Dissent, Negation, Variation

The integration of None of the Above into the electoral process transforms Dissent from mere symbolic gesture to active catalyst for change.  But, the negative formulation is misleading: it more precisely calls for Something Different.  In other words, it is not a Dialectical moment, as Marxists would interpret it, but a principle of Variation.  Nevertheless, what Marx perhaps best discerns, more in the French Revolution than in the American, is that the ruled, rather than the rulers, have become the motor of History.