A voluntaryist challenge to voting?

Economics Political Theory
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I’ve been thinking about voting recently since there was that voting thread and have been assessing the arguments against voting.I’ve been thinking ,is there really a moral argument against voting? Is voting really an aggressive act? my inclination on re-thinking it is no though voting does endorse coercion indirectly ,so voting is not un-libertarian per se but it is immoral.

Recently I was reading a Voluntaryist volume-I must speak out and came across an essay by George Smith on “The Ethics of Voting”(from Nov 1 1982). I was curious to see how he would argue against voting.I thought this would held answer my questions.

He raised some interesting questions:-

are legislators criminals for creating unjust laws?

is the getaway driver to a bank robber a criminal?

If you answer yes then it follows that people who are involved in bringing whose who desire unjust laws to power are criminals or that even voting for anyone is criminal.(this he bases on the legal concept of vicarious liability)

If you answer No and If Criminals are only direct aggressors ( as I think most of us argue,certainly I do) ,Smith argues then that there are some in the state apparatus(e.g. legislators) who are not criminals(which seems strange idea to us anarchists).Immoral but not rights violators or criminals.

Do you agree with this conclusion?

can you see any faults with his logic?

I know if the answer is yes then this would prevent the problem of individuals in the state apparatus not being criminals and would support my anti voting position but would mean that aggression becomes loosely defined.

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Yes. Creating laws is like issuing orders to the police and the courts.

Yes. He doesn’t get a share of the loot for nothing.

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  1. There is nothing saying that voting would not arise “naturally” in a voluntary type society. It seems like a plausible natural way to solve some societal issues. Much like using currency, buying property, roads and many other thing we do every day that could be seen as legitimizing government violence. I would not consider buying property, living in a city, using fed notes, walking in a city park, etc aggressive acts. We also pay taxes, start business, get permits (such as a drivers licsense), it isn’t usually to legitimize violence in society, it is just to function within ones situation in society.

I assume most people on this forum are living within a society, I also assume that while living in a community that community has inescapable consequences when dealing with the government. The government has essentially perverted and distorted any “freedom” type method of living. Voting can be an intricate part of living within a community, particularly where Democracy is King.

  1. It seems oppressive and somewhat maddening to tell people to never vote or you are evil / wrong. I would think a hallmark point on a philosophy of individualism would be to trust an individual; and that even a usually sound hypotheses (e.g. voting is usually useless or worse) is never set in stone in a world with many varying circumstances. In other words a “Law on Voting” would be little more than libertarian central planning.

  2. What voting does and does not endorse completly depends on the individual , the framework on is sing, and the situation. To make a statement that someone is “indirectly endorsing violence” is creating arbitrary ill defined lines that don’t need to be drawn.

  3. This is not to say I agree with voting / democracy (I 99% of the time detest it), and that nothing should be done about it. On the contrary, pointing out the daftness and madness of democracy is one my favorite things about libertarianism. The problem comes when the theory, observations, education, etc become part of a good guy / bad guy creed in a society where the view is a significant minority, and to create good guys / bad guys by trying to to tell individuals how to act in all situations or they go to “libertarian hell”. Polluting may be “bad” in many circumstances but look what the environmentalists have done with that “rule of thumb”. And for a Christian/ mythological analogy, when the Jews were following the laws of Moses it was usually a good thing, but Jesus/ The New Testament kind of showed the madness of stickling with that philosophy.

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Himmler didn’t kill anyone personally but he ordered institutions he had power over to do it. Would you say he was not an aggressor?

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No, it does not follow. Voting is not a marginal factor in bringing anything to power.

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What makes that criminal is that it demonstrates support for aggression. What goes around comes around.

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  1. Voting does exist and it exists in my society, it is accepted in my society, and it is a language that can be more effective to communicate an idea than using the ancap language. Saying voting should / should not exist on moral grounds does not work. Morality is not agreed on by anyone, more people respond to the moarality of a democratic society than they do of ancap rhetoric. Voting is the reality we have to deal with.

To say voting should not exist is also semi - nonsensical, it could very well exist within business, community, or anything else. It is something that people have been responding to since BC. Don’t confuse voting with American Democracy.

  1. I never said anything about voting govt out of exsitence. I am saying the world and options are far too complex to tell people EXACTLY how to behave at all times and draw lines of good person / bad person right / wrong along those lines. I think that is insanity, and very beligerent for a philosophy that seems to treat “peace” as its number 1 priority. It is fine to educate people on the general nature of Democracy and voting, but to turn it into some type of moral creed will never get you anywhere.

