Kiss your Democracy Goodbye (But Did You Ever Have One?)


by William Bowles
 
Global Research, October 21, 2005 
 


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"There are ? potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension 
of political democracy ? A government which lacks authority ? will have 
little ability, short of cataclysmic crisis, to impose on its people 
the sacrifices which may be necessary" (1975 Trilateral Commission 
Report on the Governability of Democracies)


Just how pervasive is the myth of our ?inalienable rights? is 
illustrated by the following quote from an article in the Independent 
that even as it warns of the ?drift?toward a police state?: 

? the Government is undermining freedoms citizens have taken for 
granted for centuries and that Britain risks drifting towards a police 
state. ? ?Judges liken terror laws to Nazi Germany? By Marie Woolf, 
Raymond Whitaker and Severin Carrell, The Independent, 16 October 2005 
[my emph. WB] 

Contrary to popular myth, the democratic process, the universal 
franchise, habeas corpus, the ?inalienable rights? and so on and so 
forth that the pundits spout on about, far from being an ?inalienable 
right? extending back to the Magna Carta some eight hundred years ago, 
our extremely limited democracy is barely one hundred years old and is 
something that is by no means ?taken for granted? as events in Northern 
Ireland revealed nor the raft of laws such as the infamous ?D? notice 
which is no more than an ?agreement? between the owners and managers of 
the media not to print or broadcast stories that might be embarrassing 
to the state, under the guise of ?state security?.

With literally hundreds of laws that collectively the state 
paradoxically likes to call our ?unwritten constitution? and without 
recourse to a clearly defined set of rules that sets limits on what 
powers the state possesses over its citizens, until the UK ? 
reluctantly and with all kinds of provisos ? signed the European Union?
s Human Rights Act, the state could pretty well do whatever it pleases. 
And now, under the guise of fighting the ?war on terror?, it wants to 
opt out of key sections of the Act.

In fact, the UK is probably the most regulated, controlled and 
surveilled of any of the so-called democracies. With an estimated 6 
million video cameras installed across the country over which there is 
no oversight, indeed, no controls whatsoever as to what happens to the 
footage, who sees it or who ends up possessing it, the state?s control 
over its citizens is almost complete.

And if anyone has any doubts about the perilous state of our 
?democracy?, the vote on ID cards on 18/10/05 had only 20 Labour MPs 
voting against it, and most of those on the grounds of cost of the 
project. Public debate on the issue is virtually non-existent. The 
government has consistently misled the public on the real nature of the 
ID card, hiding entirely the real reason, namely the creation of a 
national database on its citizens, an allegation it of course, 
strenuously denies. The vast cost of creating a national database on 60 
million people, a database that will contain information of all kinds, 
not merely the kind that will allegedly stop ?identity theft? or 
allegedly identify ?terrorists?, ?benefit cheats? and those 
participating in ?organised crime? but to add insult to injury, one 
that we will be forced to pay for.

So what is going here? Nobody could deny that indeed the state is 
undertaking fundamental attacks on the limited civil rights we have won 
over the past century or so of struggle but firstly, why are elements 
of the legal profession and the media only now waking up to the fact? 
Could it be that as long as it was only ?extremists? and other ?fellow 
travellers? who were the alleged subject of the attacks, our ?liberal 
intelligentsia? were not that troubled, but now they see their own 
positions of privilege threatened, they have at long last spoken out?

What is revealed here is something a lot more fundamental and a lot 
more insidious, for these self-same people who now talk of a ?drift 
toward a police state? have seen the writing on the wall for at least 
past eight years, yet said nothing and indeed were quite content to 
accept the ?drift? so long as it didn?t affect them.

Moreover, it reveals the incestuous relationship between our so-called 
intelligentsia and the state, why else do they continue to peddle the 
line that what is happening is some kind of encroachment on these 
mythical ?rights? that we are supposed to have had for centuries?

The uncomfortable truth is that democracy, even the limited form we 
currently have, exists for only as long as it?s convenient to keep it. 
And it?s a ?democracy? that is extremely narrowly defined, namely a two-
party system that exists within a structure defined by an inherited and 
entrenched state bureaucracy that is, we are told, neutral and 
independent of the political process. 

Yet the ?Establishment? as it is referred to, is a recognised 
institution composed of people who control the organs of the state; the 
judicial system, the civil service, the police and security services, 
education, the armed forces, and through their connections, the media 
and big business. These are people who are connected via the schools 
and universities they attended; the clubs they belong to and via family 
and business relationships.

However, the ?Establishment? is rarely, if ever referred to as being 
central to the maintenance of the State?s power. Instead, it is 
presented to us as an amorphous and inherited set of relationships that 
are intrinsically ?English?. The illusion is complete and reinforced by 
the assumptions made about its ?inevitable? nature, hence the statement 
?freedoms citizens have taken for granted for centuries? flows 
logically from such assumptions. 

The role therefore of the intelligentisa is to maintain the illusion 
of a society ruled by people who have some kind of ?natural right? to 
rule, benignly you understand, to suggest otherwise is to be ?un-
English? and it goes by the name of a ?meritocracy?, those who rule 
through ability alone, at least that?s what we are told. The 
Establishment is so powerful that it easily absorbs even those who 
?rise through the ranks? and end up belonging to it, such as those who 
head up the current ?Labour? government, regardless that they come from 
working class backgrounds.

