De administratione populoque Part II - About securing power and maintaining stability

I did say that stability is becoming more inherent in the world. Nevertheless, when governments come under attack from their own citizens – it does happen every so often in times of upheaval and change – the government needs an alternative plan, should things go wrong. The plan must do these things.

1. It must re-affirm government control.

2. It must stop dissenting voices.

3. It must regain people’s attention.

The answer is not sending the riot police into the streets. It is not about sending tanks and soldiers to massacre its own people. Instead, the long-term, stable solution proves to be the most effective. That solution is bureaucracy, a system of functionaries and administration to insure that administration itself is protected. It is why every single developed stable country has one, and is only destroyed by military combat, itself prevented by bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy and public servants are the most important group of people in any government or institution; elected politicians, elected for the sake of stability no less, come and go. Perhaps there is a correlation between grand buildings such as the Houses of Parliament, and the non-descript offices of Whitehall. The Houses of Parliament, and indeed other Parliament buildings and grand palaces, act as a façade, in order to display importance and thus hide the contrary truth. Meanwhile, the real important figures of government are situated in ordinary offices which blend into their surroundings in the form of rows of either glass-and-steel boxes or typical Victorian blocks. Or perhaps the headquarters of the Highways Agency or Public Health England have the most extravagant building in London that I haven’t found out about, I digress. Meanwhile, those unelected worker bees continue to sort files, formulate and realise government policy, without a single blink of an eye by any journalist or enquirer. That is the beauty of bureaucracy.

Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.” Thus, for a bad government to reform a bureaucracy is a move only the stupidest of fools dare make. It is why the 19^th century bureaucracy of Russia in all its imperial glory would be the foundations of the bureaucracy that would allow Stalin, the epitome of despotism and hated by his own family and some would argue by Lenin himself, to protect his power even during the most horrifying moments of his rule. If there is one thing that Stalin can be credited for in Russia – and the Russians themselves can think of many other things – it is that Stalin created stability after the October Revolution and then after the death of Lenin through mass industrialisation and the rebuilding of Soviet cities. However, part of his plan was to increase his own power and in doing so, he made the Soviet Union an extension of his own character. The means in which he reached this goal were barbaric – the famines in the Ukraine, the deaths of thousands of political prisoners some of whom died during construction of projects such as the Moscow Metro, the executions and ill-treatment of at up to a million Soviet officials and the attempted Doctor’s Plot whereby Jewish doctors would be blamed for a string of high-profile deaths and subsequently lead to an anti-Semitic movement, the latter cancelled only by the death of Stalin himself.  You can see the papers drafted by bureaucrats detailing the death warrants of hundreds of functionaries and generals, with Stalin’s signature of approval. The same system in Russia is used by one Vladimir Putin today, a man like many of his Soviet predecessors; revered by his people sometimes to the point of cult following, helped by a strong bureaucratic state, and, combined with the increasing incomes of the Russian middle-class, his leadership is kept strong and his power continues to be consolidated, much to the chagrin of the rest of the group of oligarchs of which he himself was once a member.

The use of bureaucracy as a backup can even develop, or mutate, into an outright scapegoat. It is why, for instance, Adam Curtis, the BBC blogger and filmmaker who continues to fascinate me, described Yes Minister as propaganda, citing that the Civil Service, the neutral functionaries responsible for the execution of government policy, were betrayed as obstacles to good government and thus their absence would allow the government, such as that of Margaret Thatcher, to push on her suppression of the miners’ strike with popular support or the equally divisive policies. Indeed, the use of bureaucracy as a scapegoat is widespread in British government, considering that they are required to be non-partisan. It is even said that the Blair Government, upon entering office in 1997, seemed to have based their approach to civil servants on Yes Minister, to outfox and subvert them. The failure in the West Coast rail franchise was blamed on the mistakes of civil servants, even if the Transport Secretary had been replaced. The ability of bureaucracy to prop up and to protect a state is invaluable to any government, good or bad.

