Thursday 12 June 2014

There is no state so first past the post is not arrogant

If you have a winner-takes-all election this tends almost always to result in only one winner. This means that it is like a presidential or mayoral system and political systems of this type are often characterised by 'personality politics' and the characteristics of individuals. Elections where a coalition is the likely outcome tend to be more concerned with policy because this is what drives the electorate. A winner-takes-all system has the power to expel the smaller parties from the political process thereby driving out the more engaged voters who have reasons to reject the more popular (and obvious) candidates. The more engaged voters are punished by the first-past-the-post system.

But from an anarchist point of view there is no contradiction in the state doing bad things and not being democratic. Anarchists are generally motivated by a desire for the truth and for justice and human rights. For them it is not a shock to find that the state doesn't seek to be accountable to the people. If the state is bad (for the people) then of course it will reject democracy where it can. So then there is no contradiction (for anarchists) when the government retains fptp and rejects proportional representation or direct democracy. It would be a contradiction for good and popular people to reject being accountable but for the state it is not so unexpected. If the state is good then it will seek to be accountable and democratic but the state is not good... which means that fptp is not inconsistent. It is hard to argue against fptp because to do so assumes the legitimacy of the state which is a rhetorical error. First-past-the-post is not arrogant and so then it is not funny because it contains within it no false assumptions. Fptp does not assume the state is more important than the people it merely assumes that the state doesn't want to be accountable... which it doesn't. To assume the state is malign is not a contradiction (in fact it is consistent and true). To assume that fptp is amusing (arrogant) or inconsistent assumes that the state is real and has a right to exist. Fptp is amusing only if the state is real which it isn't so then there is no joke to be made about fptp and we must endure it. In fact it is a form of statist arrogance to assume that fptp might be amusing (and arrogant).

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