In defense of War Tax Resistance
I have read, with some surprise, an article published on the Rebelión website and signed by Ricardo Rodríguez — Critique of Tax Resistance.
In said paper is found a broad (but intended to be detailed) and harsh
critique of this political tactic. It is not the first time that people — a priori, and not based on our ideas and practices — have
made such fratricidal criticisms, and coincidentally a little conveniently at
the time of year during which the campaign is made, and of course Ricardo
Rodríguez is not the first person to raise these same arguments.
Although Rodríguez says there exist different ways to do “tax resistance,” as
one who has spent years working on this within the Antimilitarist Movement, I
will try to defend the particular form which we call “war tax resistance” by
responding to the criticisms made.
I will try to summarize in five points the principal criticisms that emerge
from Rodríguez’s long paper:
- Tax Resistance is elitist and reactionary, inasmuch as it is proposed
in one of two formulas: a taxpayer redirects a particular percentage of
his taxes, such that one who has more money has “freed himself from
paying the Treasury more money,” “the right to object increases in
proportion to the wealth of the taxpayer.” That, he indicates, is a
“strange notion of economic justice to be promoted by groups on the
left.” On the other hand, the most precarious citizens who are not
obligated to file, or whose tax return results in “a refund,”
etc. become
unable to effectively practice it. “Employers, but not the employees”
may object, which makes it a privilege and an absurdity insomuch as these
elites are not going to be particularly interested in disarmament or in
other social improvements.
- The redirection of money that is to be done via Tax Resistance does not
work toward the pursued goal. The state will not apply this reduction
in revenue to the ends proposed by the resisters, but to whatever it
finds convenient. And in the present context, this will be most likely
to rebound negatively on expenses for social security and not on those
for the military, banks,
etc. In
fact, we could be contributing to worsening conditions of the least
advantaged sectors of society.
- Following the previous argument is put forward as a possible response
that “still, in any case the money will overflow to social necessities,
since it is to this type of destination that the resisters redirect,”
and he shoots this down with the argument that such a thing represents
“a transfer of resources from free, public, universal services to private
entities,” to “a private safety net,” to “the charity of good Samaritans”
who usurp the right that we have to receive such benefit from the
“powers that be.”
- The supposed symbolic function of Tax Resistance to serve as a tool to
transform consciences is stopped in its tracks. The results of the
campaign speak for themselves. Moreover, the campaign is only known
thanks to the efforts of its own promoters. The letters sent to the
Tax Agency managers, he affirms, are completely lacking in political
significance.
- The campaign generates an ideology with neoliberal resonance: it proposes
that the payment of taxes can be something decided by individuals and not
by the collective “necessity” determined by the “state” or by some type
of authority that looks out for the common interest. Such a thing is
very dangerous as from it could derive the right of each individual to
oppose contributing to whatever he is not in agreement with, putting
the question of financial contributions to the common good on a somewhat
objectively slippery slope (do we accept the right of pro-lifers to
object to health spending, or Emilio Botín to social policies?).
I would very much like to talk about the base assumptions underlying these
questions in the article from Ricardo Rodríguez, such as the nervousness that
freedom understood as an individual right appears to produce in him, his
faith — that I deduce from reading between the lines — in the “democratic
centralism in the Leninist style” as a model of organizing collective
decision-making, his commitment to state institutions as the supreme
guarantee of the public good and the ultimate manager of of the rights
that they permit, or his antagonism to “Conscientious Objection,” which he
ends up fancying as reducing to a species of individual moral scruple,
ignoring or wanting to ignore everything about the political, public, and
transformative dimensions. However I will not enlarge unnecessarily on this
already very extensive response, and I will limit myself to commenting on
the arguments related to the topic under debate.
From reading Rodríguez’s text it can be deduced that he does not speak from
hearsay and possesses plenty of knowledge with respect to the mechanics of
Tax Resistance and of the aspirations pursued by the entities that promote
it. However there are evidently also important lacunæ and deficits of focus.
War Tax Resistance, which is the concrete example to which I will refer, is
not an end in itself, nor does it intend to detract from antimilitarist work
(much less the anti-imperialism of which Rodríguez speaks), nor do those who
promote it proclaim it to be the definitive or unimprovable tool.
In fact most of the groups that promote it emerged from and participate in
the larger antimilitarist/pacifist movement, working for decades
simultaneously on other types of work such as what was, back in the day, Draft
Resistance, promotion of a curriculum for peace education, direct action
against military installations, counter-propaganda,
etc.,
etc.