  2. The thought of saying voting is endorsing violence is just not true. You don’t legitimize anything by voting, thinking along those lines is creating such abstract notions like “honor” or “spirit” and then rationalizing off of that notion. Voting is simply an action that may exist in ones society that can produce a result because people tend to respond to it.

Out of curiosity in countries in which health care is nationalized: are all Doctors evil SOB’s who endorse violence? Are all teachers evil statists? Is paying ANY tax an act of evil that endorses state violence? Is making these divisions really preaching a philosophy of peace? Is grouping people so broadly into good / evil categories really preaching individualism?

  1. When I say things such as “pointing out the nature of democracy.. favorite things about libertarianism” I don’t know how you could confuse that with “not saying anything because it is too radical”. That was not even close to my point. My point is about “rule of thumb” vs “libertarian rule of law” “good guys” vs “bad guys”, “for us” or “against us”, everything is either “peaceful” or “violent/murdering” being a bad way to look at things. The philosophy of individualism telling individuals how to act a certain way to be individualists or get condemned to “collectivist/statist hell” seems a bit odd as well.
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I think the trouble with voting more fundamentally stated is not that it means voting for at least some unjust laws, but that there is no such thing as a lesser evil, because freedoms are subjectively valued thus it is in practice impossible to proclaim that this party is better than another.

Let me explain. If there was a referendum where the question would be should the income tax be decreased by the government by 20%. Would it be OK to vote at a such a referendum? Absolutely. And you would be foolish not to. You have nothing to lose, but you can gain a small increase in freedom. This is similar to a question whether you would press a button that would bring forth a minimal state. Yes, we would and this does not imply we approve of or lend legitimacy to a minimal state.

Therefore, imagine there was a general election and there was a party which promised to, if elected, change nothing at all, except to lower the income tax by 20%. Lets also say this party was totally reliable and you could trust them to indeed do so. Would it be OK to vote for them? Yes, if it is OK to vote for this at a referendum, it is OK to vote for this at a general election.

However no party will do such a thing. All parties are always a mixed bag. They all promise to decrease freedoms in one area of life or the other. Imagine a reliable party which promised to proclaim total neutrality, disband the military and strike out all gun restrictions, but which at the same time promised to triple the tax rate, censor the press, forcefully sterilize all pet animals and shut down the internet. Now it would be perfectly possible to vote for such a party out of a libertarian sentiment. For example if you were a gun lover, who valued gun freedom so much as to make the trade off in the freedoms lost worthwhile. Also despite the latter portion clearly being unjust it would be totally permissible for you to vote for this party if one of the following was true: A.) You were the only person who was going to be effected by these laws B.) Everyone else preferred this party and this set of freedoms gained to the ones lost as well C.) Everyone who was not going to vote for this party was going to do so not because they disagreed with the illiberal part of their platform, but because they disagreed with the liberal part of the platform. So in theory under certain unlikely circumstances it would be OK to vote for at least some unjust laws.

But of course these circumstances are never going to happen in practice. In practice not just every party is going to have some illiberal aspect about it, but also at least some liberal aspect no matter how minor. And this liberal aspect is going to attract at least some supporters. Lets say you have a choice between a ruling Hindu Minarchist party and an opposition Socialist party. So the Hindu Minarchists are more liberal in everything except for one thing - the issue of secularism. Now to vote for Hindu Minarchists is not aggression against people who do not care an iota about the issue of secularism and vote for the Socialists only because they desire government confiscation of all the means of production, but it is aggression against people who vote for the Socialists because they promise to introduce secularism. I think all present company would prefer the Hindu Minarchists by a country mile, but if we were to vote for them it would at the same time be impossible for us to argue that we were any better than our mirror pictures who went out and voted for the Socialists because they were secularists (which we would critique). A consequence of value being subjective for freedoms just like for goods.

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Marko, have you heard of Marc Emery?

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No.

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He is a wealthy Canadian pot smoker that supported the New Democrat Party because they were willing to make changes in drug law. The NDP is a member of Socialist International. Emery is a libertarian.

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I can believe that.

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Yes. Causation and Aggression - Kinsella & Tinsley.

Latter example is expanded upon and the former is mentioned.

