Mintball wrote:
Three decades ago, Pandora's Box was opened. Trans and multi-national capital is now so large that, in many ways, it hardly has to worry about what you and I think. And governments – not just in the UK but elsewhere – behave as though they were elected not to serve us, but simply to service big business and finance.
What makes you think governments - to any serious degree of consistency - have
ever behaved as though they were elected to serve the people?
Government has two indisputable roles:
1.
To maintain the system of class control and class exploitation. It is prepared to grant concessions when pesky
Democracy gets in the way. But purely on its own terms. Take the issue of gender politics. For years women fought for emancipation, universal suffrage etc. and through various forms of democratic pressure we arrived at a point where a woman was elected prime minister. But what
kind of woman? To what
class did she identify? It's the same story with African Americans. Under Bush Jnr we saw a black Secretary of State. We now have a black President. But again, to whom do these people associate? Certainly not the working class.
2.
To protect the owners of society from their own greed. Left unchecked a capitalist system must ultimately devour itself. We saw this several years ago when Enron, Halliburton and such started expropriating not just the workers and taxpayers' money but investments and investors. Why bother making televisions when you have to deal with stupid labour organisations, build expensive factories, spend a fortune on marketing etc. Far easier to siphon money from investment funds and pensions. They were caught red-handed stealing billions of dollars and - for the most part - got away with it.
Another good example of the perils of government kowtowing to the investor class is Argentina. An entire country that collapsed when government failed to protect capitalism from itself.
There's a perfectly rational and well thought out plan being executed here by the Tories. And they are going for broke. I mean, they're after the lot. Education. The NHS. Social Security. It's all up for grabs. Indeed, the label "Conservative" has now reached the point where it's become something of a sick joke. These people are anything but Tories. A true conservative resists change because of the inherent risk whereas Cameron and his lackeys are as radical as it gets. I guess they had good teachers in Blair and Brown.
Looking to government for salvation is a complete waste of time. The only answer lies with Democracy because the one thing all governments cannot ignore - no matter how much they'd like to - is public opinion. Which is why they spend so much time and effort manipulating it. Unfortunately the electorate has become so brainwashed by the media and political spin it sees democracy only as a procedural rather than a substantive process. A century ago people didn't vote because they thought it would make them better citizens. They voted because they had genuine grievances and were demanding reform. Unless we follow suit there won't be anything left to fight for.
