Do you know how far the spiritual descendants of Marie Antoinette have developed the art of pacifying the poor?
Take a look at the richest nation on earth, where they also happen to have the widest gulf between the wealthy and the poor in the developed world. What do the powerful in America do when they see millions of their fellow citizens left far behind with no prospect of any improvement? They offer them a way out. Join the military. In one stroke, those who do not have any hope of getting a good education, a well-paid job, health care, or any of the things the privileged can take for granted, are given a highly attractive option.
And when in large numbers they take up that option, it means that the country can afford to give up on conscripting a citizens’ army. In the days of the Vietnam War, every American family (except for the super rich who can use their influence to ensure their sons stay well away from military action) stood an equal chance of bearing the responsibility of fighting their country’s war abroad, and they watched the development of the conflict with intense personal as well as civic interest. When a growing number felt that the risks and sacrifices demanded of them far outweighed the alleged gains to be made from the war, they vocally called for an end to America’s military role in Vietnam. When their own were killed day after day, the body politic spoke with one voice to call off the misadventure.
Now predominantly the poor make up America’s cannon fodder. They voluntarily sign up for a career their better-off fellow citizens gladly leave to them. They are patriotically saluted off to fight in a distant land. Should they be killed in action, no publicity is allowed when their bodies are returned to America. The civic minded do not want them to be forgotten, but those who only really care about their own families, and those who advocate violent actions against others so long as the repercussions are to be borne by less fortunate souls, barely register their loss.
So today the poor, instead of congregating outside the mansions and palaces of the upper class, shouting for bread and justice, wait quietly in line to join the establishment which has reserved for them a special place. Here, in return for support which progressive reformists of the last century tried to secure for everyone without prejudice, they, and they alone, would have to take their turn to face snipers and shrapnel, brain damage and death.
Imagine what Louis VI would have done in the face of the angry crowd calling for a fairer society, if he could simply point them to form an orderly queue over at the military registration office. With offers of decent pay, special discounts, scholarships, helpful mentors, loans, plus numerous other benefits, not to mention a wide selection of cakes, the revolution would never have even got started. Rather than threatening the powerful with militant confrontation, they would march off and get themselves killed instead. It’s a lesson the present day George II has learnt well.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Sunday, 7 October 2007
The Alpha Male Syndrome
Natural selection has left animals with a wide variety of survival instincts. The alpha male tendency is common amongst predators that hunt in a pack as well as primates. But domination by an authoritarian male is not the only route to biological success. From the social cooperative nature of emperor penguins and dolphins to the individualist behaviour of foxes and squirrels, it is clear that one does not need to submit unreservedly to a snarling leader to make something of one’s life. Without the cerebral capacity to examine and compare, it is not surprising that once a species has developed a way of being, it sticks to it. Human beings, however, have no such excuse.
For thousands of years the alpha male instinct directed human interactions. In return for order, an allotted place in the group, and protection from ‘outside’ threat, one surrenders oneself to control by the most determined and aggressive in taking charge. This mindset is projected ‘upwards’ in the theological representation of ‘God’ as an absolute ruler who will punish dissent with eternal suffering, and ‘downwards’ in the social validation of oppression through the lower rungs of the hierarchy. The lord could treat his peasants as he pleased, the head servant could treat his subordinates likewise, and similarly with the priest and his underlings, the man with his wife and children.
It was only when the right conditions for related intellectual and political development converged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the movement towards a democratic as opposed to an authoritarian way of life began. It has been a long and hard struggle. And what remains the most challenging aspect of the struggle is to expose the grip the alpha male syndrome retains to this day.
Alpha male authoritarianism is not displaced just by opening the door to women, people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, or lower socio-economic classes, especially when those who take control are no less ‘alpha male’ in their power disposition.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have been fed stories that authoritarianism has been roundly defeated by democracy. But if that is the case, why is power at almost every level still concentrated in the hands of those most ruthless in securing and exercising power? Why are corporate barons able to sell arms, destroy the environment, or promote addictive consumerist behaviour when these are blatantly against the interests of the vast majority of people? Why are only those capable of destroying their enemies through the modern weapons of mass communication and subtle (or not so subtle) character assassination in line to compete for the most important political offices? Why can the wealthiest go on rewarding themselves more while subjecting their employees to pay restraints and perpetual job insecurity? Why is domestic violence still a blot on our moral landscape? Why are human beings, including young children, exploited as mere cogs in faceless production lines?
