Saturday 2 March 2013

Ideas #3 - Revolutions

The current political system is abhorrent. Our parliamentary supervisors are as much slaves to the pound as we are. It is evident to me that things need to change. A good friend of mine pointed out once that most historical revolutions leave countries debilitated & crippled economically. I would agree with him to some extent although I would say that recent political movements have made me see fragilities in this theory. For instance most of the well documented historical revolutions that have failed are the revolutions of political systems that would compromise our current capitalist system. I have already discussed in detail the downfalls of capitalism.

“He who controls the past now controls the future. He who controls the future now controls the past” - George Orwell

This quote is relevant on this topic I would say. That's not to say that I'm advocating communism, I certainly see it's crippling effects on the welfare of the populous. But I do think that the media we consume is a consequence of capitalism. Most media outlets today are controlled by a handful of companies. Usually multinational & of course answering to no master save the share-holders. This is a giant gaping hole in our international community. The channels in question will only report on conflicts that suit there own vested interests & this misinforms the population. This is why we are left with the notion that if we revolt or try to change anything we will be left crippled. These are reminiscent of totalitarian scare tactics.

On a side note: Another thing which as been annoying me recently is that for some reason right-wing politicians seem to categorise anyone on the left as socialist. While socialism is certainly a left-wing political philosophy, it is not to say that there aren't other systems on the left of the spectrum. Yes often left-wing ideologies draw similarities with socialism, but it's not the same. It is socialism that is in the category of the left, not the left that is in the category of socialism. They just seem not to be able to think outside of their misinformed box.
    Personally I've been finding recently that socialism, capitalism even... dare I say it... monarchistic democracy are all outdated modes of governance. I believe that a contemporary & subsequently relevant system would be preferable. The current politics available to us were all devised in an economic, technologically & culturally foreign society. So I would postulate that a functional system would be both adaptive & fluid. It would be organized in such a way that when one generation has ceased to be relevant, the laws & principles of their society could easily be adapted in order to suit the needs of those who are in need.

Just to clarify at this point I would like to state that I believe Anarchism in its true & proper form would be a political ideal (Anarchism another left wing philosophy that isn't socialism). What I mean is that if it were possible for every person in the world to live every day without getting under each others feet or disagreeing with one another, there would be no need for government. We can deduce from this that the role of a government is not to control the populous (sorry Benito) it is to resolve disputes in a fair & unbiased way. Another proper function of a government is to take care of its people.
    A positive point about modern life in Britain is that we are privileged enough to experience a higher than average standard of living. Although our society is not perfect. To elaborate, things need to change. It seems that up to this point conservative politics in Britain has dominated & been based on the notion that you cannot consolidate wealth without suppressing the wealth of others. I believe this isn't true simply from a utilitarian perspective. As in the wealth of a nation is in the welfare of its people. Of course currency plays the role of the enabler, but should not be the focus of policies.
    Our current democracy is weighted too much to the big business & corporate wealth. I think it's about time we realized that there are other routes to prosperity. It would probably benefit us as a whole if our leaders were better educated in political science, sociology & economics. Of course in a society where it is mandatory for an MP to have this education, corruption could seep in via means of the education system. So it's important for us to examine the education system. An interesting system of education that could be applied here is the self-taught method. As to how these members would be elected a democratic system would probably be preferable. Although some modifications such as when re-voting parliament each members agenda should be assimilated as a simple text file or pamphlet with a preset design. The glamorous campaigns that we see in America are just open invitations for businessmen with bulging wallets to buy their favourite politics.
    Another friend of mine brought up a highly rational query to democracy as we know it here in the UK. She wondered why we don't vote on every policy. It's a simple enough observation which highlights the weaknesses of our governance. I can already hear the counter-argument: This would take too much time over each policy. But to be quite honest if I had been of age & given the chance I would have voted against the barbaric Iraq war. To resolve this I propose we assign groups of common people (much like jury duty) to asses the bills being put through parliament before they get put through & decide if they require public vote. Failing this we could vote on everything, or create a new house for deliberation of small possibly case specific policies which would not require public vote. Either way it should be easy to know what is being debated in the houses of parliament.
   
