We Have Won in Only Twenty-Five Hours!

Given twenty-five hours and the Democrats have once again cultivated messianic tendencies and the praise of the “unum” in each home. Wisconsin, too, has a savior looming over a defeated Musk, with her proclamation, “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin.” Yet the issue of the vote as a commodity has yet to be dealt with. More specifically, the vote as a universal equivalent, as Marx argued regarding money’s position in the capitalist system. The universal equivalent, money-form, or in this context, vote-form, being that commodity which is abstracted and may serve as commodity X in the attaining of commodity Y.

When Musk began to propagate financial promises, and then proceeded to fulfill those promises, the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hinder him, stating that the refusal was simply to “avoid any potential perceptions of bias and manifestations of possible bias” as the two Justices had campaigned for Susan Crawford. Present within this hesitancy is the guise of maintaining democratic impartiality. Yet, the convenience that is derived from it—the favoring of wealth’s intrusion into the democratic process—and the judicial restrictions themselves speak to the deep failures of our idealization of democracy and our present need of addressing the vote as the universal equivalent within political exchange. 

The vote as a universal equivalent, in the manner of the money-form, only makes sense in the context of social relations and exchange. Regarding the former, the current economic crisis and growing disparities between the wealthy and workers grants much validity to Musk’s rhetorical strategy around the Wisconsin vote, a point employed in a great deal of our politics. Poverty drives ideological tendencies and ideological tendencies drives poverty. Our hope for our American democracy, that it will relinquish an agent’s ability to contribute to wealth inequality, is invested into figures who, in speaking on our behalf, guarantee the economic system which binds us to our lowly positions. Our democracy is filled with signifying chains that maintain the linguistic order that maintains subversion quite successfully. The vote as a universal equivalent is the prominent definition that inhabits the minds of most voters. In offering my vote, I supposedly guarantee my receiving of that which is equal in worth to my vote; i.e., affordable healthcare, affordable schooling, financial security, etc. Yet the political system and its economic backings which define the worth of my vote do so with false guarantees: it is as if I am told that if I, over the course of an exchange, give you my watch, I will receive a basket of bread. However, the moment I give over my watch, I am told by the recipient that it actually never held any value, especially not the value to guarantee the basket. I am aware that this is an incredibly repeated point, but it speaks to our repeated failures to address the political phenomenon to any extent. How is it that I forfeit my own political power to a political figure and must bear their choices even when they harm me? Why am I not involved in a vote on every choice they make? 

The faith in a democratic figure and system, which simply prompts us to stand apart from it, watch, and trust its processes, must be overcome. I must be involved in every decision that is made. Even Cory Booker’s twenty-five hour marathon is but a maintaining of that democratic naivety. An outstanding supporter of the Israeli project, Booker’s supposed affirmation of democracy and his great and keen concern for its decline is nothing more than an effort to sustain a faith in democratic processes, a process whose defining quality is that I am barred from much of its process. My vote means: "I want [this] and you may not listen to [this].” Additionally, the Israeli project, which Booker has a great many ties to, is the clearest objectification of the democratic paradox: the violent imposition of capitalistic interest over our ethical concerns. In the same breath he speaks of devious Trump seeking to dismantle democracy as we know it, and today rests at home with a drink of sparkling water paid for by Pro-Israel entities.

The rampant distrust of our democracy speaks to an already collapsed narrative; the fragments of which are always blown away and gathered up to only be blown away again. Our ideas concerning democracy and our supposed political power are restraining us from the logical synthesis of these contradictions; the communist state presupposes a radical shift in our field of representation and its dictates.