We need to ask ourselves who get to wield power in the world around us. Democracy has won many battles in the last few centuries, but it still has a long way to go. The alpha male psyche is deep in our evolutionary make-up. The aggressive few are inclined to push their way to the top. The silent majority are all too ready to acquiesce for fear of a backlash. But if authoritarianism is to be combated, we have to start unmasking the alpha male holders of power in every sphere of society. The legitimacy of power does not come from defeating their competitors, but only from engaging with us as equals in pursuit of our common good.
For thousands of years the alpha male instinct directed human interactions. In return for order, an allotted place in the group, and protection from ‘outside’ threat, one surrenders oneself to control by the most determined and aggressive in taking charge. This mindset is projected ‘upwards’ in the theological representation of ‘God’ as an absolute ruler who will punish dissent with eternal suffering, and ‘downwards’ in the social validation of oppression through the lower rungs of the hierarchy. The lord could treat his peasants as he pleased, the head servant could treat his subordinates likewise, and similarly with the priest and his underlings, the man with his wife and children.
It was only when the right conditions for related intellectual and political development converged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the movement towards a democratic as opposed to an authoritarian way of life began. It has been a long and hard struggle. And what remains the most challenging aspect of the struggle is to expose the grip the alpha male syndrome retains to this day.
Alpha male authoritarianism is not displaced just by opening the door to women, people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, or lower socio-economic classes, especially when those who take control are no less ‘alpha male’ in their power disposition.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have been fed stories that authoritarianism has been roundly defeated by democracy. But if that is the case, why is power at almost every level still concentrated in the hands of those most ruthless in securing and exercising power? Why are corporate barons able to sell arms, destroy the environment, or promote addictive consumerist behaviour when these are blatantly against the interests of the vast majority of people? Why are only those capable of destroying their enemies through the modern weapons of mass communication and subtle (or not so subtle) character assassination in line to compete for the most important political offices? Why can the wealthiest go on rewarding themselves more while subjecting their employees to pay restraints and perpetual job insecurity? Why is domestic violence still a blot on our moral landscape? Why are human beings, including young children, exploited as mere cogs in faceless production lines?
We need to ask ourselves who get to wield power in the world around us. Democracy has won many battles in the last few centuries, but it still has a long way to go. The alpha male psyche is deep in our evolutionary make-up. The aggressive few are inclined to push their way to the top. The silent majority are all too ready to acquiesce for fear of a backlash. But if authoritarianism is to be combated, we have to start unmasking the alpha male holders of power in every sphere of society. The legitimacy of power does not come from defeating their competitors, but only from engaging with us as equals in pursuit of our common good.
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Variations on a theme of ransom
What do you do when an entire city’s transport system is totally disrupted because there is another all-out strike? You stress, you curse, and you wish someone would end this nonsense.
Then you hear about others, baggage handlers at airports, even prison officers, going on strike, causing so many problems for other people. And you think it’s the unions. You don’t see those without a strong unionized workforce going on strike. They just get on with it. Whereas those backed by the power of their unions are quite ready to hold the rest of society to ransom. Meet our demands, they declare, or else there will be unpleasant consequences for you all.
So when the leaders of society stand firm and pronounce such actions irresponsible, if not outright contemptible, people look up and welcome their intervention. At last someone to protect us from those who use their power to secure what they want at our expense. It is outrageous that some people can keep playing the “or else” card to force us to comply with their preferred scheme of things.
But what protection are we getting? Let us take a closer look. When those who are in fact the most economically powerful proclaim that in their scheme of things, they must have an utterly disproportionate share of what they in conjunction with numerous others produce, what happens? Do we hear resounding condemnation of these corporate barons? Do we hear revulsion that they are getting away with establishing a society where they can pay themselves millions, and further year on year increases of 10%, 20%, 30% and more above the rate of inflation, when many ordinary workers find that their pay does not even keep pace with inflation, their jobs are constantly under threat as management might sacrifice them to boost share prices, and whose pension terms are deteriorating when their bosses are getting extra benefits in every conceivable way?
What we do hear is this: “we must accept this, because …” wait for it, “or else”, yes, that’s the crunch point, “or else, they would leave and take their skills elsewhere, and we would all lose out”. In other words, out of fear that these corporate barons would do a walk-out – which of course is precisely what they threaten to do every time someone questions the absurd benefits they award themselves – nobody dares to challenge them.
