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Interview:
Antiauthoritarianism, Anarchism,
Critical Psychology, Law....

Dennis Fox

September 2004

Babylonia (Greek Antiauthoritarian Movement newspaper)

Email interview conducted by Greek psychologist Argyris Argyriadis

Note: This version may differ from the final published version.


Questions

by Argyris Argyriadis for Babylonia

1. Describe to us your experience as an associate professor of legal studies & psychology and an anarchist (or at least a person who is inspired by the anarchism ideas). Do you find contradictory the fact that one who is "against" the law at the same time is teaching the law? Answer

2. I am aware of your articles and presentations in various conferences and journals of the American Psychological Association and your agitations by also presenting the anarchist point of view in many subjects and especially Law. What was the reaction of these audiences towards anarchism? Answer

3. Is Critical Psychology a fad, a trend or a movement? Describe to us your experience as one of the initiators of Critical Psychology and the current situation within (Critical Psychology). Answer

4. Is Critical Psychology another reform within a legitimate context or a resistant action for transformation? Answer

5. Is Critical Psychology only a criticism within a certain profession (Psychology) or is it also a strategic guideline for Critical thinking in other fields of science like Sociology, Media, Law, Economics and Education? What is your opinion? Answer

6. Do you think that there is any relation between antiauthoritarian - anarchist ideas and Critical Psychology? Answer

7. The societal values also accepted by mainstream Psychology are in favour of individualism, consumption, and competition. On the other hand, Critical Psychology promotes values like social justice, self-identification, participation & diversity. What is your opinion regarding self-government, solidarity, mutual aid, and direct democracy, values and concepts of equal cooperation raised and supported by the antiauthoritarian & anarchist movement worldwide. Do you think that these kinds of values have or at least should have any significance in modern society? Answer

8. What are the reasons for the cognitive dissonance effect regarding Capitalism, State and Authority adopted by common people, if we accept the fact that all the previous mentioned institutions failed to deliver social justice and happiness to all as promised? Why do people continue to consider them the only way? Psychologically can't we describe this as a deviation? Answer

9. What is the future of social movements like antiglobalization, antiauthoritarian and ecological? How can these movements become more appealing? Answer

10. What is your comment as a critical & social psychologist regarding the "war against terror" and all this regime of uncertainty and insecurity? Answer

11. Finally what is your opinion regarding the participants on the forthcoming Presidential elections in the US? Do you think there is any other alternative? Answer

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Answers

by Dennis Fox

Note: This version may differ from the final published version.

1. Describe to us your experience as an associate professor of legal studies & psychology and an anarchist (or at least a person who is inspired by the anarchism ideas). Do you find contradictory the fact that one who is "against" the law at the same time is teaching the law?

In theory, there's no contradiction in anarchists studying the law, just as we might study any institution with power over our lives. Teaching how legal institutions work in practice is, or should be, very different from teaching that law is positive, necessary, or inevitable. So "teaching the law" is not really what I do.

I'm not located in a Law School. Instead, before leaving Illinois six years ago I spent ten years working in an interdisciplinary "legal studies" department, which teaches undergraduate and graduate students how legal institutions operate. Although I'm not a lawyer myself, as part of my postdoctoral training in "psychology and law" I took a dozen law school courses. This exposure to how lawyers are taught to think helps me work with students who expect to work as lawyers, paralegals, police, and so on. They often want to learn what the law "is" and assume law is a good thing. Part of my job, it seems to me, is to challenge the notion that law is inherently a force for good.

My approach to law is generally consistent with a school of thought composed of left-leaning lawyers and law professors called Critical Legal Studies, which emphasizes how law is used rather than more traditional training in "legal reasoning." Rather than teaching that legal reasoning is the epitome of rationality and the best way to make decisions, for example, they demonstrate through analysis of cases and other methods how broader political and social factors affect rulings by judges. They emphasize the subjectivity of law rather than its supposed objectivity and rationality.