In reality, it is not even a campaign in and of itself, but is part of the
larger work we call “Campaign against Military Spending” and which includes
more time, resources, and actions each year.
The immediate and realistic object of this proposal is not to overthrow
the military by means of the method of depriving it of financial resources.
Rodríguez should not imagine us to be so naïve. We would like that such a
thing could be, but for now it suits us to avail ourselves of this gesture — that, as noted, is more symbolic than effective today — in order to amplify
our protest, that is against military spending, but also against the
institution that is dedicated to this spending, and to its use at the
service of certain interests that in the final analysis are those of the
capitalist economic system. Yes, Rodríguez, with this work, to your eyes
elitist, reactionary, neoliberal, and — why not say it? — counterrevolutionary, “politically infantile” and
petit-bourgeois, we try, just like you, to combat and
transform the capitalist system.
War Tax Resistance helps very many people every year — fewer than we would
like but more than what would be if we were not to put forth the effort — become aware of the fact of the matter of militarism in this society and
to learn concrete data concerning its importance and omnipresence, its
causes and consequences… and in particular data about the way the public
treasury dedicates money to these purposes and not to others.
Rodríguez says (point 1) that tax resistance is elitist and reactionary:
“with the most spending power, more money can be diverted…” That is one way
of looking at it, but you must know that the how-much-money question is the
least important in the campaign. The truth is that we hardly pay attention
to the amount of money that is redirected each year. What interests us is
the number of resisters. We are just as happy if they have redirected a
percentage of their tax, or the particular amount of 84 euros, or half a
euro, or… a resistance of three thousand euros (which there is) has no more
political value than one of ten cents. Besides being mistaken on this
question, it is possible to perform War Tax Resistance, and so we recommend,
when your tax return results in a refund, when your tax is zero, or when one
does not legally need to file. It is not true that poor and unemployed
people cannot participate, in fact they do participate according to most
resisters. On the contrary, and as is natural, there isn’t much
participation from “the elites.”
With respect to the second argument (point 2), that the state will subtract
the money that it fails to collect from the budget for social purposes, it
is but the subjective presumption of Rodríguez. In any case, people who make
this gesture add force to their communication so that the politicians and the
rest of society will be conscious of our desire that this money not be
financing armies, armaments, and wars. If such a demand is ignored, the
responsibility clearly has to be imputed to those who disobey the popular
mandate and not to us, as Rodríguez aims to accuse. And effectively — and
this is a question of political strategy — the bureaucracies in service to
the System may, as is often the case in other times and areas, ignore the
citizens’ desires and demands and act illegitimately, but everything has its
limit. I am convinced that in this case the limit is quantitative. If
resisters represent a small percentage of the population, they may amount
to nothing, but at the moment when they present a significant figure, it will
not be so easy to deal with them.
The approaches that I have outlined in point 3 look to me a bit out of place
as they seem to reflect a very particular political ideology. There is no
time to waste in questioning here the faith of eurocommunists and some
Leninist groups in the “Welfare State” and in the “State as guarantor of
services, rights, and liberties,” and diametrically opposite, in a Manichean
way, is all that is not “State,” conceived of as “privatization,
Samaritanism” and other such monsters. It is a point of view that seems
to me tendentious and reductionist. To compare solidarity organizations that
receive money from War Tax Resistance with capitalist enterprises in search
of profits and without social utility, I believe is totally excessive, and
to proclaim that such social assistance provided by the state will be better
than any alternative, seems the same.
In fourth place, according to my summary, Rodríguez questions the extent of
Tax Resistance. Here I must submit to reason. Certainly it is only the
efforts of the promoting groups that gives part of society access to the
political message that is hoped to transmit. Unfortunately, the mass media
tend to ignore the campaign, with some honorable exceptions. Indeed,
Rodríguez proposes alternative actions such as gathering before the tax
agency doors at the beginning of tax season, actions for that matter — as
he acknowledges — we are accustomed to do. Perhaps it is our responsibility
that the work of War Tax Resistance has a limited scope. But even if it is a
solid argument against it, I don’t believe that this alone can dismiss it.
There are struggles that last a long time in bearing fruit; and while they
go on with no significant results they come to affect the way many people see
things, and, in this case, as I say all the time, this is no more than a
part of a larger work, it’s complementary. However, as things are, and to
look at it from another point of view: what revolutionary political struggle
today is making an end of the System? That would not lead us to come to the
conclusion that none of those existing have validity and sense.