This is mistaken on two counts. First, it is a myth that people, even the most greed-soaked ones, are only motivated by getting hugely more money all the time to do what they love doing anyway. Look at the top footballers’ contracts. None of them seriously thinks that they could not be bothered to fight hard to win a competition because they are not paid another million pounds on top of the X millions they are getting already. But it does become a problem if a few super elite are getting another million, then they want it too. What’s the driver here? A need to minimize differentials – not to maximize.
Secondly, when the powerful at the top are left unchallenged, vulnerable individuals have no choice but to band together to protect themselves. Unions are to workers as Robin Hood and his followers are to the exploited folks of old Nottingham. And there is a crucial difference between the Sheriff of Nottingham holding wretched peasants to ransom lest they allowed him to grab his grossly unfair share of what the people had produced, and Robin Hood holding the good Sheriff to ransom lest he agreed to let them live a decent life. It can be summed up in one word. Justice.
Then you hear about others, baggage handlers at airports, even prison officers, going on strike, causing so many problems for other people. And you think it’s the unions. You don’t see those without a strong unionized workforce going on strike. They just get on with it. Whereas those backed by the power of their unions are quite ready to hold the rest of society to ransom. Meet our demands, they declare, or else there will be unpleasant consequences for you all.
So when the leaders of society stand firm and pronounce such actions irresponsible, if not outright contemptible, people look up and welcome their intervention. At last someone to protect us from those who use their power to secure what they want at our expense. It is outrageous that some people can keep playing the “or else” card to force us to comply with their preferred scheme of things.
But what protection are we getting? Let us take a closer look. When those who are in fact the most economically powerful proclaim that in their scheme of things, they must have an utterly disproportionate share of what they in conjunction with numerous others produce, what happens? Do we hear resounding condemnation of these corporate barons? Do we hear revulsion that they are getting away with establishing a society where they can pay themselves millions, and further year on year increases of 10%, 20%, 30% and more above the rate of inflation, when many ordinary workers find that their pay does not even keep pace with inflation, their jobs are constantly under threat as management might sacrifice them to boost share prices, and whose pension terms are deteriorating when their bosses are getting extra benefits in every conceivable way?
What we do hear is this: “we must accept this, because …” wait for it, “or else”, yes, that’s the crunch point, “or else, they would leave and take their skills elsewhere, and we would all lose out”. In other words, out of fear that these corporate barons would do a walk-out – which of course is precisely what they threaten to do every time someone questions the absurd benefits they award themselves – nobody dares to challenge them.
This is mistaken on two counts. First, it is a myth that people, even the most greed-soaked ones, are only motivated by getting hugely more money all the time to do what they love doing anyway. Look at the top footballers’ contracts. None of them seriously thinks that they could not be bothered to fight hard to win a competition because they are not paid another million pounds on top of the X millions they are getting already. But it does become a problem if a few super elite are getting another million, then they want it too. What’s the driver here? A need to minimize differentials – not to maximize.
Secondly, when the powerful at the top are left unchallenged, vulnerable individuals have no choice but to band together to protect themselves. Unions are to workers as Robin Hood and his followers are to the exploited folks of old Nottingham. And there is a crucial difference between the Sheriff of Nottingham holding wretched peasants to ransom lest they allowed him to grab his grossly unfair share of what the people had produced, and Robin Hood holding the good Sheriff to ransom lest he agreed to let them live a decent life. It can be summed up in one word. Justice.
Saturday, 25 August 2007
The Crisis of Civic Disengagement
So what if people are less inclined to band together to shape the decisions that affect them? Fewer and fewer people join political parties or trade unions, organise themselves in deliberating and questioning public policies, vote or stand for public office. Some embrace this phenomenon as a minor side effect of the spread of consumerism. But for those of us who have not forgotten how throughout history the powerful few get away with exploiting the many when the latter give up on collective action, it is a serious crisis indeed.
