With the approaching election I have been thinking a great deal about the issue of voting. Particularly with regard to the so-called left/right Capitalist/Socialist pretence that the powers that be play to manipulate and control the populace. Now I am not suggesting for a moment that political philosophies are irrelevant. However I believe that in our present circumstances they have become of secondary importance.
Once the revolution has succeeded, so to speak, there will be time for people to begin once again to decide want kind of a philosophy we wish to adopt for our societies. To obsess about such things now though is to deny the startling truth that those in power are not ideologues and plays right into their hands. For them such disputes are the mere mutterings of the masses...a tool by which they ensure that people are unable to unite in opposition to them.
Traditionally talk of elites and conspiracies has been the reserve of paranoid right-wingers, anti-Semites and the like, so I have been hesitant to temporarily put aside the comfort of progressive versus conservative dichotomies. I do believe however that this itself is a monumental act of denial of the empirical evidence. The world is currently threatened not by an ideology but by a group of people who see themselves as superior to all others by right of birth, by right of extreme privilege and by right of power. Ultimately the situation was best described by Marx...it is fundamentally a class struggle against a strata of society so separated from everyone else.
These elites, if this is what we must call them, are not driven by an ideology per se. They are as happy to bear the mantle of socialists as ardent capitalist, but in truth they are neither. They are amoral opportunists who do not have enough care for their fellow man to concern themselves with such idealistic notions. Their sole justification is a belief that they are born by right to rule. Their sole aim is to extend their control over the whole planet's resources and bend all its inhabitants to their will. Who are they? Well in a sense they are us. They are what happens to human nature when it is poisoned by seemingly unlimited power.
They are in the current historical context a largely Anglo American collection of the super-rich families that have had the wealth to drive history for some time. They find common purpose with similar elites from other nations...any who can identify with their extraordinary sense of predestined right to power over all men. They have played nation against nation, corrupting every attempt at civilised discourse or attempt by the masses to untangle their minds and decide how society could be governed, manufacturing wars, famines, hatred, prejudice and more than anything else.....confusion.
The one event which could ever threaten them would be the people of the world uniting against them. These elites are not right or left, socialist or capitalist. In truth they are brutes, gangsters and psychopaths, albeit with champagne glasses and oh so pure lineages. Against this background, to participate in their elections is to behave like the dumb muttering fools they have always taken us for.....and only delays our liberation from servitude.
