The editorial board of Axis of Logic is encouraging voters in the United States to stay away from the polls on November 4.

I'm part of that editorial board, and I agree that the US electoral system is so utterly corrupt that participating in its charade borders on stupidity. We are urging potential voters to do almost anything else that day: read a book, take in a movie, spend some time with your kids or parents, clip your toenails -- there aren't many things you could choose to do that will be less valuable than choosing a candidate in the next US election.

But that got me to thinking about two things:

• What is the purpose of voting in the first place?
• What happens if US citizens listen to us, and no one shows up to vote?

Let me digress for a moment. Although we are specifically concerned about the upcoming US elections, the issue of why we are voting in the first place is more universal.

My own country might have a general election before the United States. Our government is of the parliamentary form and, at the federal level at least, elections don't follow a defined timeframe. An election must be conducted at least once every five years, but short of that requirement, the government is free to call for an election whenever the mood strikes them. Naturally, they normally do that only when they think their chances for re-election are solid. They don't always guess right, but that's life. Our present overlords seem to be thinking they will be good to go any day now.

So, supposing Canadians do get the opportunity to go to the polls soon, here are the options they can exercise: they can stay home and not vote; they can go to the polling place and spoil their ballots (in which case it is simply discarded); they can go the polling place and formally refuse the ballot (in which case it is registered as declined, like choosing 'none of the above'); they can hold their noses and select one of whatever is on the ticket in their constituency.

We have relatively simple ballots. There is usually only the election itself taking place; referenda, special votes, and so on are quite rare. And we get one vote, for one candidate. So we can't, say, choose Stephane Dion for prime minister without also choosing his band of no-goods along with him. We can't select the Conservatives without getting stuck with Stephen Harper (the current prime minister). But we do have lots of choices -- Canadian Heritage, NDP, Green, Marxist-Leninist, Lennon & McCartneyist and a bunch of others -- whom we can choose with confidence, since we can be absolutely certain none of these will ever form a government.

It is hard to accept that thinking Canadians consider our electoral system to have any merit whatsoever. In almost every individual riding, we consistently elect 'representatives' (the term is used here loosely) who are opposed by more than half of those who bothered to vote. Perhaps that's one of the main reasons that voter participation has steadily dwindled over the past few decades: only a small minority ever ends up with what it wants.

But -- and here's what sets us aside from our southern neighbours -- our elections are actually fair. There are real ballots, counted by real people, and retained in case they need to be recounted. Vote counting is overseen by representatives of the parties, and done in the full sight of everyone. No matter how inept our candidates might have been, no matter how poor our choices might have been, we can be absolutely assured that the dreck we get stuck with is the dreck we chose.

Why do we vote?

The answer to that is pretty simple, really: people in most countries think they are participating in democracy.

But let's be very clear about democracy: It never had a chance. The forces arrayed against the dream of government of, by, and for the people have been extraordinary. It is possible that they are insurmountable; it is certain that they are anonymous to most members of the public.

This is a very complicated subject, not because it addresses fair voting or republicanism versus parliamentary government, or proportional representation, or any of those things. But because it deals with the shadowy world of international economics and finance, about which most of us know very little. And it is a difficult subject because most of us don't want to acknowledge that we've been had, that we have only briefly enjoyed anything that remotely approached government serving the interests of the public -- which surely must be the purpose and definition of democracy.

Prior to the rise of democracy a few hundred years ago, hunger was rarely a social problem. As discovered in the writings of economic historian Karl Polanyi, hunger did not afflict individuals in traditional societies unless the whole group was threatened in some way -- famine, fire, pestilence, disease, invasion, and the like. Almost everyone had work to do, and freedom from hunger was an accepted social norm. As the landholding gentry became established, this situation only varied a little. Using the feudal manor as an example, everyone worked and everyone was housed and fed.