The Roman Republic and the early days of America witnessed citizens who were similar in status, working to achieve comparable rewards for their families, and were thus willing to take action through their public institutions on terms of mutual respect. But when those with the military strength and corporate muscle started to amass power in themselves at the expense of others, republican virtues gave way to irresponsibility, inequalities, and imperialist hubris. Powerful elites know that by fragmenting the public into strangers separated by widening gaps of wealth and social standing – from those too rich to have to worry about being accountable to anyone else, to those pushed so far down the hierarchy that they feel they have nothing to lose however self-destructively they behave – they can dissolve the citizenry into a multitude of disconnected individuals.
For too long, society’s readiness to allow those at the top to secure better and better terms for themselves while making lives for those at the bottom more precarious and insignificant, has left those lower down the towering pyramid with dwindling self-worth and deepening alienation. Not surprisingly, rights for workers to seek better treatment are now branded costly red tape to be cut, while rights for employers to exploit the weak bargaining position of others are celebrated as essential freedom to be enhanced.
The problem of civic disengagement we have today is not going to be solved by encouraging a few young people to volunteer to help run the odd charitable projects, or enticing a few more rich philanthropists to donate to good causes. It is a manifestation of the onslaught on civic cohesion at the heart of the rise of global plutocracy. We need to stir our democratic conscience and challenge the hegemony of the so-called ‘wealth creators’ – the corporate elites who between them dominate the private media, the lobbying of lawmakers, the consumerist industries, the arms and surveillance business, and much else besides. To adapt Niemöller’s observations, doing nothing is not a sustainable option:
First they came to strip the trade unions of their power,
One did nothing,
One was not a trade unionist.
Next they came to halt state bodies from interfering with their ‘wealth creation’,
One did nothing,
One was not a member of a state body.
Then they came to undermine the authority of public broadcasters,
One did nothing,
One was not a public broadcaster.
Finally they will come for the rest of us,
If one still has not done anything by then,
It would all be too late.
The Roman Republic and the early days of America witnessed citizens who were similar in status, working to achieve comparable rewards for their families, and were thus willing to take action through their public institutions on terms of mutual respect. But when those with the military strength and corporate muscle started to amass power in themselves at the expense of others, republican virtues gave way to irresponsibility, inequalities, and imperialist hubris. Powerful elites know that by fragmenting the public into strangers separated by widening gaps of wealth and social standing – from those too rich to have to worry about being accountable to anyone else, to those pushed so far down the hierarchy that they feel they have nothing to lose however self-destructively they behave – they can dissolve the citizenry into a multitude of disconnected individuals.
For too long, society’s readiness to allow those at the top to secure better and better terms for themselves while making lives for those at the bottom more precarious and insignificant, has left those lower down the towering pyramid with dwindling self-worth and deepening alienation. Not surprisingly, rights for workers to seek better treatment are now branded costly red tape to be cut, while rights for employers to exploit the weak bargaining position of others are celebrated as essential freedom to be enhanced.
The problem of civic disengagement we have today is not going to be solved by encouraging a few young people to volunteer to help run the odd charitable projects, or enticing a few more rich philanthropists to donate to good causes. It is a manifestation of the onslaught on civic cohesion at the heart of the rise of global plutocracy. We need to stir our democratic conscience and challenge the hegemony of the so-called ‘wealth creators’ – the corporate elites who between them dominate the private media, the lobbying of lawmakers, the consumerist industries, the arms and surveillance business, and much else besides. To adapt Niemöller’s observations, doing nothing is not a sustainable option:
First they came to strip the trade unions of their power,
One did nothing,
One was not a trade unionist.
Next they came to halt state bodies from interfering with their ‘wealth creation’,
One did nothing,
One was not a member of a state body.
Then they came to undermine the authority of public broadcasters,
One did nothing,
One was not a public broadcaster.
Finally they will come for the rest of us,
If one still has not done anything by then,
It would all be too late.
Saturday, 7 July 2007
What’s wrong with being all-powerful?
Take a house with a dozen people, a neighbourhood with a few hundred, or a country with a few million, would it be better if in each case one single person is all powerful and everyone else is to live or die depending wholly on this person’s mercy, or if power is more evenly and fairly spread so that no one has to bow down to the commands of any almighty despot, regardless of how benevolent the latter is supposed to be?
Anyone who has any historical knowledge of the exploitation, oppression and injustice which come from power being concentrated in the hands of someone who is not accountable to anyone else will have no doubt which is preferable. Absolute power does not only corrupt its holder, it enslaves those subject to its exercise. If this observation holds for a house, a neighbourhood, a country, then surely it holds for the entire universe.
