My Vote Doesn't Matter

[Technoscience Leftwing]

By force of circumstances, I was brought up in the Soviet system of education - that is, instead of idealizing and apologising for bourgeois democracy, from childhood I heard criticism of this democracy. The criticism was that democracy under capitalism has become an instrument of large owners. Billionaires have campaign money, own public buildings, newspapers and television companies, can hire professional politicians and campaigners, and through elections create their own parliamentary lobby. And the majority of ordinary people, or activists expressing their interests, are very poor and divided, and therefore unable to compete with billionaires. However, they can use freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, as well as the platform of parliament, to propagate their views - and use parliament to partially and temporarily curb police brutality and to protect the social guarantees of the poor. This is precisely what bourgeois democracy is superior to the ultra-right dictatorship.

Having learned this point of view in school in the 1980s, I saw a brief period of bourgeois democracy in 1991-1993. There were precisely these minuses and there were pluses that we were warned about. However, after the execution of the parliament in 1993

, bourgeois democracy turned into a fiction and props: under the new constitution, the president had the powers of an autocrat, and the new type of parliament (the State Duma) became a consultative, subordinate body, and at any moment could be dissolved by the president in case of disobedience. It was pointless to vote in elections to such a powerless parliament, and the results of any voting could be rigged, because. society was intimidated by the shooting of the parliament, very passive, and did not threaten to protest in case of electoral fraud. Subsequently, in 2000-2022, even these fragments of bourgeois democracy were curtailed: step by step, all forms of political and social protest were criminalized, and the situation began to resemble Italy, Portugal or Spain in the 1940s. And in these countries, parliaments, even if they survived, were only an instance that approved the decisions of ultra-right dictators. Under such conditions, democratic procedures turn into a farce, an empty ritual, superstition, imitation, fiction, a cargo cult.

But the question arises: if bourgeois democracy is the power of the super-rich, and the fascist dictatorship is even worse, then what in return? Well... Probably, the power that protects the interests of the poor, whatever it may be - dictatorial or self-governing (general Internet polls about competing projects, instead of competition between politicians). At the same time, self-government is still better, because any enlightened dictators are mortal, and their associates are few in number - self-government has a wider social base. However, ideology must stand above self-government: social care for the poor, the replacement of living labor by machines, a worldwide non-national brotherhood, secularism, emancipation. And if the decisions of the majority contradict this ideology, such decisions should not be put into practice. So far, this is the ideal of the distant future ... But in the present, there is no point in participating in the farce of imitation procedures.