It's sometimes tempting to say law is a tool that can be used for good or evil depending on who controls it, thus justifying efforts to select the right judges, for example, or to push for specific legal changes. In my view, though, legal thinking on balance is more negative than positive regardless of who controls it. The issue is related to the broader debate over technology. Many old-time Marxists, for example, believe technology can be liberating if the working class is in charge. I think, though, that most advanced forms of technology such as television, automobiles, and computers as well as social technologies such as assembly lines and bureaucracy would damage social relations and other crucial values even if we controlled them from the bottom up. Law works the same way. The nature of law is to categorize, to generalize, to apply universal rules with pure rationality based on sometimes-arbitrary principles, rather than to take into account individual circumstances or facilitate community decision making. Essentially be definition, law does these things regardless of who makes the decisions. When we make exceptions -- when we take circumstances into account and decide that enforcing a certain general rule would be silly, for example -- we're not making law better, we're leaving law behind for something else, as we should.

I began my answer to this question by saying there's no inconsistency in anarchists studying the law "in theory." In practice, of course, when we challenge conventional notions about society we sometimes annoy people, either because they have power and want to keep it or because they accept those notions as given. Students enthralled by the law are not always pleased to have a professor challenge their assumptions; this is not different than students challenged by critical professors in history, economics, and other subjects. In my case, it was mostly not students but some other professors and administrators who objected to my emphasizing the downside of law. This caused some complications in keeping my job and getting tenured, but I was fortunate to be in a department with tolerance for critical views.

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2. I am aware of your articles and presentations in various conferences and journals of the American Psychological Association and your agitations by also presenting the anarchist point of view in many subjects and especially Law. What was the reaction of these audiences towards anarchism?

The academic audience is very varied, so reactions differ widely. Although much of my academic work explicitly incorporates anarchist principles, it's not the anarchism so much as the more general left critique of dominant institutions that attracts responses. Reactions to anarchism are more often along the lines of "interesting but not too practical." This is true outside academia as well, where I do most of my writing today.

In academics, I've mostly published in general mainstream psychology journals rather than critical or political journals. I do this intentionally, because I think reaching a mainstream audience has more potential to shake reader perceptions than writing for people who mostly agree with my general values. So my readers range from those with some sympathy for critical views to those who are firmly antagonistic. Fortunately, I frequently receive mail from readers who find critical views within academic psychology worth pursuing; this has increased substantially with the posting of material on the Internet, available to anyone who searches for it (my work is at http://dennisfox.net).

Journals that publish my articles have sometimes been accused of letting in "political propaganda" rather than "science." That's one reason I keep in mind the audience that really counts in academic careers: the gatekeepers, journal editors and reviewers who decide whether or not to accept your work. Some gatekeepers are sympathetic to radical views, but even they have to satisfy their mainstream "professional" readers who insist on appropriately conventional forms of discourse. But still, even the American Psychological Association's primary journal, American Psychologist, occasionally publishes critical pieces when the authors use appropriate academic jargon, cite well-known scholars, and show willingness to adapt to professional expectations. Whether the effort is worth it depends in part on what you might be doing instead. And it does get tiring trying to follow academic norms without watering down critical views.

These days I write very little academic material, partly because I'm on leave from my teaching position and don't expect to return, and partly because after a while the material becomes repetitious. Also, easy Internet availability makes it less necessary to keep publishing variations of the same theme in dozens of different places; that practice, common to academics from the critical left as well as the mainstream, helps advance a career but seems to me less and less justifiable otherwise.

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3. Is Critical Psychology a fad, a trend or a movement? Describe to us your experience as one of the initiators of Critical Psychology and the current situation within (Critical Psychology).

It would be nice to say it's a trend, but I don't think critical psychology deserves that description. When Isaac Prilleltensky and I organized the meeting in 1993 that founded RadPsyNet, the Radical Psychology Network (http://radpsynet.org), the term "critical psychology" was not in common use, at least in the United States and Canada. Since then we've seen increased use of the terminology, books and classes aimed at different levels of study, international conferences around the globe, and journals and conferences. More scholars today use critical concepts in their work, and more students come across critical perspectives, though this is still fairly minimal in the United States. In Europe, Australia, and South Africa students can enroll in critical psychology courses and even some degree programs, but I know of no explicitly-labeled critical psychology degree programs in the US. There are very few courses in the subject other than a handful of small advanced seminars.

But to call something a trend implies it will continue to grow and perhaps even become dominant. I see little chance for critical psychology to make a big impact on mainstream psychology's institutions, though it may allow more room for maneuvering within those institutions. Even now some psychologists can make a career doing critical work. We can publish more, do critical or nonempirical research, occasionally facilitate small changes in psychology's ethics rules. But I think all this has little impact on the vast numbers of people psychologists work with -- individual and institutional clients, students, research subjects, mental institution inmates, prisoners, etc.

