A political caste system ensures the entitlement of the absurd

One of the benefits of actual socialism being represented at the top of the UK Labour party is that, much like a lightning rod, it apparently draws fire from all directions. Helpfully, although not for the peace of mind of the socialists within the Labour Party, by putting actual socialists at the top of the party all the various people in positions of power that are anti-socialist, even if they had previously been pretending otherwise are drawn out of the woodwork. And not just the usual suspects from the political caste system, or the last tranche of supposed leftists that rediscovered their inner capitalists, or the mainstream media in general, but perhaps most revealingly, from the voices of the self-styled journalistic left as well. Thanks to the resurgence of socialism in our political caste system, large swathes of the allegedly measured, educated and unbiased political journalists who were waving their pantomime liberalism at the rest of us, have now outed themselves for the fanatical cheerleaders of inequality and authoritarianism they actually are.

By way of full disclosure, I have been a long term supporter of several socialists in the Labour Party and their tireless efforts outside of the Houses of Parliament. The have been consistent, committed, and courageous. However, all that being said, I don’t believe Parliament is really the place for anyone trying to make society a fairer or more democratic place. The actual people in charge are the same people that all the benefits go to, while the rest of us who carry all the costs, in that process at least, have no voice to speak of. If the political caste system in the UK could change that, it would have by now. As Emma Goldman famously said, if voting changed anything they would make it illegal. The fact that it isn’t, shows that it doesn’t really threaten their status.

Without getting too far into it here, let me be blunt. The approved forums for political discourse are structured in such a way that the elite have a disproportionate advantage within them. And if you are in any doubt of that, the evidence is only ever one click away. So, by accepting their rules and their forums of the political caste system, we end up playing a game they designed specifically to ensure that we could never win. I would love to think that the ‘self-styled’ UK democratic system could one day represent the will of the population. However, the historical evidence suggests quite the reverse. So … in keeping with the Zeitgeist, let me give an example of how this can and does manifest. Brexit is not about giving political power to the general public in the UK. Brexit is about shifting certain administrative responsibilities from an elite in Brussels to an elite in Westminster. The omitted factor in the debate is that the political caste system has been globalised along side, in order to administrate on behalf of the international economic caste system. It has quite literally nothing to do with ‘democracy’ in the true sense of the word.

But this goes further than just the Brext debate. The exploiting class have spent a long time ‘reframing the narrative’ of the entire socio-political relationships within society. By defining when, where, how and who is acceptable to discuss politics and political change, they have managed to marginalise close to 90% of the population. Listen to any establishment broadcaster, or look at almost any mainstream publication … almost without exception it is rich people talking to rich people about why rich people deserve to be rich and therefore should be trusted by the poor people to tell the poor people what is good for them. Albeit, beneath the disguise of that wonderful euphemism, ‘middle-class’. This ‘reframing’ is how the establishment has been able to approve of the systems, educations, and forums that are represented as being suitable for ‘grown-up’ political debate, but are in truth the ones that are monopolised and controlled by them, as functions of the political caste system, and its master the economic caste system.

In order to maintain and extend a fixed system of intergenerational inequality, while making sure that it appears to those trapped in it to be a process of universal suffrage and economic meritocracy is extremely complicated. To unpick it and examine it, is even more difficult. But it is not all bad news. Thankfully, due to their religious adherence to their caste privilege, the exploiting class have bred into themselves a cognitive tunnel syndrome. They can’t see it failing, because they can’t imagine an alternative, and they can’t imagine an alternative, because an alternative would force them to accept their unsustainable cruelty. No one wants to realise that they are the villain, even the villain. So they delude themselves, going as far as to deny the reality that is quite literally staring us all in the face.

Let me put it another way. If people like Bannon, Hodge, Trump, Farage, Gove, Blair and Rees-Mogg are really the best they can find to make the case for their authority, then their system has quite clearly already failed. Of course, I use those names as a practical demonstration of elitism taken to its logical and most absurd conclusion. If you need more evidence try this thought experiment. Look at any recent UK or US administration and see if you can pick out someone who you would trust to watch your children while you left the room for any significant length of time. Why do you think they all employee accountants and nannies. They clearly can’t be trusted with their own finances, or for that matter their own children. So why do we trust them to run multi-billion dollar budgets on which our children’s lives depend? There is an absurdity to an hierarchical system built on inherited status.

In May of this year I wrote an article for the Morning Star called The Electoral Systems is Designed to Serve the Powers that be. The article was very much in response to a series of ongoing conversations I had been, and still am having with people recently aligning themselves with the socialist left in the Labour Party. For those new to the movement for a more equal and sustainable society, it is worth mentioning that this isn’t a new struggle, born out of Corbyn’s recent ascendancy in the Labour Party, or the NUS’s action against tuition fees, or the Stop-the-War coalition’s campaign against the Iraq war, or the global Occupy movement, or even the electoral success of parties like Podemos. No. In reality, this struggle has been going on for millennia, and has already costs hundreds of millions, if not billions of lives.

The Morning Star was kind enough to publish this article on 24th May 2018. To read it here or to download a .txt version of it please click through to the page.