It does? If that’s the case, then it follows that democracy actually is representative. Does it not? lol.

NEW BANNER: Some libertarians have recommended anti-voting activities during the 1972 election. Do you agree with this tactic?

ROTHBARD: I’m interested to talk about that. This is the classical anarchist position, there is no doubt about that. The classical anarchist position is that nobody should vote, because if you vote you are participating in a state apparatus. Or if you do vote you should write in your own name, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with this tactic in the sense that if there really were a nationwide movement – if five million people, let’s say, pledged not to vote. I think it would be very useful. On the other hand, I don’t think voting is a real problem. I don’t think it’s immoral to vote, in contrast to the anti-voting people.

Lysander Spooner, the patron saint of individualist anarchism, had a very effective attack on this idea. The thing is, if you really believe that by voting you are giving your sanction to the state, then you see you are really adopting the democratic theorist’s position. You would be adopting the position of the democratic enemy, so to speak, who says that the state is really voluntary because the masses are supporting it by participating in elections. In other words, you’re really the other side of the coin of supporting the policy of democracy – that the public is really behind it and that it is all voluntary. And so the anti-voting people are really saying the same thing.

I don’t think this is true, because as Spooner said, people are being placed in a coercive position. They are surrounded by a coercive system; they are surrounded by the state. The state, however, allows you a limited choice – there’s no question about the fact that the choice is limited. Since you are in this coercive situation, there is no reason why you shouldn’t try to make use of it if you think it will make a difference to your liberty or possessions. So by voting you can’t say that this is a moral choice, a fully voluntary choice, on the part of the public. It’s not a fully voluntary situation. It’s a situation where you are surrounded by the whole state which you can’t vote out of existence. For example, we can’t vote the Presidency out of existence – unfortunately, it would be great if we could – but since we can’t why not make use of the vote if there is a difference at all between the two people. And it is almost inevitable that there will be a difference, incidentally, because just praxeologically or in a natural law sense, every two persons or every two groups of people will be slightly different, at least. So in that case why not make use of it. I don’t see that it’s immoral to participate in the election provided that you go into it with your eyes open – provided that you don’t think that either Nixon or Muskie is the greatest libertarian since Richard Cobden! – which many people, of course, talk themselves into before they go out and vote,

The second part of my answer is that I don’t think that voting is really the question. I really don’t care about whether people vote or not. To me the important thing is, who do you support. Who do you hope will win the election? You can be a non-voter and say “I don’t want to sanction the state” and not vote, but on election night who do you hope the rest of the voters, the rest of the suckers out there who are voting, who do you hope they’ll elect. And it’s important, because I think that there is a difference. The Presidency, unfortunately, is of extreme importance. It will be running or directing our lives greatly for four years. So, I see no reason why we shouldn’t endorse, or support, or attack one candidate more than the other candidate. I really don’t agree at all with the non-voting position in that sense, because the non-voter is not only saying we shouldn’t vote: he is also saying that we shouldn’t endorse anybody. Will Robert LeFevre, one of the spokesmen of the non-voting approach, will he deep in his heart on election night have any kind of preference at all as the votes come in. Will he cheer slightly or groan more as whoever wins? I don’t see how anybody could fail to have a preference, because it will affect all of us.

To throw a spanner in the works even more - voting is compulsory where I am. lol

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As in he was hiring or paying people to kill (or in a lesser example - violate rights) thus he was also an aggressor in the crime?

That intuitively makes sense.Is that consistent with a strict NAP?

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I think having a personal preference is different from endorsing someone. As I understand it endorsement of a candidate is helping him campaign. So it would make sense only if he is better in relative terms than the counterpart on every single isolated issue. Else it is like pressing a button which makes 50,000 cripples able to walk again, but also breaks the spine of one or two healthy people.

I agree that non-voting is in theory only a tactical decision, but in practice given the options we are presented with it, which are almost always at least somewhat ambiguous from the viewpoint of which of the options is more libertarian, it is also strictly speaking a moral one.

Anyway thanks for the text Conza, you are like a walking database of these things.

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You do have a choice on not being taxed, you just don’t like it, and find paying taxes an acceptable to condone violence. Just as well you have a choice to or not to vote, you just find not complying acceptable and right.

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You do not have a free choice. It is a hampered choice.

Calling that ‘a choice’ is like placing a positive obligation on a victim of robbery to resist because the spoils may help the robber expand his criminal activities.