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There is often a degree to which elections function as a public ritual to legitimate the power of elites more than to offer any realistic prospect for ordinary people to challenge them. The “established democracies”, which are supposed to be the horizon of our democratic aspirations, are often two-party systems in which the electoral system, along with civil society and the media, are so distorted by the influence of money that voters are able to choose only between competing factions of the elite. There are many countries where no party can be a serious player without enormous financial backing . . .
Every time South Africans go to the polls, we’re subjected to an incredible degree of mystification that presents the secular act of voting as a sacred ritual and invests it with all kinds of magical powers that it manifestly lacks . . .
We’re told that voting is all about making our own choice, whereas it is, in most cases, a limited choice between two competing factions of the elite who are equally invested in scaling back people’s legitimate aspirations for a just society into an insanely unequal society contained with state violence, new forms of spatial segregation and “service delivery" . . . .
we need to bring the same attention to the practice of democracy outside the electoral arena as we bring to elections. For as long as we continue to make elections a fetish for democracy rather than understanding that they are just one part of our limited form of democracy or public conversation, we will be unable to comprehend the full significance of the competing responses to the failures of our democracy to realise the legitimate aspirations of the majority.
Read the rest. Opposition to duopoly government is global in scope, and can be found everywhere from the Americas to the EU to Africa, India and East Asia. Is there a sense in which we could say such opposition is globalized, i.e. globally coordinated? One might mention here the global social forums, which stand in direct opposition to the Davos meetings of the global elite, among other things. The global protests against the war in Iraq in February 2003 were organized at just such a forum, for instance. At the level of party, two obvious examples spring to mind: the Green Party and the Pirate Party which are at least potentially global in scope and have affiliates and members all over the world.
Might not the necessary emphasis on the importance of local organizing and bottom-up third party and independent political strategy here in the US have the unintended effect of blinding us to potential models and modes of organization being developed by allies abroad? Must we not consider the global implications of local third party and independent political strategy?
3 comments:
Good post. I think third parties in the US could learn a lot from their counterparts in other countries (even just north of the border). Particularly in other countries that use FPTP but still have good organized opposition parties, even if they rarely even win seats. I wonder how such a learning process could be facilitated....hmm.
From what I remember though, South Africa is a one party state essentially, as about 80% of the population still votes for the ANC, even though they've become corrupt beyond belief. Though the liberal "Democratic Alliance" is emerging, and so it may result in two dominant political parties eventually. They also control a province/state I believe. There's also a plethora of smaller parties elected to local and federal office there too.
You're totally right re: political party strength in South Africa, so far as I'm aware, and the DA is the nearest competitor to the ANC, but lags far behind them. In the rest of the article quoted in the post, the author basically argues that the ANC and DA are basically the Janus face of the ruling elite, but he is clearly coming from a far left perspective . . . he even opens with a quote from Emma Goldman!
It terms of organizing models being developed abroad, I'm very interested in the UK Independent Network, which is geared toward providing a support network for independent candidates who are battling against opponents with a party apparatus behind them.
http://www.independentnetwork.org.uk/
If the fellow is far left, I can see why he doesn't like the DA, they're socially liberal moderate Libertarian economically, though they use to be far more extreme in their free market policies than as of late. The DA seems pretty decent IMO, and an emerging counterweight to the ANC. But there's lots of other parties elected to federal office there too, albeit mostly regional ones. He might be pissed the Communist party isn't so influential in the ANC anymore (technically the ANC is a coalition of many parties, but like the Nationals and Liberals in Australia, are essentially one party now).
That's an interesting network there. I'm wondering how we can facilitate a dialogue, particularly in say, Canada, and United Kingdom, about organizing tactics under an exclusive political system, and impart them to the third parties and indies here. We could certainly use a lot of learning of organizing here...
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