Chapter 2: Democracy & CivilizationRepresentative democracy writ large; The many democracies in modern countries; Right sized democracy in Sweden; Thunderstorm approach to civilization management; Imperial purpose of mass elections.
It has been said that if voting would change anything they would abolish it. It was said by somebody who should know for his parliament had just been abolished.If London’s democratic parliament elected from London’s eight million people determines the good sense of opening discussions with the peoples of Belfast with a view to persuading them to stop their practice of setting bombs in London and injuring its citizens, then this, one would have thought, was a most reasonable and democratic thing.
But not a bit of it. The democratic parliament elected from the fifty million people from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the several parts of the English Kingdom debated the matters in their chambers just a stone’s throw across the River Thames from the debating chambers of the London Parliament and voted instead to reduce rather dramatically the power of the London Parliament by the simple expedient of closing it down. This, one might have thought, was a most unreasonable and a most undemocratic thing.
Perhaps. But it happened within just three years leaving nothing but the odd plaque on some building or other and a corporation charged with shrinking itself into oblivion by selling off the London Parliament’s goods and chattels to democratically elected councils such as the one in Greenwich elected by the two hundred and fifty thousand citizens of the district or the decidedly undemocratic corporate bodies of the Grand Metropolitan public limited company sort who will undertake the task of refurbishing debating chambers for the use of Members of the European Parliament, a democratic parliament elected from two hundred and fifty million people residing in the areas of Europe over which some national governments claim certain types of jurisdiction.
And so on. So ends this preamble. If it leaves you confused and breathless, then this is the hot air of democratic principle when mixed with the inert gases of imperial power.
It has shown itself to be a most explosive mixture throughout history for the simple reason that it has been shown to be quite impossible to fool all the people all the time.
The United States of Europe, the United Kingdoms of the British Isles, and the United Boroughs of London are too much to take in and have quite left out any mention of the United Parishes of Greenwich or the shareholders of the Grand Metropolitan Public Limited Company.
But Sweden. That’s better. Not too big. Not too small. Just the right size. Let us try once again.
Sweden and Representative Democracy. No EuroImperialism yet to confuse the picture. No tribal complexities and religious contradictions to test our patience. No loony left Labour councils confronting ranting right Conservative governments. Unreal? Unrepresentative? Unlikely?
Perhaps. But instructive nonetheless, and with lessons worth the learning for those brave souls who would struggle in the real political realm where power is wielded, souls destroyed and minds manipulated.
To be blunt, mass elections are the legitimizing arm of the onward and upward brigade. They believe in them for as long as they fool enough of the people enough of the time and allow them to continue with their upwarding and onwarding.
When elections no longer serve this purpose, they are abolished. Sometimes a collapse of the financial system and a war are included in the package, so as to deal with one or two other little problems at the same time: problems like what to do with young men or fundamental viruses like usury in your money and credit machinery.
As temporary expedients for the insanities of the modern world this approach has its advantages. Better perhaps to have a few short sharp dislocations. The thunderstorm approach to civilization management?
In large empires running on the mass election fraud principle, the elections have their usefulness even between the fifty year dislocations. In such empires with their fifty or so city regions, their corroding prairies and dying forests, farms are foreclosed and the price of the working day falls in real terms as the clerks and the pirates oversee the outputs from the invisible handling equipment of the Imperial Apparatus.
Discontent builds up, new political alliances come together to do something about it once and for all, and the great divides between the haves and the have-nots become just a little too obvious.
New Wealth becomes conspicuous and Old Wealth gets found out. Scholars begin to talk too much and Women start to nag. The old men are killed off and the children come of age.
Mass elections reduce the pressure. They allow the people to let off steam. The Imperial Apparatus has a chance to take the public pulse, assess the effectiveness of its propaganda control and measure the extent of any resistance.
Once again, as a temporary expedient for civilization management, not such a terrible device. It clears the air. But as a fundamental principle for a sane society? Hardly!