Finally, the fifth point of the summary brings us to a disquisition of an
ethico-political sort. The principal determinant of the actions of each of
us is what: individual conscience or collective agreement? Rodríguez sticks
with the second; me with the first. And in fact I believe that the
collective agreements must be fabricated, and then applied, by means of the
free consent of personal choice and not some type of victory of majorities
over minorities. Because being the majority is not synonymous with being
right, and because our individual conscience — this concept that appears to
have so little credit with Rodríguez — is that which makes us people and not
pieces of machinery. Neither do we agree in the value we give to the
institution of the State as administrator and arbitrator of rights. That’s
why he didn’t issue, for my part, enough skepticism at this time about
the possibility of people of different ideologies refusing to pay taxes. In
the transformative and revolutionary horizon, which unfortunately for now
we are far from as Rodríguez points out, until a society without the State,
without accumulation of power or of wealth, in which people can be really
free and interact with dignity and justice, it is reasonable to neglect to
pay part of or all of the taxes to the actual administration, as it is
reasonable not to have a big problem with other people, the way things are,
doing the same.
I should not neglect to refer to a couple of inaccuracies in Rodríguez’s
text, to wit:
It is to be expected that the Tax Agency will issue its own return and
charge us for what we failed to pay. For this eventuality, the promoters of
resistance ask us to comfort ourselves until the end with the idea of
converting each such letter into a new opportunity to protest
Though Rodríguez appears to not be familiar with it, some years back the
opposite was recommended. This is a symbolic political gesture that works
in the face of the arousal of the society, it is not masochism or an act of
martyrdom. This path of appeal is only recommended with certain conditions,
and if it will be used effectively as a means of protest to amplify the
denunciation of military spending, knowing full well that the appeal may not
technically succeed in a legal sense, except for those relating to fines.
And if once discovered but not charged, this is likely because the debt is
so low that the administrative procedures to force payment would cost more,
or because, given the growing scarcity of personnel, the Tax Agency offices
are concentrating on larger debts.
This argument only applies with respect to tax returns with tax owed, but
in the many in which the result is a refund and the Treasury refunds what
it has to, then is refunding more via the
WTR, how do
you explain that?
Finally I strongly call attention to the suggestions that Rodríguez made
with his possible alternatives (that are no improvements) to Tax Resistance.
- On the one hand, he calls out for tax resistance to indirect taxes (the
VAT,
etc.) in
place of the “very revolutionary” — according to Marx and Engels — progressive taxes like the income tax. Indirect taxes, according to
Rosa Luxemburg, increase the capability to finance militarism.
- Also, inconsistent with the previous in my view, he proposes to refuse
paying direct taxes in certain cases that he judges to be more
legitimate. For example, he cites the refusal of some Americans to pay
taxes on such grounds during the Vietnam War. Such a gesture is
considered by Rodríguez as “true civil disobedience” while that of
War Tax Resistance is entitled “denouncing imperalism and the
massive crimes of the system and then merely being satisfied with
pilfering small change from the purse.”
- Finally, a sort of uprising called anti-bank actions à la
Enric Durán, represents something like the true way to proceed.
In conclusion:
This criticism doesn’t seem to me very pleasing, and less at this particular
time of the year. If Ricardo Rodríguez is a revolutionary activist so
conscious of the necessity of overthrowing the capitalist system, why don’t
present realities occur to him as more worthy of criticism and denunciation
than this? Even assuming he were right in all or in part of his critiques,
could War Tax Resistance really present an obstacle so capital as to warrant
such an onslaught? And along with the questions, does Ricardo Rodríguez
wander so lazily in his revolutionary work that he does not have another
thing to aim against than those who, with methods more or less far from his,
work for a similar objective?
One is to believe that Ricardo Rodríguez is an active member of one or
various revolutionary collectives and that they take themselves seriously
at this — than many people promoting War Tax Resistance and who back in the
day performed Draft Resistance — in the front of the struggle that he
considers more useful and practical. However the current reality, that
there are not many struggles going on that appear to be seriously undermining
the System, must give us a certain humility and a certain consideration for
the work of others. Because it does not seem that the Leninist parties in
their various guises are anywhere near the point of winning elections, nor
does it appear that any massive anti-bank movement is at the point of
achieving a financial collapse.
But, because we believe in humanity and have hope, we continue forward.
In any case, thanks also for the chance to reflect, assess, and take
stock of what is involved in this public critique.
