Bourgeois-ism - a Twenty-First Century Problem

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Karl Marx

Two commentators this week have highlighted to me a single issue which throws into sharp focus a fundamental problem with our democracy.
Jeff Smith in an email to the Lads earlier pointed out that there apparently is still a majority in favour of this idiot government, despite all the evidence shrieking out to say categorically that they are totally and utterly unfit to govern.

Andy Beckett in the Guardian yesterday: 'The Tories' incompetence is obvious - but do voters care?' It would seem they don't. The simple fact that the universal franchise was won relatively recently and at great expense to those that fought for it and that those very people who have benefited from that struggle and the seemingly simple right - to vote - have then themselves re-enfranchised the very class of people who for centuries have oppressed them and have given them carte blanche to reset the class structure to suit themselves, beggars belief.

The problem is comfort and a sense of entitlement - aspiration has always been at the very heart of our ridiculous class-ridden society - the looking up and the looking down - when people are comfortable, they form value-structures based on that comfort. Anything that threatens their particular status quo is de facto wrong. The only people outside of that game are the totally disenfranchised. The homeless; the dog-poor, living in shit-hole sink estates - those whom the system chooses to either ignore completely or marginalise to the criminal extremes of society. Not a lot has changed for some since Dickens' day.

I think at the end of it, Marx was right. The problem has always been the bourgeoisie. The difference now is that being bourgeois is what most working-class people aspire to be. Memory is short and history badly taught.

  

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner24 August 2020 at 09:12

    Last general election turnout: 66.1% we (the Labour Party) needed 71% to get the execreble liar Blair elected. So IF we are to stand a chance of getting rid of the Blunderer in Chief Boris we're going to have to rattle a LOT of letter boxes. Most of the 30% that never vote are the severely disenfranchised plus those who think that their votes don't count. It's an uphill struggle but it could be done. Sadly the local Lafur candidates for the "North Wales Assembly"(sic) are already consumate non-question-answering-proto-politicians; it doesn't fill me with the energy that will be needed for the only two big polling successes in my life (1960's Brighton Kemptown: first Labour MP & stopping the hugely distructive Pesda by-pass in the 80's). Politics is the "science" of the possible but when there are NO guiding principles (Clause IV) where and HOW do you steer the "Ship of State"?? I have to quote the original text of it cos it's just SO perfect and enshrines what is now occluded by banal short-termism:
    "To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service".
    We're now populated with Ombudsmen & women that do BUGGER_ALL and are just feckin' window dressing. We've got a second chamber populated by chancers and financial criminals NOT those who have spent a lifetime in REAL public services. Having our services and key industries back in public ownership and independant of political control is essential for our Communities (there IS such a thing Thatcher you stupid bitch! as we're finding out with Covid), our environment and our legislature.
    How many of the 30-40% non voters would go for that?
    Gaia IS forcing change upon us BUT has the Labour Party got the balls to diss-invent "New Labour"??
    Joe the pissed orff!

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