Monday, June 13, 2005

Quote of the Day

"The only way to guard against throwing your vote away is to vote for the party that stands for what you stand for. To vote for something that you don't want in order to avoid something else that you don't is to do worse than throw your vote away".
Eugene Debs, writing in the pages of The Call, circa 1908.

3 comments:

Will said...

What happens if there isn't anybody who stands for what you want so what you do want isn't on offer? Is it then OK to vote for something that isn't what you want?

Will
www.gentheoryrubbish.com

Only asking.

Imposs1904 said...

Hello Will,

I'm guessing you already know my answer to that, in that as a chavtastic - or should that be atavistic? - SPGBer I think the question that should be posed at every election should be one of Capitalism or Socialism?

Granted that is a bit Simon Purish in light of the fact that more often than not such a question for most people - socialist or not - can't be posed because there aren't socialist candidates standing in most seats come election time.

However, what I would say is that if socialists seek to strive to the best of our ability to stand candidates, seek to pose that question to fellow workers etc, then I don't think we are so open to the accusation of splendid isolationism or politically impotent purism.

The alternative to posing that revolutionary alternative is that we will be forever re-enacting what the left done for most of the twentieth century: I totally agree with you that socialism is a good idea but, in the meantime, why don't we do this . . . .

I think from reading about the labour movement in Britain in the late ninettenth and early twentieth century, that pretty much sums up the history of the Labour Party, and the choices made in its early days by some leading members who were socialist minded (granted a majority of them weren't).

And it does beg question: at one point are you able to break out of that cycle of compromise - of that mentality of doing something - anything - in the here and now. It's a big question, and I don't pretend that I have any pat and easy answers, despite that seemingly being the case because of my continuing support and membership of the SPGB.

Cheers.

Will said...

thanks for that Darren.