-- Vasuki Nesiah

"If the god had intended people to vote, they would have given us candidates."
Howard Zinn

In the course of the 2000 election campaign Ralph Nader is said to have urged that there may be some value to Bush being elected rather than Gore - "I rather be provoked not anaesthetized". There was widespread conviction amongst the liberal-left intelligentsia at the time that there was no significant difference between the democrats and republicans, between electing George Bush and Al Gore - if anything it was a difference of style - swashbuckling, cowboy imperialism vs. American hegemony with a more diplomatic face. And undoubtedly progressives were provoked by four years of Bush - after the Eugene McCarthy-Richard Nixon election of 1968, this was probably the most invigorated election cycle with grassroots mobilization of the like that the US hasn't seen in a long time. So provoked were they that even harsh critics of the American electoral political spectrum such as Noam Chomsky moved into 'the anybody-but-Bush' camp - Nader was abandoned and the center-right candidacy of John Kerry supported with fierce anti-Bush fervor. Admittedly, Kerry was no radical, he was 'Bush lite' as Chomsky noted, but still, compared to the far right fundamentalist politics of George Bush, that was a difference that could have significant consequences for America and the world.

Today in post-election America, the left is left with the worst of all possible worlds - a year of left activism devoted to campaigning for Kerry and his center-right candidacy; Moreover, not only does it seem that all that energy and activisms was misdirected, it was also to no avail - because even that center right electoral platform that sucked up all that progressive activism ended up defeated at the ballot box. So if American progressives are found wondering around the world submitting immigration applicants and prescriptions for anti-depressants, it is not without cause.

Democracy boxed-in by the ballot box

Today the left is reminding itself of old lessons that the ballot box can box-in democracy to periodic orchestrations of formal acquiescence to the status quo. Thus on the morning after, on November 5th, progressive internet chat rooms were flooded with suggestions for dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder coupled with re-affirmations of the lesson that democracy is not just about elections . Participating in democratic processes determining the structures that shape our collective lives cannot be reduced to advancing or withholding support for a candidate running for office. The fact that this simple lesson needs to be learned anew is itself extraordinary.

Some have argued that the specter of America on the global stage is a malevolent mix of nastiness and naiveté; equally, the vision of democracy that it stands for is also both nasty and naïve, 'manufacturing' both, status-quo affirming 'consent', and counter-intuitive optimism about electoral politics as an avenue to change the status quo. The fact that familiar critical lessons have to be learned anew, that the limitations of electoral politics once again eluded well meaning American progressives, is itself an indicator of the ideological underpinnings to that spectral presence. For political mobilization generated by this Polly Anna-ish optimism, the election results are all the more devastating.

But perhaps that's too defeatist; the lesson that re-emerged on the radar screen of American progressives on the morning of November 5th came late, but not there is no such thing as too late. It is true that the flip side of not limiting progressive energies to electoral victories is that electoral losses are not the end of history. If democracy is not merely a matter of elections, electoral defeat does not spell the end of democratic possibilities. Not that elections don't matter; Rather, it is that electoral politics can be an important terrain of struggle for social change if our engagement is focused not only on the victory and defeat of particular candidate, but also on larger goals that feed into social movements not election cycles.

Even in this past year, there were groups that used the election cycle in more laudably strategic ways to mobilize on issues that went beyond and/or deepened electoral politics - I am thinking of those groups that were agitating on equal access to civic participation by racial minorities (i.e., strategically mobilizing on the right to vote as itself an entry point into a discussion regarding the nature of pluralism and access to justice in America), equally, some of the groups that campaigned on campaign finance reform (again, as a window into the socio-economic injustices built into the american model of democracy) and so on.

However, these examples of groups using the short term opportunities of electoral cycles to pursue struggles for social change are the exceptions. The majority deferred any radically counter-hegemonic activism for the long term. Urged on by the likes of Michael Moore, the majority stood behind the Kerry camp and channeled all energies into defeating Bush. For many getting Kerry elected was the immediate priority, justifying short term compromises with the promise that in the long term we will challenge the system as a whole. Famous, if misguided last words. We are not the first to observe that "in the long term we are all dead."

