
