Understanding Governments and The Establishment for Dummies

OK, many folks will be totally turned off by the post title here having already been turned off from politics by the shinanigens of politicians and the apparent complexity of politics. Obviously you havent quite reached that point otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. The good news is that politics is far simpler than most folks realize, though you wouldnt naturally pick that up from the white noise that is the mainstream media. The not so good news is that politics is far more sinister than most folks realise, but don't despair, I have some great remedies for that enraging sense of powerlessness. I'm not going to bog you down with confusing political jargon, rather I intend to cut through the crap and give you the big picture by reminding you about things that you probably already know, but have faded in the glare of the information barrage coming from your TV/Internet/newspapers etc.

The first thing to remember is that you live in a class structured society. The structure of modern society has not changed much since the dawn of human civilization and it is teered or stratified, broadly speaking, as lower, middle and upper. There are variations on these terms which maybe more or less familiar too; the establishment, the 1%, the ruling class, the wealth of the nation. These are all variations of the upper class. Management and political class are variations on the middle class. Working class, proletariate and steerage are variations of the lower class.

The distribution of political power amongst the classes is roughly speaking inversly proportional to the numbers of people in each class, during in 'peace time' at least, and is illustrated:

Class population distribution and order

These figures are taken from an article published on the BBC website for Britain called 'What is working class?'. The accuracy of the figures isn't terribly important for the point of this article. The magnitude of distribution is enough to make the relevant points. Power, wealth and attitudes maybe further stratified and compartmentalised within each class, but that is not terribly important for this article either, we just need the class oriented overview.

The first thing we should notice about the above figure is the order i.e. upper, middle and lower. What do these actually mean. Well, the most common way of viewing this order is in terms of wealth and power, with the upper having the most of both and the lower having the least. However, what I want to bring to your attention is the distribution of attitudes, particularly with regard to how these classes view each other. A typically held view by each class is that of 'we are the good guys'. Empathy of the upper towards the lower is low as is the lower towards the upper, the latter being commonly referred to as 'inverted snobbery'. Interestingly the middle class has a higher degree of empathy for the upper and lower classes than those classes have for each other. The middle class broadly speaking aspire to the wealth and style of the upper class but also sympathise to some extent with the lower class's hardships. Of course you will find plenty of exceptions to the these views within each class. I am speaking here in terms of general attitudes. Another aspect of attitude we might want to think about is the sense of superiority. Self superiority is nowhere near as abundant in the lower class, whereas it is dominant in the upper class.

'Order' is a word that you will come across frequently in politics, as in 'law and order' or as spoken in courts and parliament as a command 'Order!'. What does it mean. Well, look at the illustration and it should become obvious. The term means 'deference' or 'defer' i.e. the expectation that one should defer to their 'superiors'. It's not a term I am fond of, as like most I do not think of myself as being inferior to anyone. Of course we maybe inferior on specific skills and so forth e.g. I'm no carpenter, so a professional carpenter is obviously superior to me in wood working skills, but as a person I am much more egalitarian of thought. That is to say that I believe that all people are equal even if different. This is not a view widely held in the upper class I'm sorry to say.

There are many sources, particularly auto-biographies of national leaders, from which we can find candid revelations of supremacist attitudes amongst the upper class. I have picked one, which I have shamelessly lifted from Noam Chomsky in a talk he gave in Belfast 1993 titled 'Creating a New World Order', that should give some sense of attitudes amongst the ruling class:

The actual reality was expressed a bit more accurately by Winston Churchill, with his customary lucidity, when he was describing the new world order of the day, in 1945, and he wrote as follows; "The government of the world must be entrusted to the satisfied nations, who wish nothing more for themselves than what they have. Not to the hungry nations who only cause trouble. The government of the world must be entrusted to rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations. Our power placed us above the rest and it is our right to rule."

These kinds of utterances are generally kept out of the mainstream media, so for the casual observer it is quite hard today to pick up the degree of supremacist thinking amongst the ruling class, in fact many of the real power wielding ruling class do not appear in the mainstream media whatsoever. For example you might want want to browse the website 'Who Owns Britain' and see how many of the major land owners' names you recognise.

So what causes these social groups to become distinguished in their attitudes? We only need look at the evolution of species of plant or animal to find the answer. Geographically isolated groups of the same species will diverge into different species given time. Likewise, intellectually or geographically isolated groups of people will evolve different cultures over time. Just think about the evolution of Islam versus that of Christianity. Once an administrative group is formed to govern a people, and even though that administrative group is of those people, they immediately have a common interest; governing people. Government will always face resistance from some sections of the population on each issue, and so become desensitised to the concerns of such sub-groups believing that their own actions are for the 'greater good'. Given enough time the administrative group will be concerned with governing only and care nothing for the concerns of the people it governs, which is pretty much what we see today. A class of governors has evolved who serve the interests of governors only, relenting in its course only when discontent amongst the governed starts to frighten them. Even then they will use forceful means to try to stay their course, until of course it becomes untenable. The result is that at least 2 classes will evolve who exist in varying states of opposition to each other, the governors making laws to suit their ideals and the governed breaking those laws to suit their ideals. So now we have upper and lower classes.

So where does the middle class come from? Well, the upper class is a minority, and given that it's largely self-serving policies will benefit it most, it is naturally a minority of the privileged. So, based on the ratio of governors to the governed, many of its policies will be concerned with its own security. At the very least it requires a police force between it and the governed. If the police were to share the same views of the governed then the police force would be of no use to the governors, in fact a capable police force would be a threat to the governors. As a result the police force are given preferential treatment over the lower class, in the way of pay at the very least. Today the treatment of police goes much further, including indoctrination of the police against the lower class. The lower class must be treated with suspicion at all times. These are just 2 of the ways in which the police are set apart from the lower class. There are many others. This is quite probably one of the roots of the middle class, though we can go back to the Romans or further to see other middle class groups such as slave traders and so forth. Each middle class group serving the interests of the upper class whilst benefiting from exploitation of the lower class, or even other members of the middle class.

This stratification of the people has been around for a long time. The earliest civilisation I know of that doesn't appear to have had a middle class is that of the people of Caral in Peru. This was very likely a civilisation transitioning from a flat society to a structured society in which no middle class had yet developed.

There are many more aspects to this topic to be discussed, including the extremes that the ruling class regard as norms, which I shall do in future posts, but in short, countries are ruled by the ruling class for the ruling class, not by the people for the people.