According to Polanyi, the principle of having basic needs satisfied was sanctioned "under almost every and any type of social organization up to about the beginning of sixteenth century Europe." At about that time, individuals 'unattached to the manor' began to arise and develop into craftsmen. Some were able to sell their services and products, while others fell to destitution. But with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, these individual craftsmen and artisans found themselves quickly swallowed and suddenly bereft of the ability to feed and house themselves and their families.

In England, this caused the onset of an early attempt at socialism. In 1795, a system was established that provided an allowance to the poor, tied to the price of bread, and meant to ensure a basic 'right to live'. Within about forty years, though, the 'right to live' was considered an impediment to the progress of the Industrial Revolution, essentially because it eased the desperation of workers and made them a little less amenable to working in horrid conditions for starvation wages. It is not hard to see why an eventual clash between the labourers and the business owners was certain to come.

As we all know, the ruling classes around most of the world were eventually dragged, kicking and screaming, into a new reality where the people got to select governments and have some input into the direction that they wished society to take. And almost from the outset, these popularly elected governments, or democracies, have been chimera.

Government has, as one of its primary responsibilities, the management of the economy. Leaving aside whether they should have more or less input into economies, they have by their sheer size and force of law the ability to influence how a country's economy operates internally, and how it reacts to or coalesces with international economies.

The simple reality is, however, that governments are only as powerful as their ability to control the movement of capital. And that has almost always eluded them. Gold was once the medium of exchange and the constant against which currency was measured; the ability to readily move the gold from one country to another was constrained. That gave government its last best opportunity to govern effectively.

In our present day, however, wealth moves in nanoseconds. Currencies around the world are bought and sold in a heartbeat, and decisions made just to put a few more coins into someone's pocket can destroy the economy of some small country overnight. And all of this happens completely free of regulation.

To make matters worse, corporations now rule the world -- no country's government is in charge of anything, except a few small dictatorships. Decisions regarding economics are all made to serve the needs of corporations. In effect, our governments are the paid lobbyists of those corporations. So when we vote, all we are really determining is who we think is the best person to get paid by us for working against our interests.

This might not be so bad as it sounds if the corporations were housed locally, paid taxes locally, and generally provided a benefit to society. But they are not, do not, and cannot. It is a legal requirement for a corporation to take all steps necessary to achieve the maximum return on the shares of its investors. They cannot have concern for the needs of society.

My friends on the left -- most of whom are not as far left as I -- object to any acknowledgement that capitalist pursuits have some merit. But the trouble is, Adam Smith was largely right in his views that even-handed trade and strong worker power are the only things that could realistically promote fairness and democracy. And we on the left are often guilty of absolutism; we refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that some of the thinking of the right might have merit. On the right, however, it is far more common for them to lift the good ideas of the left and simply appropriate them.

The word 'capitalism' is in bad odour today, a disdain it has surely earned. But the ideal behind trade amongst peoples is a great incentive to people to produce, to get ahead, to make things and invent things; it is the necessary grease to move society forward.

My concern is always with labels -- I know all about the arguments that surround the concept of 'framing', and that choice of language is very powerful in how things proceed. But looking at the reality, rather than at what things are called, we see pretty clearly that the problems stem -- almost entirely -- from corporate rule.

The British court which originally declared corporations to be 'persons' set us down an inevitable path to where we are right now. In the absence of reforming that issue, nothing is going to change. Even revolution won't help unless we change that fundamental law. We need an overwhelming surge of jurisdictions throwing off the shackle of corporate rule, and willing to tell those nations who won't do likewise to take their business elsewhere.

We do have the Scandinavian experience of how benign capitalism can be when sternly corralled -- but even there, it is still the corporation at the heart of driving society. Given the legal personhood, corporate rule cannot help but be totalitarian -- it's what it's designed to do.

So we have three essential problems that will need to be stopped before any real progress will take place:

• outlawing speculation in currencies, or taxing it heavily enough to strongly curtail it
• stripping corporations of their personhood
• making corporations responsible first to the laws of their homeland, second to the laws of any country where they do business, third to international law, fourth to their shareholders

And another thing that would be helpful is that the United States needs to be sent to its room and told to think about what it has done.

