This goes so much deeper than genocide, also. Every aspect of the capitalist supply chain is just full of blood, and any liberal idea of harm reduction when their candidates are the literal personifications of accumulation is just redundant.
The argument gets sharper if we separate legitimation from mitigation. Voting may fail as a vehicle of liberation, but it does not automatically follow that it fails as an instrument for altering how harm is distributed, delayed, or intensified within an existing system. Institutions can remain fundamentally unjust while still producing materially different outcomes for the people forced to live under them.
That distinction matters because rejecting the ballot as inherently complicit can flatten the difference between participating in domination and navigating constraint inside domination. A captured political order can still contain variations in policing, deportation, welfare access, prosecution, labor protection, and administrative violence. None of that redeems the system. But it does complicate the claim that engagement is merely symbolic surrender.
So the harder question may be whether a politics of refusal can adequately account for the populations who must survive before any rupture arrives. Liberation may not be on the ballot, but exposure to harm often is.
Thanks for this. So, I think it’s important to look at the specific and concrete issues at play. I don’t necessarily think all engagement with “the system” is equivalent to complicity. I do, however, think voting for a candidate who supports genocide does violate the principle of equality. It is also worthwhile to note that on the deontic approach, harm is not understood as “distributed.”
That being said, I certainly agree that there’s ways of navigating constraint in order to resist. Indeed, there is no “outside” to domination — all resistant political action takes place within the context of domination. I would say that we need to expand our political imaginations beyond the ballot box. Voting is an important mode of political engagement, but also just one of many different methods — all of which should be taken seriously as part of our political responsibility to our civic communities.
There are two perspectives in relation to "harm reduction". Floris clearly positions us as the provider of harm reduction polices, and as such, we are not directly implicated in the harm that our policies aim to reduce. But the alternative perspective is to conceptualise harm reduction from the position of the recipients. From that perspective, a practice of harm reduction is about reducing the harm to oneself despite needing to engage in an activity that you know to be harmful.
When thinking about voting strategies, the appropriate perspective is not so clear-cut. I agree that voting serves to protect the rights of others, including those experiencing genocide in Palestine. However, for most marginalized people, our lives are directly affected by the results of elections. When a trans person votes for a Democrat because they fear being forcibly de-transitioned (despite knowing that Democrats will continue their present oppression) I think that is much closer to the user's perspective of harm reduction. To extend the analogy of injection drug use, voting is motivated by making injection drug sites available not just to stigmatized groups, but also to ourselves.
I would argue that this analysis changes the moral character of voting as a strategy considerably. When we only take the position of the provider, then it is indeed illogical to promote the equality and dignity of some at the expense of others. But when the threat to ourselves is existential, we introduce a competing imperative of self-preservation. Neither is subordinate to the other. I simply will not accept a moral system that demands the self-extinguishment of marginalized people.
I also agree that voting is not the optimal or only way of engaging politically, despite what our political institutions tell us. As such, I'm sceptical of perspectives that place voting on a pedestal. Voting is a tool. Positioning a vote on a ballot as some kind of pure political expression is, in my view, a perspective the system perpetuates to disempower dissenters. It is, first and foremost, an exercise of the political power available to us. We shouldn't expect voting to fulfil all of our moral obligations. That's not an expectation we hold of political violence, boycotts, or any other political tactic.
If voting is harm reduction, then it is so in the sense of seeking to reduce harm to ourselves and others as we are forced to engage with a political system designed to harm us. It starts from the presumption that voting is itself harmful, and that more action is needed. I'm not confident that it is morally justified, but if it is, it cannot be vitiated by the fact that it fails to uphold the equality of all others. It is our own equality that is at stake.
Thank you for an excellent and well-written post! I'm not a political philosopher by any means, so I hope these ramblings are of some value to you. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you for taking the time to spell out your thoughts on this! Definitely made me think. This is the first piece of yours that I've read, so I wonder what your thoughts are on voting in general? You mentioned "Voting for a particular candidate does not actually guarantee any particular set of policies" as a reason to be skeptical of voting for Democratic candidates to reduce harm, but that applies to anyone you vote for (Democrat or leftist), even those that are vehemently anti-genocide. So that makes me wonder what your stance is on voting in general? Would love to hear more!
Thanks for this comment. So, that specific point is just meant to illustrate that harm reduction is a model that depends on clearer causality pathways than voting does because, in the public health context, it’s about singular and concrete policies (ie needle sharing) — rather than politicians (who may or may not support many different kinds of policies).
But as for your larger question about voting, I think it’s something people ought to take seriously, just as I think people should take all their civic and political responsibilities seriously. But I also think in the US, there is a tendency to see voting as the ONLY way of engaging politically — and I actually see voting as one of many different methods of political engagement, all of which people should take seriously.
