Frankly, but regrettably, voting in elections in liberal societies is ornamental and devoid of power. A transnational cartel of corporate entities, richer than entire countries, ring fence elections for their preferred candidates, only rarely losing. Within the bipartisan system both parties are the big business, ecocide party and the system doesn’t respond to or acknowledge inputs of public reason from civil society. Society itself is in decline as intrinsically valuable spaces that don’t exist for the enrichment of corporations are ever scarce.
The transfer of public commonwealth money to private companies has become exponentially faster and larger in scale. Covid was treated as an occasion to further fatten the coffers of the corporate sector, with governments awarding procurements to class allies instead of the best performing or cheapest options. The most virtuous politicians ought to be demanding seizure and redistribution of the ill gotten wealth.
The maintenance of elite power in such an obviously flawed and iniquitous system relies on perception and narrative management which fabricates a sense of common cause and enforces the idea our governments are moral. Winning the vote is seen as indisputable proof of a mandate to govern, but when the design and structure of the voting system gives unfair advantages to conservative forces, the foundations of their power are illegitimate.
The world around there are vulnerable people who are being groomed to forget that only a handful of people and institutions have forfeited the miracle of life on earth for the sake of money. But like a candle, whose light multiplies and never divides, conscientious dissidents are spreading mass consciousness of the real struggle. The internet, a data commons, is a society that exists beyond the remit of state force, the fastest and most accurate device for information dissemination, even if states still subject it to coercion and try to develop it to suit their own agendas. The internet is post-national and exists with a spirit of solidarity. Code is egalitarian and ubiquitous, it doesn’t divide people or discriminate based on arbitrary characteristics. Children in the global south who live on pennies are contributing to a utopian world by developing socially useful code projects.
In a technologically progressing world, elections, voting, will soon be seen as an anachronism. As is suggested from the recognition that we learned democracy from the trees, democracy will be managed from the roots, with power moving away from a centralised executive to citizens assemblies. Multilateral cooperation will eclipse militant unilateralism from imperial states. This is the world we want, but we must make sacrifices and fight for it.
