I think the last two posts are valid, and I respect an individual's decision to vote. I am an ex-student also, and wouldn't want interest to be put back on my rather sizey loan! So I'd hope that people would respect the right not to vote also, which is the way I'll be going this year.

What I don't agree with is the argument that the right wants us not to vote, and that we should vote in a lesser evil. Here's why:

What this forgets is that the lesser evil is still an evil. What happens is that instead of the greater evil attacking us, we get the lesser evil doing what the right-wing was going to do. And, since we are discussing the "lesser evil," let us not forget it was the "lesser evil" of the Democrats (in the USA) and Labour (in the UK) who introduced the monetarist and other policies that Reagan and Thatcher made their own (and we may add that the US Air Traffic Controllers union endorsed Reagan against Carter in 1980 because they thought they would get a better deal out of the Republicans. Reagan then went on to bust the union once in office). Simply put, we cannot expect a different group of politicians to react differently to the same economic and political pressures and influences.

So, voting for other politicians will make little difference. The reality is that politicians are puppets. Real power in the state does not lie with politicians, but instead within the state bureaucracy and big business. Faced with these powers, we have seen left-wing governments from Spain to New Zealand introduce right-wing policies. So even if we elected a radical party, or even the lesser evil, they would be powerless to change anything important and soon be forced to attack us in the interests of capitalism. Politicians come and go, but the state bureaucracy and big business remain forever!

Therefore we cannot rely on voting for the lesser evil to safe us from the possible dangers of a right-wing election victory brought about by abstentionism. All we can hope for is that no matter who gets in, the population will resist the government because it knows and can use its real power - direct action. For the "only limit to the oppression of government is the power with which the people show themselves capable of opposing it." [Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p. 196]—from www.anarchistfaq.org.

Of course, the relative size of anarchist thought in NZ at the moment is far from ideal, that is why we could be using the upcoming election to raise more awareness.

Jared D