This goes so much deeper than genocide, also. Every aspect of the capitalist supply chain is just full of blood, and any liberal idea of harm reduction when their candidates are the literal personifications of accumulation is just redundant.
Yeah. You’re right. I wanted to keep it simple for the purpose of this one essay for the folks at home
agree
The argument gets sharper if we separate legitimation from mitigation. Voting may fail as a vehicle of liberation, but it does not automatically follow that it fails as an instrument for altering how harm is distributed, delayed, or intensified within an existing system. Institutions can remain fundamentally unjust while still producing materially different outcomes for the people forced to live under them.
That distinction matters because rejecting the ballot as inherently complicit can flatten the difference between participating in domination and navigating constraint inside domination. A captured political order can still contain variations in policing, deportation, welfare access, prosecution, labor protection, and administrative violence. None of that redeems the system. But it does complicate the claim that engagement is merely symbolic surrender.
So the harder question may be whether a politics of refusal can adequately account for the populations who must survive before any rupture arrives. Liberation may not be on the ballot, but exposure to harm often is.
Thanks for this. So, I think it’s important to look at the specific and concrete issues at play. I don’t necessarily think all engagement with “the system” is equivalent to complicity. I do, however, think voting for a candidate who supports genocide does violate the principle of equality. It is also worthwhile to note that on the deontic approach, harm is not understood as “distributed.”
That being said, I certainly agree that there’s ways of navigating constraint in order to resist. Indeed, there is no “outside” to domination — all resistant political action takes place within the context of domination. I would say that we need to expand our political imaginations beyond the ballot box. Voting is an important mode of political engagement, but also just one of many different methods — all of which should be taken seriously as part of our political responsibility to our civic communities.
There are two perspectives in relation to "harm reduction". Floris clearly positions us as the provider of harm reduction polices, and as such, we are not directly implicated in the harm that our policies aim to reduce. But the alternative perspective is to conceptualise harm reduction from the position of the recipients. From that perspective, a practice of harm reduction is about reducing the harm to oneself despite needing to engage in an activity that you know to be harmful.
When thinking about voting strategies, the appropriate perspective is not so clear-cut. I agree that voting serves to protect the rights of others, including those experiencing genocide in Palestine. However, for most marginalized people, our lives are directly affected by the results of elections. When a trans person votes for a Democrat because they fear being forcibly de-transitioned (despite knowing that Democrats will continue their present oppression) I think that is much closer to the user's perspective of harm reduction. To extend the analogy of injection drug use, voting is motivated by making injection drug sites available not just to stigmatized groups, but also to ourselves.
I would argue that this analysis changes the moral character of voting as a strategy considerably. When we only take the position of the provider, then it is indeed illogical to promote the equality and dignity of some at the expense of others. But when the threat to ourselves is existential, we introduce a competing imperative of self-preservation. Neither is subordinate to the other. I simply will not accept a moral system that demands the self-extinguishment of marginalized people.
I also agree that voting is not the optimal or only way of engaging politically, despite what our political institutions tell us. As such, I'm sceptical of perspectives that place voting on a pedestal. Voting is a tool. Positioning a vote on a ballot as some kind of pure political expression is, in my view, a perspective the system perpetuates to disempower dissenters. It is, first and foremost, an exercise of the political power available to us. We shouldn't expect voting to fulfil all of our moral obligations. That's not an expectation we hold of political violence, boycotts, or any other political tactic.
If voting is harm reduction, then it is so in the sense of seeking to reduce harm to ourselves and others as we are forced to engage with a political system designed to harm us. It starts from the presumption that voting is itself harmful, and that more action is needed. I'm not confident that it is morally justified, but if it is, it cannot be vitiated by the fact that it fails to uphold the equality of all others. It is our own equality that is at stake.
Thank you for an excellent and well-written post! I'm not a political philosopher by any means, so I hope these ramblings are of some value to you. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you for taking the time to spell out your thoughts on this! Definitely made me think. This is the first piece of yours that I've read, so I wonder what your thoughts are on voting in general? You mentioned "Voting for a particular candidate does not actually guarantee any particular set of policies" as a reason to be skeptical of voting for Democratic candidates to reduce harm, but that applies to anyone you vote for (Democrat or leftist), even those that are vehemently anti-genocide. So that makes me wonder what your stance is on voting in general? Would love to hear more!
Thanks for this comment. So, that specific point is just meant to illustrate that harm reduction is a model that depends on clearer causality pathways than voting does because, in the public health context, it’s about singular and concrete policies (ie needle sharing) — rather than politicians (who may or may not support many different kinds of policies).
But as for your larger question about voting, I think it’s something people ought to take seriously, just as I think people should take all their civic and political responsibilities seriously. But I also think in the US, there is a tendency to see voting as the ONLY way of engaging politically — and I actually see voting as one of many different methods of political engagement, all of which people should take seriously.