Will abstentionism lead to the right winning elections?
Possibly. However anarchists don’t just say “don’t vote”, we say “organise” as well. Apathy is something anarchists have no interest in encouraging. So, “[i]f the anarchists could persuade half the electorate to abstain from voting this would, from an electoral point of view, contribute to the [electoral] victory of the Right. But it would be a hollow victory, for what government could rule when half the electorate by not voting had expressed its lack of confidence in all governments?” [Vernon Richards, The Impossibilities of Social Democracy, p. 142] In other words, whichever party was in office would have to rule over a country in which a sizeable minority, even a majority, had rejected government as such. This would mean that the politicians “would be subjected to real pressures from people who believed in their own power” and acted accordingly. So anarchists call on people not to vote, but instead organise themselves and be conscious of their own power both as individuals and as pa
