We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, November 6, 2015

The myth of US democracy

Click here to access article by Asad Zaman from The Express Tribune.

This is another expression of middle class opposition to the declining prospects of this shrinking class as capitalist ownership over more sophisticated technologies reduce their need for middle class managers, highly skilled technicians, and assorted other professionals. A few members of this class are now expressing their outrage about this trend as an attack on democracy which they always posit as existing previously when substantial numbers of their class were required by capitalists. 

Members of this class have also played a critical role in indoctrinating workers from the cradle to the grave that the latter were living in a democratic system, a system best expressed in the Declaration of Independence as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people". This extravagant promise was delivered to early European farmers and workers on the North American continent when the rising capitalist class here wanted to have the "freedom" to acquire riches and power like their European counterparts instead of assuming a more subordinate role of colonialists who supplied European countries with raw materials. Of course, no such "democratic" government ever existed before or since the American Revolution in the US or any other government since the rise of civilization. 

Still it is the dream of the billions of ordinary people across the globe, and this is precisely why our middle class indoctrinators keep referencing this dream whenever they want to disguise the reality of class rule. But how the times have changed! The prospects of this middle class who have been loyally serving the One Percent are now clearly diminishing.

So, read the article because these middle class ideologists do correctly point out the growing concentration of wealth and power. But just keep in mind that when they talk about "democracy", they do so from a very self-serving perspective on history.