this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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My take, if you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain, simple as that.
Why?
Why should voting status be the be all and end all of who gets their grievances taken seriously?
It isn’t the end all and be all, it is the first step. If you don’t take the opportunity given to you to address your grievances, why should you expect others to do it for you?
I would posit that for many in Europe and America voting has not once addressed a single major grievance. What would you say of those who do not vote as it has never proven a real avenue for systemic change in the West and instead organise outside the system? Do they have the right to have their grievances heard?
I don’t accept the premise that voting has never led to change.
You can not accept it all you please and yet under the western capitalist system it remains true.
[citation needed]
Women’s suffrage, the abolition of (chattel) slavery (as the Americans Thirteenth Amendment explicitly preserved involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, laying the basis for coerced prison labour and the modern prison-industrial complex), the eight-hour working day, the weekend, the dismantling of Jim Crow and legal segregation, the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, partial Irish independence from the British Empire, and universal local-government suffrage and civil rights for the Catholic and nationalist population of Northern Ireland and more. None of these things were voted into existence but won through struggle. Voting under liberal democracy has not once been a real driver of meaningful systemic change.
You're citing examples of other forms of redress, not disproving the effectiveness of voting. I never claimed voting was the only (or even the most effective) form of redress, only that it is one.
Don't bother responding, you have nothing of value to offer other than your absurd soapbox.
How about you name 1 (just one) systemic change won through voting under liberal democracy. (Oh wait you can't because it's never happened).
Are you under the impression that the only way things happen is by direct vote on the issue? Nearly everything you cite is a result of the elected officials in power. Put there by the voters.
you can't even name one, lmao. pathetic bluemaga. voting is bread and circus bro, keep telling yourself that you can eventually vote shit out with your wallet. meanwhile, we in the third world keep getting FUCKED by either of any possible party that gets elected in the bürgerreich because all of them represent the international bourgeoisie.
Not a single thing I cited did came into existence because people voted for them. They arose because the economic base required a particular political, legal and ideological superstructure to reproduce the prevailing class relations. Their abolition was likewise not the product of voting, but of massive class struggle outside the system: militant trade unions, abolitionists, suffragettes, the NAACP, the Black Panthers, the IRA, the ANC (Umkhonto weSizwe), and countless other organised movements that made the existing conditions impossible to maintain.
No. What I am “under the impression of” is that voting under liberal democracy has not once provided a real avenue for systemic change. Using voting status as a gauge of whose political views should be taken seriously is therefore idiotic.
Maybe they're talking about something like this Key & Peele sketch?
In history, we learn two things. Either you can work within the system by voting, pressuring the government to change its stance, or striking like the French. Or, you can spark a revolution to change the current order.
If you don't vote, you're being passive, like Humpty Dumpty, just looking at the world pass you by without making your mark.
This simply does not follow. Would you call those who work within unions, direct action groups, etc. (avenues that have provably lead to real change while voting in the west never has) passive? Using voting as some grand gauge is immensely flawed (especially given the system in the west where voting is nothing but a spectacle that has no ability to provide systemic change and truly address the major grievances of the masses).
I would expect that people involved in unions and direct action groups to vote on top their other work. It's the smallest thing you can do, if you can't do that, why should I trust you to have done anything else?
Because as I posited at the beginning of this exchange many people have come to realise that in the west under the current liberal democratic system voting is nothing more than spectical that provides no real avenue for meaningful change. All that being said I am not against voting just that the idea of taking what is under the current system in the west a meaningless action as the be all and end all of who to take seriously is silly.