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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 553
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WCL 553 April 2007
Imperial plutocracy
Democracy is not an absolute term. It is relative, describing a political state of a society. Examples range from the marginal, where a society may be developing tendencies towards a more open and responsive system, to the other extreme, where a functioning system is about to be taken over by a tyranny - such as Germany was under the Weimar republic. Generally we assume that a society that is called a democracy is more like that form than any other description.
Among the things which inhibit or pervert democracy, one of the most important is inequality, above all of wealth. The financial corruption that can and does result comes from the excessive power of that wealth. Such wealth can reach a degree of importance in a functioning democracy as to completely pervert it, while to outward appearance the system remains democratic. Degrees of wealth and inequality may be different at different times and in different societies, but the dangers to democracy are always present where great wealth and inequality exist together.
A recent statistic that two of the richest men in the United States, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, together own an equivalent to the total owned by the poorest 30% of the American population, is a clear indication. The Almighty Dollar has long been seen as a most accurate representation of the United States, and that is a sign that the present situation is more dire than ever. Coupled with the notorious fact that virtually every law-maker in the States is at least a millionaire, this gives the lie to the validity of now describing the U.S. as a democracy.
A society in which wealth and inequality is so overwhelming cannot seriously continue to be described as democratic. When every aspect of choice and decision-making is dominated by the interests of big business and the wealthiest members, the society cannot hope to adequately represent the wishes and aspirations of the vast majority, let alone the poor, of whom there are no shortage. Only by incessant manipulation and propaganda can they be persuaded to continue to give support, even grudgingly, to their rulers who are ultimately chosen by the ruling group of wealthy.
The resulting American plutocracy is still invested with trappings of the democracy which preceded it, but these are increasingly irrelevant. Even the much-vaunted reliance upon law, once the cornerstone of the fledgling democracy, is increasingly marginalised and denied by a neoconservative clique that rejoices in its own recognition of empire as a true description of the society that it has taken charge of. But of course this has been long in the making. The empire began with the suppression of the native Americans and the importation of African slaves. It gathered strength and dominance with the rise of the imperial presidency by fighting two world wars in successive generations.
The world has become the American oyster, with military bases in almost every country to bolster and replace the financial control exercised by means of business, banking and diplomatic alliances. In all this, the American power is represented as democratic, because it is ostensibly employed for the benefit of the American electorate. That comprises the voters (nearly 50%) and also the unrepresented majority. The comfortable and the gullible accept it as their god-given right to be pampered as the expense of the rest of the world, while the various levels of favoured friends and allies are given sufficient incentives either to participate in running the world or to acquiesce in its looting.
The fraud is complete, not by its iniquity but because it works largely by self-deception. The masses are content and believe that their content is enshrined in a democratic validity that should not be challenged or impugned. The more far-sighted of the rulers know the score, but few are prepared to take issue with so overwhelming a satisfied consensus. If the United States were, as so many of its citizens feel it to be, a microcosm and an epitome of the world as a whole, perhaps that would be enough. But it is not so. World citizens elsewhere, who are as entitled to have their needs and wishes respected, are totally ignored.
The inequality that is at the root of this plutocracy will destroy it, because the rulers guided by so partial a view and so partial an electorate, fail to read the signs of tension that will prelude vast change. But in China, India and other places still not entirely dominated by American wealthy, there will be seeds of change that will grow and are growing to challenge the Almighty Dollar. Not only will there be disillusion felt by millions at the antics of the imperialist Americans, there will also be stirrings of revolution. As these become subjected to the looming strains of global climate change, the results will be truly revolutionary.
John Roberts
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