I also think that publicisation of certain ministries (eg. public transport) is advisable because as I've stated before, & I can't really stress this enough, corporations don't answer to the public. So publicisation in certain sectors relating to the public is optimal. Obviously we wouldn't want to take it to a ridiculous level like in communism. Just as long as we iron out the corruption we can have a bit more say over our public transport.

Thanks for reading.

7 comments:

  1. A very thought-provoking post.. And I'm really happy to see you're blogging and posting your ideas online. When did you start this blog?

    I really like your idea of a jury of 'ordinary' people deciding whether a decision should get a public vote. Another way might be for petitions to get more lawful relevance. By this I mean that if a petition with a certain number of signatures calls for a law to get a public vote, then legally it would have to happen, and the vote would decide whether the law was kept or changed.
    I think democracy is a great idea and we shouldn't get disillusioned with it, but we should realize that we need to raise the bar because it is slipping away. One of my lecturers at uni said the other day: "Democracy is a historic achievement. But it needs to be continuously regenerated".

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  2. The big problem with Socialism / Communism is centralisation. Common ownership of property isn't such a bad idea. What we really need is a new economic vision as both Keynes and Friedman's theories fail on the international scale. The other problem is the underlying misuse of psychology - Bernays' 'Public Relations' - which skews most people's understanding.

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    1. Well then maybe it would be a good idea to resolve that centralization by applying confederal ideas so that policy and regulations are relevant to a local area. But I still retain that, even though I resent illogical nationalism, the ability to act as a nation is useful for economic stability, if one region lacks resources then there is a fallback and things like generally being represented on an international level so that there can be validity to our existence for very shallow people. Basically just another form of accessibility.

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  3. Yes there is no excuse for not having REAL ACTUAL democracy.. we vote every day on facebook "like" it is a forum for life - short step to using a similar system for refurenda. [historically it was impractical but in my view party system has been warped into justified totalitarianism.

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  4. globaliztion could facilitate the feasibility of less interventionist quasi-anarchistic governments. The cost of intervention at levels of Blaire etc. unsustainable – makes economic sense to let people self regulate – with certain exceptions – BANKS !!?..

    pre king alfred [first national government ?] at first people sorted their conflicts [albeit with each group having its own top dog] but when you get groups of groups who organise on a bigger scale [Vikings ] then you need to evolve Big organisations too or be over-taken [taken over] which then meant killed /raped or in business terms swallowed and asset -stripped.. … This perhaps [ironic?] is where the [developed from this pattern] biggest organaisations of all : nato or g8 could .. turn tide against takeovers and defend the little guy .. oh it DOES and many politicians know this – that they as many before are in the rich opportunity . To use the products of globalization brought around by greed and acqusitionism into something to prevent greed and acquisition..

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    1. I'll be honest with you here, your comments don't make a lot of sense to read back. When you say globalization what are you actually getting at because I think that word is a word used to cover up/justify the eradication of locally relevant cultures. Which I think are essential to the survival of a community, superficially anyway. Yes & your comments about NATO & the G8: I don't think that NATO are actually committed or trustworthy in respect to protecting the underdog. I say this because if they did, they would intervene in the Israel - Palestine conflict (maybe even end it), places like north korea, not to mention all the military campaigns the US have started in let's say the past 68 years as I'm sure that most of them have an element of severe injustice to them (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, to mention a few).

      If I've misinterpreted anything you've said, sorry about that... please feel free to correct me. But as I understand it globalization is a naughty word that the right has hijacked to look more liberal, whilst still be incredibly fascist.

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  5. My personal prayer is for co-ops to make a comeback – rid of the stigma of communism. What a motivator for staff .. no fat cats everyone shares in the profit .. and the loss so everyone pulls together and feels genuinely accountable …

    ps I wonder re one global currency but more local currencies to just as one global country but more regional defenition culturally not economically...

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