WHY VOTE IN A FAULTY DEMOCRACY?
I am sending an extra essay this week, to encourage people to vote. Please read on.
There are several answers to this, but first, allow me to fill in a little history.
It is said that those who understand history may better understand the present and the future, perhaps learning how to prevent or repeat the mistakes of the past including World Wars.
Evil Prevented
After World War II it became clear to the .01% who owned and own most of the land, industry and media in England, that they could not shove the working class back into poverty, poor pay, lack of medical care and lack of decent education for their children as in the 1930s, without severe and perhaps violent social responses.
The wealthy resented the idea of the welfare state
being proposed by the Labour Party.
They did not want their profits taxed to make a fairer state,
given that their poor wages to the mass of workers created the unfair state.
They were also conscious that the UK and European working classes,
trained in the use of weapons from the war,
bitter about having saved the bourgeois state and the wealthy
from the horror of Nazism and fascism
and then being thrown back into poverty, would not succeed.
Further, they were aware that the workers would be looking
at the supposed blissful Soviet Union worker’s state
and that the comparison between Soviet communism and western capitalism
would reveal the greed and mendacity of the super wealthy British.
Although the Labour Party seemed to be composed of decent and caring people,
many of the leaders were from the Oxford/Cambridge world of wealth.
No doubt some of them believed in service to the people and in a fairer world.
While many were social liberals,
they were none the less political/economic conservatives.
Although the called for reforms
they never proposed the ideas that would have given legal entry to the workers
onto the boards of the newly created nationalised mines, docks, rails
or even the new NHS.
Even given that they chose capitalism over democracy,
it was better to have Labour, whose humane social concerns
saved the working class from great hardship and strife.
In that case, voting for the Labour Party, although far from perfect,
did make significant differences to the lives of many.
EVIL RETURNS
By the end of the 1970’s those politicians
who had lived through and often served in the horrible war against the Nazis,
were retiring or fading away from the cultural, political discussions of the day.
In the early 1980’s Thatcher gave rise to a new breed
of self-interested entrepreneurs, businessmen and investors
whose energy and ideas may have turned a profit
but who not so much despised the working class
as simply did not care about their plight.
They viewed them only as commodities in their financial profit machines.
With Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society”
a new antisocial, anti-neighbourly,
anti-collectivist, anti-union culture was given birth.
This led to the rise of the ‘me’ rather than the ‘we-centred’ world;
this was when one’s possession became more important
than one’s contribution to society,
this was when one’s house became an investment rather than a place of memories,
this is when consumerism replaced collectivism and kindness,
this was when the concentration on one’s psychological self
was thought to be more important than one’s social history of family,
neighbourhood or workplace.
THE FREE MARKET
All of this was rationalised as defending personal liberty.
What was really meant by that was that the so called ‘free market’
should be left to function on its own with no oversight from regulators.
The placement of the profit motive at the centre as the central goal in life
helped to foster an incompetent and corrupt world of CEO’s
who turned their backs on kindness, care, love, wellbeing,
good health, decent diets, and meaningful jobs
and their responsibility to their clients, the nature of their locale,
and their employees.
Only their investors were important to them.
This was why they have no compunction about dumping filth into our rivers,
why they stood and still stand in the way of converting to a green economy,
why they couldn’t care less about an unhealthy population,
an ever increasing number of psychologically disturbed young people,
and were crassly uncaring about the dreadful toll of Covid.
There was a second important idea wrapped around this.
A dispute arose and still exists between those who promote positive freedom,
which means the biggest person in the room with the biggest club
should be allowed to do as they wish, unfettered by laws or regulations.
Those who oppose this with the idea that in a safe, sane society
there must be laws to restrain the bullies and this is refereed to
as negative freedom.
Negative means ‘not allowing’ as opposed to ‘not good’.
Having voted Thatcher in with her band of hierarchical men,
people had decided on another cruel leadership
who passionately hated the unions and working people.
Again, voting choices mattered
and led to this brutal anti-union government.
AUSTERITY, INFLATION and BREXIT
The last financially and socially disastrous fourteen years of incompetent,
ideologically narrow rule of Tory amateurism
has left us poorer,
with too few new build houses,
with people working two jobs still incapable of paying for electricity, rent and food, with growing homelessness and foodbanks,
with 4 million children going to bed improperly fed every night,
with increasing suicides,
with too few teachers,
with a financially starved NHS
and having committed an act of financial, scientific, political and cultural suicide
by turning our backs on the EU and the entire continent of markets and culture.
Recently I saw a sign in a demo which read “Silence = Violence”.
This is equivalent to “not voting = the rich gloating”.
Your refusal to vote from a moral position
allows them to place their politician-servants in front of the levers of power,
taxes, financial support,
and all the other things needed to create an unfair, uncaring society.
WHERE ARE THE GOOD ONES?
A Bosnian poet, Goran Simic**, asked me
“why do you think we Bosnians always vote in the bad people?”
“Why, I asked him?”
“Because”, he said, “that means we don’t get the worst ones.”
I am certain that many people who decide to run
for local, county and nationwide office
are well-meaning and understand the notion of service to the people.
But, I also think there are many puppets
who will serve the party to share its political power
or directly or indirectly serve the wealthy
encouraged by perks, bribes, sex, money, holidays, committee positions etc.
I think some are members of secret organizations as the Freemasons,
with their histories of racism, antisemitism, corrupting governments and misogyny.
In a real democracy these people should not be allowed into government,
especially when they have power over contractual agreements
between the governing body and the supplier.
Democracy should mean there is transparency.
But democracy means much more.
We all need to understand that local and national decision making
is vital to create caring communities.
Together we need to build local structures, develop active committees,
increase charity works and welfare groups
to look after all children as if we were a village,
to care for the depressed, the ill and the isolated elderly.
We need to embrace everyone in the community
and we need to take the moral high ground.
Much of this is down to how you vote in your town and county councillors,
and your MPs.
We need to let them know that they are our public servants
and are there to represent our best interests
and not those of the party or big business.
This is why, if you are dissatisfied with our political representative’s decisions,
our wealthy rulers,
our authorities and bureaucrats,
our members of secret organizations,
we must inform ourselves about who they are and what their values are
and vote, Vote, VOTE accordingly.
Take responsibility for your own lives in so doing.
Become proactive and turn away from only being reactive and complaining.
If this means you need to vote for the bad ones to keep the worst out,
remember you will be helping to alleviate some pain of the many.
And a little help from my friend Tina Ellen Lee:
“If you don’t want to vote for yourself,
then vote to help your neighbours who might need more support
than they’re getting at the moment.
And if you’re really angry and want to make change,
become a town councillor yourself and make a difference.
So in the UK on the second of May,
vote for people who care and want to make people’s lives better…
and every time there is an election,
local or national, vote for the same reason.
We can change things for the better
but it’s up to us to do this, not someone else.”
Capitalism is brutal, competitive, domineering and destructive.
Democracy should be fair, just, egalitarian and its policies should be
caring and kind, regardless of financial concerns.
NOTES
*TCFT see this.
**Goran Simic, see this.