The world would always be better if there isn’t a single person who possesses limitless power to dominate everyone else. If God is the embodiment of perfection, it would follow that God cannot be an all-powerful entity unaccountable to no one else. As power is better distributed in a progressively more equitable manner amongst all those who can be affected by that power, perfection is reached when power is shared out so evenly that all can decide for the good of all, and none can arbitrarily dictate to the detriment of any single one.
The primitive infantile mind craved for a powerful parental figure to look after everything and projected God as an all-powerful being. Fixated on this naïve premise, theologians and their critics, for centuries argued about whether there is proof that an all-powerful being rules the universe. But what they have in fact arguing about is the likelihood of, not God’s existence, but cosmic tyranny. Perhaps all concerned can now wake from their intellectual slumber and recognise that what moral goodness calls for is not the absolute concentration of power in a single being, but its very opposite – the fair dispersion of power to everyone on equal terms.
The erroneous conception of God as all-powerful has for centuries lent itself to be exploited as a justification for papal, monarchical, patriarchal, fundamentalist oppression at every turn. Only a ‘God’ so twisted in its core meaning can be invoked to back wars, tortures, and suppression of love and free-thinking. God, properly understood as the ideal state of power shared by all in a just commonwealth with no boundaries, is real in so far as it is the guiding principle for life.
So it’s time to put aside flawed theology and invite the religious minded to embrace God as the path to a fairer society. Forget about worshiping all-powerful tyrants disguised as saviours. The only future worth striving for is the one where the gap between the powerful and the powerless is finally closed.
Anyone who has any historical knowledge of the exploitation, oppression and injustice which come from power being concentrated in the hands of someone who is not accountable to anyone else will have no doubt which is preferable. Absolute power does not only corrupt its holder, it enslaves those subject to its exercise. If this observation holds for a house, a neighbourhood, a country, then surely it holds for the entire universe.
The world would always be better if there isn’t a single person who possesses limitless power to dominate everyone else. If God is the embodiment of perfection, it would follow that God cannot be an all-powerful entity unaccountable to no one else. As power is better distributed in a progressively more equitable manner amongst all those who can be affected by that power, perfection is reached when power is shared out so evenly that all can decide for the good of all, and none can arbitrarily dictate to the detriment of any single one.
The primitive infantile mind craved for a powerful parental figure to look after everything and projected God as an all-powerful being. Fixated on this naïve premise, theologians and their critics, for centuries argued about whether there is proof that an all-powerful being rules the universe. But what they have in fact arguing about is the likelihood of, not God’s existence, but cosmic tyranny. Perhaps all concerned can now wake from their intellectual slumber and recognise that what moral goodness calls for is not the absolute concentration of power in a single being, but its very opposite – the fair dispersion of power to everyone on equal terms.
The erroneous conception of God as all-powerful has for centuries lent itself to be exploited as a justification for papal, monarchical, patriarchal, fundamentalist oppression at every turn. Only a ‘God’ so twisted in its core meaning can be invoked to back wars, tortures, and suppression of love and free-thinking. God, properly understood as the ideal state of power shared by all in a just commonwealth with no boundaries, is real in so far as it is the guiding principle for life.
So it’s time to put aside flawed theology and invite the religious minded to embrace God as the path to a fairer society. Forget about worshiping all-powerful tyrants disguised as saviours. The only future worth striving for is the one where the gap between the powerful and the powerless is finally closed.
Saturday, 2 June 2007
Together We Can
Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ continues to resonate down the age. It is so true that when citizens give up striving to hold the powerful to account, and allow themselves to be tricked or bribed into leaving those in command of their fate to act without due public constraint, they end up weak and vulnerable. Without a collective platform to challenge, and if necessary, halt those with power from charging forward, they become mere pawns in someone else’s game plan.
And tyranny adapts with time. If the first half of the twentieth century was still stirred by rallying calls to band together against Caesar-like dictators, the contemporary world is seeing a multiplicity of social, political and corporate leaders who seek to control others by fostering fundamentalist beliefs, handing the public realm to creeping private interest, and promoting addictive consumerism. There is no single imperial figure to confront, but a shifting alliance of the rich, the irresponsible, and the ‘let’s invoke God when it suits us’ brigade.