The area within psychology most amenable to critical psychology in North America is community psychology, which traditionally is psychology's liberal-activist end. My own training is in social psychology, which critical psychology in the US has utterly failed to infiltrate. But community psychology began with the goal of acting for social change, and community psychologists like Isaac Prilleltensky are trying to make the field live up to its rhetoric. So perhaps critical psychology is a trend within community psychology, but even so that's a relatively small part of psychology, most of which remains clinical individualist outside the university, and experimentalist within.

Is critical psychology a movement rather than a trend? To be a movement there would need to be more momentum, better organization. To me it seems a bit slow-moving, even with the increase in journals and conferences. Although I haven't been following developments as closely as I should for the past few years, I have yet to see evidence that critical psychology has much impact beyond those who already agree with it, except perhaps in community psychology as I noted. Most working mainstream psychologists I speak with have never heard the term critical psychology and don't relate well to the concepts.

Perhaps it deserves to be called a fad, but I think it's longer lasting than that. How does calling it a "subculture" sound? We have our ways of speaking and interacting, our rituals and values, our email listservs and journal styles. Identifying oneself as a critical psychologist engenders a variety of legitimate expectations. Subculture is not so bad -- it provides some breathing room, especially for students and newer psychologists who otherwise might find psychology too confining.

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4. Is Critical Psychology another reform within a legitimate context or a resistant action for transformation?

The rhetoric certainly aims at transformation rather than reform. Critical psychology aims to replace mainstream psychology's norms, its individualism and empiricism. But in practice, again, critical psychologists in mainstream institutions have little room for maneuvering, so small victories -- allowing researchers to do some qualitative rather than only quantitative research, for example -- amount to relatively minor reforms.

Many critical psychologists also aim to replace more general societal norms that mainstream psychology reinforces. The problem with mainstream psychology isn't only its direct effect on its subjects/clients/students, but its participation in maintaining an unjust status quo that affects everyone. Psychologists, for example, advise legislators and political leaders and judges on public policy issues, write books for the general public encouraging individualist rather than communal problem-solving, help pacify dissatisfied workers and prisoners, and use psychological principles to facilitate advertising and other means of keeping the general population focused on consumerism, competition, career, fashion, and other individualist pursuits. Revolutionizing psychology itself is a challenge, but the real goal is to revolutionize society.

Or it should be. In the real world, especially psychology's real academic world I know best, sights are often lowered out of practicality. Academia can be an oasis from outside society. We can sit and write and teach and go to conferences and persuade ourselves we are making a difference. But academia is also frequently a pressured combat zone. The rules of publication and tenure and promotion push us toward blending critical values with accepted mainstream forms of discourse, research, teaching. The result too often is a "realistic" reduction of goals from transformation to something somewhat less.

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5. Is Critical Psychology only a criticism within a certain profession (Psychology) or is it also a strategic guideline for Critical thinking in other fields of science like Sociology, Media, Law, Economics and Education? What is your opinion?

Critical psychology can certainly help encourage critical thinking more broadly, but I'm not sure it has much to offer these other fields you mention, which had critical tendencies before critical psychology took off. Critical Legal Studies, critical sociology -- these are more influential in their own fields, or at least more noticeable, than critical psychology is within mainstream psychology. Cross-fertilization is desirable, but I don't think critical sociology, for example, needs critical psychology input as much as the opposite -- critical psychology in some ways is an attempt to bring into psychology the critical modes of thought that originated elsewhere. Psychology, the most individualist social science, is not yet in much position to influence fields that are inherently more social in focus and more open to political analysis.

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6. Do you think that there is any relation between antiauthoritarian - anarchist ideas and Critical Psychology?

Some of us see the connection clearly, but most critical psychologists haven't given this any more thought than critical thinkers in other fields, or than leftists more generally. Anarchism strikes most politically inclined people as unrealistic, and critical psychologists are as impatient as others in making changes right now.

I wrote a short piece once suggesting that anarchist principles could help organize thinking about much of mainstream social psychology's traditional subject matter -- things like social interaction and group dynamics, competition and cooperation, hierarchy and obedience, the development of values and attitudes, decentralized versus centralized decision making. To the extent that critical psychology focuses attention on psychology's connections with the status quo, anarchist and antiauthoritarian ideas are directly relevant. But at this point I think critical psychology, like psychology more generally, has more to learn from anarchist ideas and practice than the other way around.

