What is your stance on reformist and 'democracy'?

Well I am an anarchist, so I don't believe in voting. I believe that revolutionary change will be built in our workplaces and neighbourhoods, and will make voting irrelevant.

I think it's a waste of your time to vote for anyone, for the following reasons:

a) Which candidate ever won by one vote anyway?!
b) 'If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal' - real power lies with those who have money. They decide what happens with the economy. And the military always stands behind the most right wing elements.
c) The 'centre left' politicians might not sound as bad as the 'centre right' politicians when they are in opposition, but when they get power they become at least as bad. Look at the British Labour Party under Blair/Brown, the US Democrats under Clinton, and the German Social Democrats under Schroeder. All of them slashed social programs (with the Greens' help in Schroeder's case).

In many ways it's like what would happen if you could vote for your boss at work. They might sound different before they have the power, but as soon as they get it, they need to make a profit for the company.

Read this selection from the comic writer Douglas Adams about voting: http://wso.williams.edu/~rcarson/lizards.html

Im left wing and British, the problem often lies with in party factions, in the labour party there are three Labour Left (havn't had power for years), Brownites (mid left taking power) and Blairites (centre left ending power), i personally beleive that anarchists, socalists and anyone left wing should unite under the Labour Left who are voting against labour party and may split off if given enough support from the masses

I agree with Ad Nauseam.
Reformist change has never been more than a temporary and partial fix, which only serves put distance between the people and the problem. It allows for the system and upper class to adjust to the social tension. In the end nothing really changes.
The largest example is the 8-hour workday. Yeah, modern labor laws disallow committing workers to work longer than 8 hour per day, but in reality how many people work longer than that? It is a unwritten rule that if you want to climb the career ladder or just want to get better pay, you have to work overtime. I don't know what the situation in richer countries is, but in eastern Europe you have to do it just to feed your family. Meh, even the shops are open from 7 to 23 or longer for the poor working class. The poor drones ofcourse think that this is natural and normal, but it's not.
Another solution that reformist labor laws have allowed the upper class to devise is globalisation. Now the developing world makes 12 to 16 hour work shifts for us. Aint that nice of them?
One can argue that those were essential social changes, but in reality it just shows how overdue revolutionary action is.

Not only did Hitler become to power through the "democratic" process, but both of the world's biggest dictators(Hitler and Stalin) held periodic election to justify their rule. My abstention is my personal way to say "f'ck you!" to all those bastards behind this idiosity.

This is a great discussion to have.
I'm a revolutionary socialist from the United States, I subscribe to the politics of the International Socialist Organization, so these thoughts come from that tendency.

I have really wanted to abstain from voting in the past few elections in hopes that the high rate of nonvoters would worry someone and that it would be a protest of the two-party system. However, I came to think this year that probably no one is listening and I should vote.

I ended up voting after some arguments and discussions with people. This year I voted for Obama partially out of support and partially out of weakness. I think it's pretty important to vote for a 3rd party, perhaps the most leftleaning/revolutionary party you can find. I don't think any of the 3rd parties in the United States are actually revolutionary, but the point is that by voting for them you're protesting in another way, saying that you prefer politics that aren't available here (since the two parties will always win). So I think it's useful to vote as a protest, more than it's useful to NOT vote as a protest.

At the same time, revolutionary socialists don't believe that Socialism can be won through the ballot box, so voting in elections should not be our main form of activism, and as some other people are saying in this thread, spending time trying to get someone elected can be very bad for the movement. The Democratic party in the US has always been a "graveyard of social movements", and many revolutionary groups (Socialist Party, Communist Party, etc) have fizzled and died because of their move towards reformism.

The ISO is also in support of struggles for reforms, because some changes can come through reforms (and many have) and the struggle gives us experience and potentially a class consciousness that allows us to overcome prejudices such as racism and sexism as we work together to demand change. Ultimately though, the goal is revolution and a society where people are valued over profit.

The real problem with democracy and voting is that politics, such as conservatism are only followed by those who are selfish and want to keep their current state of being. The global truth is that conservative capitalism is making 80% of the world suffer for the sake of 20%. Therefore, surely, if we are all to think on the behalf of others and not ourselves, politics are unimportant since anything apart from absolute left wing society is based upon selfishness and is not what is best for mankind. Therefore, people must learn themselves to give up their conservative and capitalist values, and render the democratic system irrelevant.

DJ_STFU knows what is up. Reform? What reform? Nothing changes besides the mask. It's all the same bourgeois agenda year after year, decade after decade, century after century... Take back the streets, reclaim your community. Democracy can only be effective from the bottom up, not as a futile ritual...

Being more involved in local government is more effective than national politics because you bring more awareness to your communities and thusly in the long run this will help effect national politics. Either way, reform is generally a waste of time. Don't cooperate with terrorists, ie. the state.

obifferson said:
I think it's useful to vote as a protest, more than it's useful to NOT vote as a protest.

Pretty much this.

Also, it's not like everybody is equally a bad vote. Ralph Nader is who he is and will not waver in the slightest. The same goes for Dennis Kucinich and he's in the mainstream Democratic party.