Against this chameleon axis of oppression, what can we do? In England, an initiative which began in 2005, is proving that solidarity can be cultivated through the focused collaboration of both the state and citizens. The Together We Can campaign, developed to encourage and support active citizens and public servants to cooperate in finding solutions to public problems, brought 12 Government Departments together with a shared commitment to improve citizens engagement with the development of their policies and services. The annual review of 2006 featured the Secretaries of State of all those departments reflecting on the diverse achievements, from citizenship education for all pupils, through greater local say in setting policing priorities, to wider adoption of deliberative engagement in developing environmental policies (see http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1502653).
Now an interactive resource on the web has been launched to enable all those, who believe that citizens can together exert far greater influence than acting alone, to utilise, contribute to, and promote ideas and practices which will strengthen that influence (http://togetherwecan.direct.gov.uk).
Together We Can cultivates a robust civic culture, to give citizens, from an early age, the skills, confidence and opportunities to work together in raising issues with and getting answers from with public institutions. Of course, this will not by itself prevent democratic life from being damaged by those who want to infect the public realm with their brand of ‘spiritual’ or commercial values, but it is an important inoculation against civic atrophy.
For example, approaches like participatory budgeting are spreading and people who had previously been sceptical about the prospect of civic solidarity have not just witnessed, but deeply moved by young people changing their minds and switching support to back projects which were to benefit primarily the elderly, and ethnic groups voting on spending priorities irrespective of racial factors. Women who had been marginalized, and people with learning disabilities had acquired new skills and confidence to make their voices heard.
Without fanfare, but with quiet determination, a new generation of civic-minded activists are coming through. Together they will stand up to any modern Caesars, in whatever guise they may appear, who threaten the precious solidarity of democratic citizenship.
And tyranny adapts with time. If the first half of the twentieth century was still stirred by rallying calls to band together against Caesar-like dictators, the contemporary world is seeing a multiplicity of social, political and corporate leaders who seek to control others by fostering fundamentalist beliefs, handing the public realm to creeping private interest, and promoting addictive consumerism. There is no single imperial figure to confront, but a shifting alliance of the rich, the irresponsible, and the ‘let’s invoke God when it suits us’ brigade.
Against this chameleon axis of oppression, what can we do? In England, an initiative which began in 2005, is proving that solidarity can be cultivated through the focused collaboration of both the state and citizens. The Together We Can campaign, developed to encourage and support active citizens and public servants to cooperate in finding solutions to public problems, brought 12 Government Departments together with a shared commitment to improve citizens engagement with the development of their policies and services. The annual review of 2006 featured the Secretaries of State of all those departments reflecting on the diverse achievements, from citizenship education for all pupils, through greater local say in setting policing priorities, to wider adoption of deliberative engagement in developing environmental policies (see http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1502653).
Now an interactive resource on the web has been launched to enable all those, who believe that citizens can together exert far greater influence than acting alone, to utilise, contribute to, and promote ideas and practices which will strengthen that influence (http://togetherwecan.direct.gov.uk).
Together We Can cultivates a robust civic culture, to give citizens, from an early age, the skills, confidence and opportunities to work together in raising issues with and getting answers from with public institutions. Of course, this will not by itself prevent democratic life from being damaged by those who want to infect the public realm with their brand of ‘spiritual’ or commercial values, but it is an important inoculation against civic atrophy.
For example, approaches like participatory budgeting are spreading and people who had previously been sceptical about the prospect of civic solidarity have not just witnessed, but deeply moved by young people changing their minds and switching support to back projects which were to benefit primarily the elderly, and ethnic groups voting on spending priorities irrespective of racial factors. Women who had been marginalized, and people with learning disabilities had acquired new skills and confidence to make their voices heard.
Without fanfare, but with quiet determination, a new generation of civic-minded activists are coming through. Together they will stand up to any modern Caesars, in whatever guise they may appear, who threaten the precious solidarity of democratic citizenship.
Sunday, 20 May 2007
Long live the Con
When so many commentators in Britain and America are queuing up to congratulate France for electing a President who’s prepared to drive through ‘reforms’, take the ‘tough decisions’, and bring about ‘greater flexibility’, you have to start worrying for the French people. What have they done?