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7. The societal values also accepted by mainstream Psychology are in favour of individualism, consumption, and competition. On the other hand, Critical Psychology promotes values like social justice, self-identification, participation & diversity. What is your opinion regarding self-government, solidarity, mutual aid, and direct democracy, values and concepts of equal cooperation raised and supported by the antiauthoritarian & anarchist movement worldwide. Do you think that these kinds of values have or at least should have any significance in modern society?

The anarchist values you identify are central to human psychology. On the whole, more people live more satisfying lives when they directly participate in decision making, when they cooperate with those around them, when they interact with others on equal terms. Even mainstream social psychology research supports this conclusion. So my interest in seeing the world transformed into one based on anarchist principles comes not just from anarchist theory and not just from personal experience but from reading a significant amount of research. Nothing I've learned in psychology makes me think an anarchist world wouldn't be better than the one we have today. Properly understood as a means of organizing society rather than as a simple-minded rejection of structure, or endorsement of random violence, or proclivity for wearing black, an anarchist society would be not just workable but a vast improvement for most people.

The problem is getting from where we are today to where we'd like to end up, not just because societal elites have power to resist change but because too many people have internalized the assumption that things like hierarchy and national states and capitalism are either inevitable or optimal. I don't think anarchists have figured out how to confront institutions of power in a sustained way or to effectively shake people's assumptions about what's possible.

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8. What are the reasons for the cognitive dissonance effect regarding Capitalism, State and Authority adopted by common people, if we accept the fact that all the previous mentioned institutions failed to deliver social justice and happiness to all as promised? Why do people continue to consider them the only way? Psychologically can't we describe this as a deviation?

This is the Big Question.

I would say, first, that not everyone considers status quo institutions optimal. Many working class and poor people know first-hand that the system fails to deliver as promised, but they have yet to see a realistic strategy to eliminate or bypass elite power. Even for many in the middle class, especially political progressives and liberals, the failure to deliver social justice and happiness is obvious, but pushing for minor reform seems more promising than complete transformation. If only the right people were in charge of elite institutions, the thinking goes, then maybe we could tidy up capitalism's loose ends. Given the many reforms in the West over the past century stemming from pressure from popular social movements, liberals claim not entirely unreasonably that reform can improve people's lives even if it reduces pressure for more revolutionary transformation.

Others who reject the conclusion that what we have is optimal include many conservatives who, often for religious reasons, reject the cultural emphasis on consumerism, fashion, selfishness, and excessive individualism. Despite initial appearances these conservatives have something in common with left anarchists properly concerned about loss of community.

But as you suggest, many people do endorse capitalism, the state, and hierarchical authority relations. Popular culture endorses individualist solutions to what are defined as individual problems even though they are so widespread they are better described as institutional problems needing institutional solutions. One primary reason is that elites effectively present status-quo values as if they are obvious, natural, and inevitable.

Today, especially in an individualist culture such as the United States, the relatively few people who manage to climb the economic ladder are presented as evidence that anyone can succeed if only they make the right decisions in life -- go to college, work two or three jobs, wear the right clothing and network in the right places, never give up. The vast majority of people who do these things don't get very far, but society's bulwark institutions -- schools, churches, the media, the political system, even things like pop psychology books -- explain those failures as failures of drive, of effort. Sure, the odds are difficult, but anybody can get ahead if they just try hard enough. Attention thus is focused on individual accomplishment and individual blame. Children grow up taught that they too can become rich, or a Hollywood movie star, or a multimillion dollar basketball player. If they fail, they must have done something wrong, somewhere. This I think is what modern societies promise -- not the social justice and happiness you mention in your question, but the chance for individual advancement.

Much has been written about how this works. How can people continue to support institutions that oppress them? Marxists first talked about false consciousness, the notion that people endorse societal assumptions that clearly disadvantage them. That makes sense, but other things are also at work. People need not just a shift in assumptions but also a model for action and some optimism about the chance of success. Absent that, it's easier to stay home and watch television, which teaches us that consumerism is natural, luxury is within our reach, political action is silly, and nothing is going to change.

