I have a small circle of friends who from time to time meet at one of our houses and watch politically relevant documentaries (mostly documentaries) and talk about them. The other week we saw one that seemed to have been produced during that same great outflow of documentaries that all came out in the lead-up to the '04 election, with names like Outfoxed and Bush's Brain. This one, The Take, (co-directed by Naomi Klein who has a new one out now called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism) perhaps went under my radar because it was internationally relevant, and most of the documentary presenters in my area at the time were focused on domestic politics.

The Take is about an anti-globalization movement in Argentina, and it's about workers organizing themselves to do something for themselves. Factories closed as jobs went overseas (wherever you are, there's always an overseas), and workers started taking over those factories and establish worker run co-ops to get the factories running again. It's a fascinating and very empowering film.

During the course of the documentary, there is also a national election going on in Argentina. It appears to be a race between a former president who is running again on a nostalgia platform but who really serves the interests of the wealthy class, and a number of opposition leaders who purport to be for the people (well, they all purport to be for the people, don't they?). The daughter of a woman worker who is part of the first and very successful co-op that re-opened a textile factory refuses to vote in that national election. She believes it doesn't matter who wins, and she is disgusted with national politics. In the end the opposition candidate her mother supported wins the election, but the movie states that he cut turned around and cut a similar deal with the IMF and World Bank that his predecessor had, indicating his pro-globalization stance.

The next day I said to one of my friends, "You know, I sympathize with that girl who refused to vote. If the system is a fraud, it's a political statement to not pretend to give it legitimacy." He made a funny face, and I couldn't be sure what he thought about what I'd said.

This article from Counterpunch argues that here in the US the only sane solution would be to refuse to vote in the next national election. Joel Hirschhorn says people are deluded if they think a Democratic candidate will do anything to solve the real problems the nation faces. He says the electoral system is a dance orchestrated by the two parties. One party oversteps its bounds, the next party says it will save the day, and then when it wins proceeds to do the same thing. The real choreographers of the dance are corporate business interests that pay for campaigns and benefit from the policies.

This point of view and the idea of a boycott of the election deserves serious thought.