Time to head South!

Revolution in a box?

In Latin America, from Uruguay to Argentina to Brazil, there has been a resurgence of the left through the ballot box. This is a region where US cold war foreign policy and its allies in the authoritarian regimes of the 1970s and '80s strangled the left to near extinction; right wing politics scientists urge that the left was defeated by its own enarmourment with militant struggle - and that true enough the reversal of the legacy of Che, Castro and others through the embrace of the ballot box evidences a maturing into the democratic fold. Perhaps this is sour grapes on the part of the right. In any case it is undoubtedly the case that the new millennium has seen a robust resurgence of democratic participation in both 'official' and 'unofficial' politics by marginalized communities, voices of resistance/advocates of progressive social change - mobilized, not solely, but significantly, through electoral politics and the capturing of electoral office. Moreover, this has accompanied achievements that are not to be scoffed at - from the negotiation of new terms with international financial institutions that are at least marginally more favorable to the poor to some measure of justice at long last to victims of Pinochet and his ilk in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and elsewhere. Moreover, from Iraq to the ICC, Latin American countries have also been voices of dissent in the international public sphere. While always less than would be desirable, there may also be concrete gains in the region for indigenous struggles for justice and recognition; the same is true for sexual minorities - For instance, Brazil has been leading efforts to press for the incorporation of sexual orientation and attendant rights and protections into the international human rights regime. Moreover, the very real achievements here are not even those policy initiatives but the revitalizing of traditions of dissent in the invigoration of the public sphere. Perhaps this is a context where electoral politics has enhanced democratic life rather than emasculated it.

It is true that the electoral spectrum here is much wider than in the United States - thus there are significant material and ideological issues at stake in the differences between competing candidates and it is difficult to not be seduced by the Lulas of the world. However, the role of progressives in Latin America (or for that mater in countries like Spain and India) once the euphoric post-election dust settles remains a vexing issue. For instance, if we turn to India - against the backdrop of the BJP, how much do we focus on throwing in our weight with keeping the Congress party led coalition together (and in power) when there are is much to oppose and resist in the continued economic disenfranchisement of the majority in many of the policies that the coalition advocates? In South Africa, how do we negotiate the importance of maintaining that critical outsider space of resistance and distance from the establishment on the one hand, and, on the other, the seemingly irresistible opportunity to make ones peace with the establishment, to use electoral power to effect social change? Perhaps the lessons of the last US election regarding the limitations of electoral politics have wider resonance. Recall the maxim recounted above regarding the political death that accompanies endlessly deferring activism directed at long-term counter-hegemonic change to make room for activism entailing short term compromises - can a flirtation with electoral power be anything but a fatal encounter that everyone knows about before it happens?

Post-mortem

Rather than leave this on such a despairing note, it may be worth reminding us of another lesson that we can take from American politics. In fact, not a lesson so much as a reminder that seeks to arrest complete despair regarding the outcome of the last elections. While the American empire has a history of brutality, partially sanctioned by its trafficking in a model of democracy that is reduced to elections, it also has a marginalized but important tradition of dissent that has been most impressive precisely in those moments when America was its most regressive - consider the abolitionist movement in the height of slavery, labor struggles and the late 19th century haymarket riots in Chicago precisely when American capitalism was on its triumphalist ascent, the exuberant, subersive embrace of anarchism by Emma Goldman and others when Wilsonian statism was being marketed internationally, the fight for sexual pluralism in the face of Stonewall, the numerous artists/intellectuals/activists who declared themselves communists in resisting McCarthyism, the masses involved in civil disobedience against the deepest segregationists in the 1950s and '60s, the draft card burners viz Vietnam… and even more recently, under the Reagan years - from Act-up challenging homophobia and bigotry against those who were HIV positive to the underground church networks that supported the Sandinistas and the FMLN protesting American foreign policy in central America … This may also be a moment to remind ourselves that even when elections come and go, even when political compromises are made, even when regressive regimes are in place, even when past struggles have come to naught, a tradition of dissent breathes strong even in the heart of the empire.

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