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9. What is the future of social movements like antiglobalization, antiauthoritarian and ecological? How can these movements become more appealing?

Social movements are crucial. They combat false consciousness in the general public by pointing out the failure of dominant institutions, the possibility of other forms of societal organization, and the prospects for change. They can put real pressure on elite institutions, sometimes resulting in reforms that do make a difference in people's lives. And they sustain commitment on the part of those who participate, building the social ties and common experiences that reinforce the determination to stand up to injustice. These things are all true in the long run even when activism leads to state crackdowns and increased repression in the short run. Indeed, state resistance to reasonable demands often radicalizes liberal activists, pushing them beyond their initial stance toward more comprehensive analysis and more confrontational action.

To accomplish more than minor reform, however, movements need to grow beyond their initial base. They need to appeal to a broader -- and thus older -- segment of the population. This is partly a matter of more effective communication with mainstream audiences, offering easily understandable critiques of the status quo, interesting alternatives, and the prospect of making change. This can be done through writing, electronic media, teaching. We need discourse at a more sophisticated level than slogans and posters. We need more serious self-education and study groups. We need to get our analyses into mainstream newspapers and magazines, not just alternative media. All this can help.

But it's also a matter of style. When the public's only view of movement activists is that portrayed in the corporate-owned media -- young people wearing black clothes, hiding their faces, breaking windows, screaming and throwing projectiles at cops -- they're not likely to want to find out more. The image of activists as immature raging crazies hurts movement growth; even if most activists know the image is inaccurate, the public accepts media images and worries about where things are headed. So tension exists between protest as self-expression and protest as recruitment for change. We need to find a way to do both.

Another thing worth thinking about if the goal is long-term movement sustainability is the drop-off in activism that commonly comes with age. I'm writing this a few weeks after the Democratic National Convention in Boston. The anarchist-organized marchers were overwhelmingly young. What happened to those who organized as anarchists and antiauthoritarians in Boston when I was younger, during the 1970s anti-nuclear movement and related activity? Then, thousands of (mostly young) people tried to shut down the Seabrook Nuclear Plant. Today most no longer march through the streets. Many have moved on to liberal politics, or even out of politics. Is this progression inevitable, a sign of mature reevaluation of earlier commitments? Or is it a sign instead that our movement, like the earlier movements we followed, failed to institutionalize lifetime support for radical action and radical living? We failed to counter the pressures of individualized everyday life. Jobs, family, health problems, a place to live -- approaching these challenges as aging individuals within isolated nuclear families, year after year, decade after decade, makes it easier to relegate political concerns to the background than to maintain the radical impulse. Although there are many exceptions, aging activists who retain their energy and commitment and focus, for too many of us political work became less urgent, less imaginative, and less satisfying. Today's younger movement activists may think they will avoid the same fate, but unless they create institutions to sustain motivation I suspect most won't be any more successful than we were.

Creating workable alternative institutions would also demonstrate to the public that the status quo is not inevitable. That would be valuable indeed.

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10. What is your comment as a critical & social psychologist regarding the "war against terror" and all this regime of uncertainty and insecurity?

After the attacks on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the American Psychological Association issued a call for assistance in drafting a statement on terrorism. The APA request, which accepted uncritically the official US interpretation of events, emphasized how psychologists could help people cope with the fear of terrorism through stress reduction and similar interventions. It concluded with the self-serving statement that "Such an initiative could help position psychology as a key national resource, perhaps as significant as the repositioning that occurred after World War II." This remarkably misdirected effort should come as no surprise given organized psychology's effort to be a significant player in influencing public policy.

Liberal social psychologists, many of whom began their careers during the movement against the Vietnam War, have spent decades identifying factors that lead to war and repression. Dehumanizing the enemy, faulty group decision making procedures, unchallenged authority -- all these and more cause escalation rather than de-escalation. Indeed, this mainstream psychology work can help authorities try to prevent escalation if that's what they want to accomplish, but it can also help them generate support for war if that's what they seek instead.

Every society seeks to defend itself. Under ideal circumstances, it does so at least in part by trying to determine what institutional failures have led to terrorism and other forms of unjustified violence. Most people don't kill other innocent people without a reason. Sometimes the hostility is justified even if the terrorist act is not.