Why this is important to the current onslaught on our ?inalienable 
rights? becomes apparent when we trace the trajectory of our 
governments, especially since the end of WWII and that of the Labour 
Party, whose historic role has been to manage capitalism when the 
traditional party of capital and of the Establishment, the Tory Party, 
eventually became a redundant force. 

There could be no clearer example of the obsolete nature of the Tory 
Party than the current ?contest? to find a Tory Blair. Hence, aside 
from the ineffectual Liberal Democrats, we now have a de facto one-
party system. Thus it is imperative to establish a ?legal? framework to 
enshrine the one-party system, in other words, the corporatist, 
security state, so beloved of Mussolini, a state that if it is rule, 
needs an absolutist framework of laws with which to protect itself and 
with which to control and repress any opposition.

The role of the ?war on terror? therefore, is to justify a state that 
has lost all legitimacy and must perforce rule by force, admittedly 
without recourse to an English equivalent of the SS and given the fact 
that the majority of the citizens have opted out of a political process 
over which they have no say, won?t be needed ? yet; except of course to 
repress those who fulfill the role of ?enemies of the state?, Muslims, 
?extremists? and other malcontents, who can be safely handled by 
existing organs of the state, MI5, MI6 and the various and sundry 
?security? services (in authoritarian regimes, they get called the 
secret police) all administered with the ?anti-terror? laws. Throw in a 
complicit corporate and state media, which is only too happy to 
maintain the illusion of a democracy and we have a ?very English? 
police state.

Goodbye Social Contract

What is referred to as the ?social contract? between capital and 
labour, formulated by the post-war Labour government as the response by 
the state to the demand by working people for a greater share of the 
wealth and for a genuine participation in the political process, has 
finally been abandoned. The reasons are complex but not inexplicable.

In the first place, the crisis of capital that came after the first 
?oil crisis? of the early seventies, precipitated the attack on working 
people represented by the Thatcher/Reagan so-called neo-liberal agenda 
that sought to address the issue of the falling rate of profit by 
taking back the gains that working people had won during the ?golden 
years? 1945-75, the longest period of consistent growth the Western 
world had ever experienced.

In addition, the defeat of the US in Vietnam signalled to the 
developing world that in spite of the US?s overwhelming military and 
economic power, imperialism could be defeated, admittedly at great 
human and material cost, and perhaps at a cost that in long run it 
could not bear. This was a defeat that the US simply could not tolerate 
and one that had to be answered and in my opinion anyway, led directly 
to the US intervention in Afghanistan and the subsequent and final 
?proxy? war between the US and the Soviet Union, a war the Soviets 
lost.

There can be no doubt that the rise of the ?social contract? was in no 
small part due to the success of socialism?s attraction to working 
people and, following the disasters of the 1920s and 30s, the failure 
of capitalism to solve the recurring crises that beset it. For proof of 
this we need look no further than the roles of successive Labour 
governments throughout this period to ?manage? capitalism. But each 
successive Labour government moved further and further to the right and 
at each turn, it abandoned chunks of its historical mandate as the 
?party of labour? as the allure of socialism faded, due not only to the 
failures of Soviet Union but also to the propaganda of the Cold War.

Ultimately, the Thatcherite ?counter-revolution? which hinged on the 
deregulation or the abandonment of the state regulation of the ?market? 
that enabled capital to move unhindered across the planet and which in 
turn enabled the state to mount a frontal assault on the organised 
working class as industrial production moved to un-organised, cheap 
labour markets, most often in repressive regimes of one kind or 
another, where the lack of labour and environmental laws didn?t get in 
the way of doing business.

However, the frontal assault on working people did nothing to alter 
the fundamental crisis of capital, if anything it exacerbated the 
problem as it led not only to an increasing flood of products, but 
products that fewer and fewer people could afford to purchase. Capital?
s response to this crisis was to invest the surplus of capital into the 
financial markets, also now deregulated. Thus increasingly, profit was 
generated through speculation, especially in the currency markets that 
further destabilised the weak and vulnerable economies of the world ? 
the developing countries.

In turn, failing a genuinely progressive alternative, created the 
conditions for a variety of ?fundamentalist? movements to fill the 
political vacuum, some no doubt created by imperialism using classic 
divide and rule tactics, others out of sheer desperation.

It can be seen therefore, that there is a direct and organic 
relationship between repression abroad and repression at home; they are 
two sides of the same coin and result from the same process, the crisis 
of capital. Without once more entering into and engaging with the 
political process, I think it?s safe to assume that failing an 
organised and coherent opposition to the current Labour government-led 
regime, and one that?s not led by a posse of self-serving ?liberals?, 
whose position of privilege is only now recognised as being threatened, 
the omens are seriously bad. And, if you?ll forgive me for repeating 
myself, it?s up to you to break free from the illusion, so cleverly 
constructed, that the attacks on our rights only apply to ?extremists?, 
as they?ll come knocking on your door in the morning, of that you can 
be sure, history has taught us that, over and over again.
 

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