I don't invest; I don't speculate in currencies or bond markets; the money I do have is kept in several Credit Unions; I actively boycott dozens of corporations based solely on their bad citizenship (Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble, etc.); I buy from local farmers and local vendors wherever possible; I buy Fair Trade products as much as I can; I don't eat meat -- partly because I don't like it much, but mostly because of the North American penchant for loading it up with chemicals, for mistreating the animals and the environment; I donate money to groups like Doctors Without Borders. In short, I try as hard as I can to live within the economy we have, while participating in it as little as possible.

But I don't vote.

It isn't that I wouldn't love to vote; it's just that I hate to waste my time on anything so meaningless. I'd get far better use of my time by looking for imaginary shapes in the clouds; and I wouldn't have to wash my hands and gargle when I was done.

I am thoroughly a socialist (have been since my teens); but that's not enough. Without those fundamental changes noted above in how the world's economy operates, we will merely be moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. Because even socialism will eventually decay if required to operate within the current economic paradigm -- whatever name we call it by.

In my view, the radical thinkers who seem to be trying to move society in the right direction are not nearly radical enough. I am a big fan of Hugo Chavez, but I don't think his reforms will go far enough -- they can't, without those fundamental changes noted above.

What happens if no one gets elected?

I have tried to locate anything in United States, Canadian, or British law that can offer guidance here. But, frankly, no one seems to have considered the possibility that the populace would ever, en masse, just sit on their hands and refuse to be led to the polling booth.

Since it is the upcoming US vote that prompted this article in the first place, let me speculate about how they would handle it.

First, having absolutely no one vote is simply unthinkable. At the very least, each of the self-serving candidates is going to vote for him or herself. And depending on the size of their families, and who owes them favours or hopes to get favours, somebody is going to win each seat. But if every candidate manages to win election on a basis of, say, 20 votes against 15 for their opponent in a jurisdiction with half a million potential voters, how do you think that will play out? Even in the United States, where citizens are often referred to as 'we the sheeple', it must be assumed that no one would tolerate the formation of a government on such a basis.

So the next logical choice is that the incumbents would try to enact some form of martial or emergency authority to maintain the seats themselves. That would require a level of cooperation between these people that is likely to be so far outside their experience as to be impossible -- they can rarely even agree on lunch. Regardless, whatever efforts they tried to hold power would require the assistance of the military, and it is speculative how much support the military would be willing to give. More likely, some strong military leader would get it into his head that if there was ever a time in the US for a coup, this was it.

By far the most likely scenario, is that all hell would break loose. And the US would finally see a real revolution; not like the one in the late 1700s where the population simply exchanged one sort of aristocratic authority for another. The society that would eventually flow out of this revolution is anyone's guess, considering that US citizens are armed to the teeth.

In Canada, if there was a complete absence of government, it is doubtful that most of us would notice the difference.

What can we do about all this?

Maybe nothing.

But maybe, just maybe, we'll wake up and smell the rot. Maybe we'll take the initiative and go after our governments -- with threats, if need be -- and force them to take control. One of the things our rulers have always relied upon is our willingness to be cowed. From time to time, here and there throughout the world, a movement arises that overthrows the order of the day. Unfortunately, in all but a very small number of cases, the movement quickly deteriorates into a carbon copy of what it just replaced.

What is needed is a completely new mindset. One that is based on thinking that the world really belongs to us all, not just a few of us; one that is built on the principle that society needs enough capitalism so as to maintain individual incentive, enough socialism so as to maintain individual humanity.

A significant part of the world, in particular the part usually referenced as the 'First World', has developed from the stock of Christianity. That is not to say that all those folks are Christian, but the basis of the laws and the societal standards they have developed over the centuries arose from that tradition. Unfortunately, Christ would find very little in society today that he would recognize; he would be quite surprised at the things said and done in his name. In fact, Western society has moved so far from the basic principles of Christian charity and caring that if Christ was to appear on earth today he'd probably sue for slander.

