From Kindness to Democracy
There is no Democracy without Freedom
I think that by now, the tipping point has been reached by millions of individuals
including journalists, economists, philosophers and even politicians, that the old mercantile and then transnational corporate capitalism has turned into oligarchies
or thievocracies * around the world.
The cruel, the macho violent greedy but infantile self-loving psychopathic politicians (those who would be dictators)
with their mafioso legions of thugs
have surrounded the castle
and as the true barbarians they are,
they defecate on culture, art, beauty, appropriateness
and on the relative freedoms** we had held dear.
Please look at this list of connections:
There is no democracy without freedom;
there is no freedom without equality;
there is no equality without justice;
there is no justice without truth;
there is no truth without knowledge;
there is no knowledge without curiosity;
there is curiosity without empathy;
there is no empathy without kindness.
You can read the above from top to bottom or the other way around.
It makes sense both ways.
THERE IS NO DEMOCRACY WITHOUT FREEDOM
Before any discussion of the nature of democracy,
we must carefully separate it from the nature and effects of capitalism.
Democracy implies a coming together of people,
collaboration, tolerance, sharing common community values.
Democracy, without hindrance from a destructive economic system,
implies affection for communality, attachment to a place,
the enduring preservation of familial and common values.
It implies staying and evolving,
providing stability for an enduring democracy.
Capitalism actively pursues competition,
with the strongest, richest and most vicious rising to the top,
destroying competitors and as practiced,
taking as much as possible from other corporations,
the state and the people into their own possession
for the accrual of wealth and power for their financiers/investors.
Wendell Berry, the American farmer/philosopher/writer wrote,
“Power deals ‘efficiently’ with quantities that affection cannot recognize.”
Capitalism encourages greed and avarice.
It’s practices often include destruction of traditions, values, jobs, skills, neighbourhoods and ultimately of people’s homes and lives.
It leaves wastelands in its wake.
This fosters the fracturing of families and communities,
motivates migration and constant movement
as people flee the damage or seek better opportunities.
Capitalism has caused the evisceration of country life
and the creation of crowded and unhappy urban centres.
Defenders of capitalism’s worst traits rationalise this destruction
as ‘the price of progress’ or as ‘creative destruction’.
In the countryside, farmers lived with an obligation to the land;
in cities alienated people throw rubbish on streets
over which they feel no ownership.
In the countryside there is memory and fidelity;
in the city there is forgetfulness and a desire to escape the ‘old neighbourhood’.
Capitalism’s methods and unstated aims are explicitly contradictory
to the social aims of democracy.
Or, as expressed by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda:
"I belong to this great mass of humanity, not to the few but to the many".
I wrote the following for my script of my documentary THIS GOOD EARTH
(with inspiration from Robert Reich)
The future of freedom is coming from
We who are women.
We the young.
We the people of colour.
We who are immigrants.
We who are LGBTQ people.
We the people of every faith, or no faith.
We who are poor.
We the working people who need meaningful jobs and better wages.
We who believe in democracy and cherish freedom and the rule of law.”
THERE IS NO FREEDOM WITHOUT EQUALITY
Today in the US and Britain, the political classes are in the service of big media corporations, the super-rich, corporate CEO’s and bankers to maintain their power. These masters/monsters of our fate have altered beyond recognition
the proposition of democracy and the partly written, partly traditional social contract between the people and our governments.
This is because capitalism – now masked as the nicer sounding ‘market economy’ – requires the servitude and constant indebtedness of the people,
which is contradictory to the needs of democracy.
Modern economists refer to this as ‘wage slavery***’.
It should be clear to caring people
that the old idea there are two sets of laws,
one for the rich and one for the rest,
has never been truer.
With untold numbers of black people
murdered by law enforcement officers in the US
and with statistics showing that the US and the UK
have the largest number of imprisoned people of colour in the western world,
the story of inequality is clear.
A less clear but equally troubling reality for most people
is that they are trapped in a cycle of low wages, increasing living costs,
burdensome mortgages, higher education debts, rising health care costs
and lowering standards in all social care.
The absence of money means that people cannot avail themselves
of what is otherwise possible
(decent housing, food, healthcare, holidays, education, cultural opportunities)
when having money.
This absence of money is an absence of freedom.
The absence of freedom, constructed by an economic system which is exploitative,
is a generation upon generation crime against our own species.
Of course it will be defended by those who too easily
use the popularized and distorted Darwinian notions of the survival of the fittest,
whilst they ignore that it is not the fault of infants to be born into poverty or violence.
For next time, I will unwrap the idea that without Freedom there is no Equality.
NOTES
* An oligarchy is a government in which a small group of people control a country or an organization.
It is debatable if the US and UK governments aren’t instead Kleptocracies
(from Greek ‘kléptēs’ or in English ‘thief’, or kléptō’ meaning ‘I steal’,
and ‘krátos’, meaning ‘power or rule,
also referred to as thievocracy.
This is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power
to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by force.
** Liberty is defined by the Oxford dictionary as:
“The state of being free within society
(therefore liberty is a social/political condition)
from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behaviour, or political views”, while freedom is defined as “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants,”
therefore this is a personal condition.
Philosophically this becomes difficult
as it enters a discussion about whether we have free will
to do as we please or whether all of our choices are formed by previous experiences, which is a simplistic definition of what philosophers call determinism,
but this is for another essay.
***This definition of ‘wage slavery’ came from Karl Marx who noted that both a person in bondage – a slave – and a ‘free’ worker are both, as all other things in capitalism, a commodity, bought and sold for the purposes of profits. Today, as a consequence of austerity and now of completely unjustified inflation, working people survive pay-check to pay-check while owning and having as savings very little.
AFTERWORD
One of my go-to editor friends said to me after reading the above,
’that because people are shouted at all day by strangers, advertising,
the news, the common culture, politicians, etc.
perhaps I should write with a less angry tone.
I can do this but at my age I own my anger and share it with readers
as a sense of outrage against the Barbarians
who turn what could be a kind and well cared for citizenry
into living miserable or unduly tough lives.
If anyone cares to comment, I will appreciate the response.
Thank you
Robert
Yes thank you...the anger, my anger is unabated. Another friend asked is there a difference between random anger and just anger? I thought it was a fine distinction....I have worked with wonderful young people over the last few years from across Europe and a few from the US, and can sense their frustration, their lack of faith in politics and politicians who do not act as verbal warriors in their defence, and their sense of doom and gloom whilst struggling to understand and to be brave...As a species we need to ask, 'what are we doing to our young?'
You speak with frustration and anger. And you also speak with compassion. We need to hear all three. Keep it up, comrade!