They have for decades struck a nice balance between work and life – producing sought after designs and goods all round the world, and enjoying a decent quality of life sustained by economic security. What exactly went wrong? In short, they began to be undercut by corporations which made more money by squeezing their employees dry. Corporations which are celebrated by Anglo-American pundits for ‘thriving’ in the global marketplace by being utterly committed to cutting back on employment protection, demanding longer hours, polarising between the bosses who could do more and more as they please, and the dispensable workers. The message to France and other socially minded countries in Western Europe has been simple: embrace this style of governance or perish.
But why would the citizens of any democracy, in France or anywhere else, give up the power they have through their state and let new leaders dismantle the precious apparatus for securing liberty and equality for all? Well, you have to use the old divide-and-rule trick, but give it a contemporary twist.
Here’s the new con – a compassionate one as some like to put it, for it hinges on showing how caring you are – challenge people to choose between trusting themselves or some faceless public institution. Put this to them bluntly: Wouldn’t you rather trust yourself than somebody else? To keep your destiny in your own hands, you must distrust, nay, reject anyone trying to regulate things on your behalf. Keep these meddlers away, and what happens in life would be down to your own efforts. You can’t get fairer than that.
Once the gullible bites, you can feed them the rest. Why pay ever more taxes to the state when you know better how to spend your own money? Why let anyone dictate to you how many hours you can work, or indeed what conditions are acceptable for you to work under, when all that would do is to hamper you from earning what you deserve? Why allow busy bodies to interfere with what can be sold to you, or how it should be sold to you when it would just add to the costs of what you want to buy? Why do we have to pool our resources to invest in schools and hospitals for everyone, when we should be able to choose the health and education services we want from successful private companies?
Con artists at the service of plutocratic barons have refined their message with a reference to globalization here, and a nod to post-modernity there. But their intent is the same as it ever was – ensure those who have amassed wealth and power over others can take the fullest advantage of them without any intervention from collective forces acting in the public good. They want people to see taxes, civic institutions, public standards, state inspection regimes, regulations and controls as all inherently bad. They invite to us to cut them right back, so that we can be more free, more flexible, more ready – to be picked off one by one. They are counting on each and everyone of us to be foolish enough to be tricked into enslavement in the name of individual freedom. Vive le con.
They have for decades struck a nice balance between work and life – producing sought after designs and goods all round the world, and enjoying a decent quality of life sustained by economic security. What exactly went wrong? In short, they began to be undercut by corporations which made more money by squeezing their employees dry. Corporations which are celebrated by Anglo-American pundits for ‘thriving’ in the global marketplace by being utterly committed to cutting back on employment protection, demanding longer hours, polarising between the bosses who could do more and more as they please, and the dispensable workers. The message to France and other socially minded countries in Western Europe has been simple: embrace this style of governance or perish.
But why would the citizens of any democracy, in France or anywhere else, give up the power they have through their state and let new leaders dismantle the precious apparatus for securing liberty and equality for all? Well, you have to use the old divide-and-rule trick, but give it a contemporary twist.
Here’s the new con – a compassionate one as some like to put it, for it hinges on showing how caring you are – challenge people to choose between trusting themselves or some faceless public institution. Put this to them bluntly: Wouldn’t you rather trust yourself than somebody else? To keep your destiny in your own hands, you must distrust, nay, reject anyone trying to regulate things on your behalf. Keep these meddlers away, and what happens in life would be down to your own efforts. You can’t get fairer than that.
Once the gullible bites, you can feed them the rest. Why pay ever more taxes to the state when you know better how to spend your own money? Why let anyone dictate to you how many hours you can work, or indeed what conditions are acceptable for you to work under, when all that would do is to hamper you from earning what you deserve? Why allow busy bodies to interfere with what can be sold to you, or how it should be sold to you when it would just add to the costs of what you want to buy? Why do we have to pool our resources to invest in schools and hospitals for everyone, when we should be able to choose the health and education services we want from successful private companies?
Con artists at the service of plutocratic barons have refined their message with a reference to globalization here, and a nod to post-modernity there. But their intent is the same as it ever was – ensure those who have amassed wealth and power over others can take the fullest advantage of them without any intervention from collective forces acting in the public good. They want people to see taxes, civic institutions, public standards, state inspection regimes, regulations and controls as all inherently bad. They invite to us to cut them right back, so that we can be more free, more flexible, more ready – to be picked off one by one. They are counting on each and everyone of us to be foolish enough to be tricked into enslavement in the name of individual freedom. Vive le con.
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