It's no surprise that Western elites prefer to wage a "war against terror" than reverse centuries of colonialist and capitalist domination. Thus, creating uncertainty and insecurity has many advantages -- it leaves intact dominant institutions and the global distribution of power and resources, it fosters popular support for short-sighted military adventures that boost patriotism and nationalism, and it justifies restrictions on civil liberties in the name of security. Treating political protesters as potential terrorists, investigating and intimidating peaceful activists, searching people at random on the subway -- all this makes it difficult to organize, to show up at protest activity, even to feel comfortable going about our daily lives. The constant reminder that only government secrecy and repression can protect us from terrorists secretly plotting in our neighborhoods may not root out too many terrorist plots, but that's not its real purpose.

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11. Finally what is your opinion regarding the participants on the forthcoming Presidential elections in the US? Do you think there is any other alternative?

Whether you think the main candidates for US President differ substantially depends on your vantage point. Their political parties have somewhat different allegiances. George W. Bush's Republicans more forthrightly seek to make the rich richer, claiming this will help others become rich in return. They also represent more socially conservative segments -- for example, those in favor of more privileged status for religion in public life and opposed to abortion, gay and lesbian relationships, and so on. John Kerry's Democrats, who traditionally claim to represent the working and middle class, seek to protect capitalism by moderating its excesses and preventing complete degradation of its victims, but their increasing interest in attracting better-off professionals and others in the middle of the political spectrum has led them away from their working-class roots. This has also meant more support for social goals such as abortion and gay rights, which alienates many in the working class.

So on social issues, on the surface at least the two parties do differ in ways that can potentially affect many people's daily lives. Bush seems determined to reverse a century of left-liberal political and legal advances, in areas ranging from freedom of speech to environmental protection to existing controls on corporate destructiveness. Kerry will try to prevent some of this slippage. Although it's true that no president can make major changes without the cooperation of legislators and judges, presidents do have great influence.

On the other hand, neither Bush nor Kerry will challenge corporate global capitalism or US global power. Kerry at times seems even more war-ready than Bush, prepared to show US toughness when provoked. He has a habit of supporting bad policy and then trying to explain his support away, as with his votes in the Senate for the Iraq war, the civil-liberties destroying USA PATRIOT Act, and a federal law that seeks to remake public education along more corporate-friendly lines. So on these issues, Kerry's replacing Bush will make little difference.

Most leftists and progressives who vote have apparently decided that the social issues are significant enough to choose Kerry despite his obvious flaws. Some also believe, without much rationale as far as I can tell, that Kerry is really more opposed to the Iraq war than he says publicly, or that at least he can be dealt with.

Within the US system, given the strength of the two mainstream parties, no other candidates have a chance of winning the presidency. The US Constitution, vaunted mostly for its longevity and its creation of a stable government, protects the status quo by making it almost impossible to bring about significant change through legal democratic means. The winner-take-all system shuts out small political parties and makes voting for someone like Ralph Nader or the Green Party mostly an exercise in principle without substance. Under these circumstances, voting for Nader instead of Kerry means a net gain for Bush -- though this is really true only in a dozen or so states where the result is not essentially predetermined. Kerry will easily win my own state, Massachusetts, where he is from, so voting for a third party to boost its perceived support or not voting at all won't affect the outcome. In states such as Florida and Ohio, though, anything other than a vote for Kerry can conceivably tip the election to Bush. Anarchists opposed to voting under any circumstances may shrug off that result, but most leftists are so horrified by Bush's policies that voting for the lesser of two evils begins to seem reasonable.

It's important to note that half of all Americans don't vote, not for principled reasons but because they believe that the two main candidates don't sufficiently differ on issues that really matter, or that real differences won't be transformed into policy, or that electoral victories will never move people at the bottom any higher. Many wealthier people also don't vote; to affect policy they give money instead, to candidates, to lobbyists, to influential political think tanks. Voting in the US remains primarily a middle-class ritual, engaged in out of conventional good-citizenship habits regardless of any real impact.

The challenge for those who advocate change through elections is demonstrating to the poor and working class that voting will make a difference in their lives -- not an easy task given the lived experience of people who have generally voted before, even for winners, without noticing any real benefit. The dominant political parties today don't even try to reach these nonvoters, focusing instead on the tiny segment of moderate regular voters who have not yet made up their minds.

Anarchists opposed to voting in principle have different goals and strategies, but still must approach the same population. Voting may not change the system. What can we offer instead?

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