No matter what sect of Christianity you wish to consider, the reality is that Christ was a humanist, a socialist. He lived and breathed the Golden Rule; he cried out for the rich to take care of the poor and ill; he spoke of a brotherhood of mankind; he asked us all to play nice. It would take a very vivid imagination for anyone to believe that much of mankind has stayed even vaguely familiar with the teachings of Christ.

Indeed, that same sort of tradition forms the basic tenets of most of the world's great religions and, therefore, the backbone of the societal structures built by the adherents of those religions. While the practices of the religions themselves may have declined in many places throughout the world, the basic fabric of those societies was still woven from those beliefs. As much as I can say Christianity is hard to recognize in today's societies, the same is true for most other religious traditions.

Abandoning our basic humanity has become de rigueur among those who have embraced the capitalist dogma. It seems that many among us believe any activity that smells like socialism is the very bane of life, and that it is necessary for us to make sure we get ours while everyone else is on their own.

To be sure, there are nations where dog eat dog eat dog is not the norm. I think particularly of the Scandinavian countries who, better than anyone, appear to have grasped the idea that society should care for and nurture its members. They are amongst the most highly taxed people on earth, and much of their lives is regulated by governmental rules and regulations. But the average Scandinavian will tell you that the taxes they pay are well spent, that they are getting their money's worth. Are you? They will tell you that a caring society is a good thing, that they all benefit from it, that it is still possible to get rich but not if it means other people go hungry. What exactly is wrong with that?

The fact is, there is little to distinguish humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, except that they are generally better people than us. We have at our disposal the tools, the wealth, the opportunity to put aside centuries of bickering and warfare; we are more than able to feed all of our species; we are quite capable of allowing for the drive of those who want to succeed in capitalist pursuits and for allowing them to prosper while they help others.

Surely it must be self-evident that a society which cares for its weakest, that prevents unnecessary hunger and illness, that ensures the basic necessities of life are available to all, is a society worth having. Surely it is self-evident that such a society takes away much of the impetus toward anti-social behaviour that has caused so much strife among us. Surely it is self-evident that removing some of the want from people and addressing the needs of the dispossessed, the refugees, the poor, is an act of self-preservation.

There are some basic needs that should be satisfied at the governmental level: potable water; electricity; heat; a minimum level of shelter. But establishing a society where the exploitation of one class by another does not exist shouldn't be a pipe dream. A capitalist system where entrepreneurs are free to develop their ideas and their enterprises, and to get rich, should not interfere with an orderly distribution of wealth within a society.

I'm not talking about stealing from the rich to give to the poor; I'm talking about a fair system of distribution where the truly industrious can get as rich as their labours will allow, and where the less able or poorly equipped receive a boost to maintain dignity and basic living standards. There doesn't seem to be any problem with filthy rich sports franchises redistributing gate receipts to benefit the smaller market teams; but there is a strong aversion to giving the same sort of attention to common people.

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degrees of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and tolerable administration of justice.

- Adam Smith, the 'father of capitalism'

The Wealth of Nations

Maybe we should seriously look at the way we order our priorities and the care we give to our species. We put a great deal of effort into managing everything except ourselves, and we are the one creature on this planet desperately in need of a good slap upside the head.

But here is the main point: None of this is going to come about by voting. It is only going to come about through people gathering and demanding control.

I am advocating revolution. I prefer it to be non-violent; we know that enough people peacefully lining the streets demanding change has been very effective more than once. But that requires the organization of the left, who currently appear to be in disarray. The left needs to think a lot more clearly about what it hopes to achieve, and it needs to plan a lot more diligently how the diverse groups on the left can come together and work together.

There are far too many marginalized people, too many impoverished and hungry people. Eventually, that is a dam that is going to burst. And if the left can't make progress before this happens, revolution will eventually occur without them. History suggests it will not be pretty.

Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com

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Paul Richard Harris is an Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada.  He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com

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