This is a great writeup I have to say, thanks for that and agreed on all parts tbh.
The word ‘democracy’ is far broader than most people assume it is as it encompasses like 300 different ‘forms of government’ at the very least. Having said that, the concept of democracy as it is expressed in the UK is deeply flawed as you laid out. Any real ‘resistance’ is met with incredible repression and violence. This system is broken to the point that it can not be repaired. It must be replaced entirely. But that’s the socialist in me, though when you lay out the fundemental rot like you did it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion.
Well, back in the 50s and 60s when a lot of working class people came back from WWII with military training, the elites did relax their choke-hold on power and the system did work much more as a Democracy, which is why things like Social Security, the National Health Service and most Public Housing in Britain date back to that era, but most of it has been walked back since and the present day Labour Party is a perfect example of how the era of electable politicians who actually represent most people is over.
Even with the growth of the Greenparty (disclamer: I was a member of that Party for a while when I lived in Britain) who are a mix of Ecologist and Social-Democrat (after all, consumer society and unfettered capitalism are incompatible with Ecology), the entire voting system is set-up to stop them getting a parliamentary representation matching their fraction of the vote (by quite a lot, even - for most of its life the party generally got 5% of the votes which that system translated to only 0.3% of parliamentary seats), the entire Press is set up to push them back (by relentlessly slandering their leaderes, the very opposite of what they do to the leaders of the far-right such as Reform UK) and there’s a long tradition of the police being caught having Ecologist movements and even elected Greenparty members under surveillance.
So yeah, the system will collapse due to its own weight (there’s only so far that debt-fueled rent-seeking can go before it collapses if the Homeland doesn’t have a lot of external territories - i.e. and Empire - to pillage to make up for producing less than it consumes) long before the power and money elites there ever concede the slightest drop of power or accept the tiniest slowing in the growth of their wealth - there is no prospect of the condition of post-War Britain with a strong united Working Class repeating.
One doesn’t even need to be a Socialist to see how Britain, even by Capitalist criteria, is neither stable nor politically or socially capable of resolving its instability in a fair way that minimizes pain for the many.
This is a great writeup I have to say, thanks for that and agreed on all parts tbh.
The word ‘democracy’ is far broader than most people assume it is as it encompasses like 300 different ‘forms of government’ at the very least. Having said that, the concept of democracy as it is expressed in the UK is deeply flawed as you laid out. Any real ‘resistance’ is met with incredible repression and violence. This system is broken to the point that it can not be repaired. It must be replaced entirely. But that’s the socialist in me, though when you lay out the fundemental rot like you did it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion.
Well, back in the 50s and 60s when a lot of working class people came back from WWII with military training, the elites did relax their choke-hold on power and the system did work much more as a Democracy, which is why things like Social Security, the National Health Service and most Public Housing in Britain date back to that era, but most of it has been walked back since and the present day Labour Party is a perfect example of how the era of electable politicians who actually represent most people is over.
Even with the growth of the Greenparty (disclamer: I was a member of that Party for a while when I lived in Britain) who are a mix of Ecologist and Social-Democrat (after all, consumer society and unfettered capitalism are incompatible with Ecology), the entire voting system is set-up to stop them getting a parliamentary representation matching their fraction of the vote (by quite a lot, even - for most of its life the party generally got 5% of the votes which that system translated to only 0.3% of parliamentary seats), the entire Press is set up to push them back (by relentlessly slandering their leaderes, the very opposite of what they do to the leaders of the far-right such as Reform UK) and there’s a long tradition of the police being caught having Ecologist movements and even elected Greenparty members under surveillance.
So yeah, the system will collapse due to its own weight (there’s only so far that debt-fueled rent-seeking can go before it collapses if the Homeland doesn’t have a lot of external territories - i.e. and Empire - to pillage to make up for producing less than it consumes) long before the power and money elites there ever concede the slightest drop of power or accept the tiniest slowing in the growth of their wealth - there is no prospect of the condition of post-War Britain with a strong united Working Class repeating.
One doesn’t even need to be a Socialist to see how Britain, even by Capitalist criteria, is neither stable nor politically or socially capable of resolving its instability in a fair way that minimizes pain for the many.
You can’t vote them away. That’s it really.