The whole point is most people don’t do both, they likely do neither and maybe vote (which doesn’t matter because it’s largely just spectacle anyway).
The bourgeois electoral process is a mechanism for dissipating political momentum. It’s the buffer between the masses and the elites. Picture a monarchist system on the verge of revolt, and the bankers funding the king come out and give a concession allowing the peasants to choose one of two new kings (both of whom have to go through an arbitrarily complicated selection process to ensure they aren’t going to lessen the bankers’ power and wealth). Some of the peasants might see through the ruse, but it only has to trick just enough of them to shift the balance of power back to the state apparatus.
The goal of leftists here isn’t to get people not to vote, it’s to help people see through the illusion, hoping to reach a critical mass that can affect material change. Historically, these critical masses are what forced puppet kings to give concessions. But history is rewritten to switch the causality, erasing activists and bestowing all credit on supposed great men.
I care more about your hair color or what you ate for breakfast than whether you vote and for whom. We need to see beyond the symbols and images and interact with the mechanisms they obscure.
The whole point is most people don’t do both, they likely do neither and maybe vote (which doesn’t matter because it’s largely just spectacle anyway).
The bourgeois electoral process is a mechanism for dissipating political momentum. It’s the buffer between the masses and the elites. Picture a monarchist system on the verge of revolt, and the bankers funding the king come out and give a concession allowing the peasants to choose one of two new kings (both of whom have to go through an arbitrarily complicated selection process to ensure they aren’t going to lessen the bankers’ power and wealth). Some of the peasants might see through the ruse, but it only has to trick just enough of them to shift the balance of power back to the state apparatus.
The goal of leftists here isn’t to get people not to vote, it’s to help people see through the illusion, hoping to reach a critical mass that can affect material change. Historically, these critical masses are what forced puppet kings to give concessions. But history is rewritten to switch the causality, erasing activists and bestowing all credit on supposed great men.
I care more about your hair color or what you ate for breakfast than whether you vote and for whom. We need to see beyond the symbols and images and interact with the mechanisms they obscure.