Stability and bureaucracy go hand in hand – they are both symbols of a self-aware post-ideological world. Centrism, a mixture of left- and right-wing philosophies at the top of the horse-shoe political spectrum, seems to be the dish of the decade in world politics, and sets to continue into this era. Indeed, it is the most pragmatic option: to keep both sides of humanity – the individuals themselves and the organisations in which they operate – happy. It does not matter for any country or its system whether there is a formal declaration of public approval or not; people still feel, in a democratic or undemocratic country, that their view is important. It is just that most of the time people have no opinion; democracy can be considered unnecessary in the right conditions, such as states of emergency and war. However, we can still sleep soundly in the clear correlation that an intense dislike of a government leads to its eventual removal; it does not need to mean that the surface may disintegrate, the skeleton of government may remain, such as bureaucracy; however the muscles, the organs and the soul of power will have disintegrated nonetheless. Who can say that the Communist Party of China is truly communist, either in the traditional Marxist-Leninist or the derivative Maoist context? How many political parties have the words “democratic” or “democracy” in the name, regardless of actual conviction and practice?

However, that does not mean that I am in favour of an authoritarian banana republic-style dictatorship in this country, nor for any country in the Western world, for that would be fundamentally unstable. 

De administratione populoque (On administration and the people) Part 1: About stability

Prologue

When I come to writing these blog posts, I don’t sit down and say to myself, “Let’s talk about X today, that will get people interested”, or at least not very recently. Often I’m sat on my bed, reading some sensationalist column in The Guardian which makes out that humans being bad and doing bad is something completely new, when I suddenly decide to document my own novelty in thought and type away into this account of my own immaturity. This is exactly what has happened in the last fifteen minutes. And so, here is another one of these documentations, perhaps to be one day thrown in front of me by a journalist on a mission to proscribe against those who speak against majority-dictated voices, and for which I shall have to explain myself. So, what spoon shall I use to stir the great cauldron of discontent today, you ask? Today, I am going to write about power.

                                                                 

About stability

There seems to be a great myth which circulates in all four corners of the world. It is one which has incited many tumultuous events that have marked civilisations, and continues to do so this very day, where we consider ourselves, even in financial crisis, the pinnacle of human advancement. The myth dictates that, at some point in human history, there was a “golden age”. It is an age where everyone, rich or poor, white or black, or whatever extreme you wish to use, was happy and prosperous, and that it is our job, as human beings, to recreate and then to supersede this period of supposed equality, wealth and customs. This “golden age” has produced the most harrowing events in human history. Why? It is because every single political group, moderate and extreme, is unified by this one single desire and end, and it is the means that are used to justify this outcome, that differ. Such equality among the political groups has allowed the technological revolution, the improvement of living conditions and the overall organisation of the human race to co-exist with such depraved acts as the Holocaust, the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Irish potato famine and the brutal conquests of Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and other famous military masterminds in ancient times.

Thus, the pursuit of the “golden age” is like taking a high-risk investment; the rewards may be plentiful, but so may the losses. Indeed, a financial gamble in a recession, such as the one we undergo, is one to be avoided if one takes the gamble completely blind and devoid of background and information. Instead, we look for “stability”; we place our bets on something reliable, and we accept that the results will not be as sweet, but that the losses are much easier to bear. It is also something that is currently being accepted in a wider sense within society, not just within the Western world but globally, in a spirit of fear and, at the same time, of tolerance.

An example: parliamentary democracy suits the United Kingdom well, in a balancing act of autocracy and popular tyranny. A federal presidential republic suits the United States in a balancing act of democracy and the acceptance of leadership. Suppose that we swap the systems around; would the people of the United Kingdom like to have their prime minister become president, or the people of the United States like to have a non-partisan leader for a supposed goal of advancement? The answer would most likely be no. Both systems are accepted as stable, and we see no reason to change it. Although we look to where advancement may have been beneficial in hindsight, such as where people argue that the alternative vote may have stopped the rise of fringe parties, the role of stability is very rarely challenged.

At the same time, our opposition to alien forms of governance of a country seems to be lessening. Since the world was awed by both the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, and by the substantial growth of China as a country through investment in infrastructure and business, our criticism of the system known as the “people’s democratic dictatorship” has waned whilst instability in Europe is on the increase. The traditional western point of view, built on a correlation between capitalism and freedom, the title of Milton Friedman’s book advocating a free market, does not understand how people who are not allowed to express a dissenting voice against the government can have a prosperous and more accessible middle-class, buy Gucci and D&G dresses and handbags and Rolex watches, drive high-end European cars, and can eat well for so little money. But all of these conundrums are dwarfed by the fact that they remain loyal and patriotic despite a perceived heavy-handedness of the government. It makes the western mind shriek “Does not compute”. The fear created by the economic problems in the western world, combined with an increased awareness of global events through new mediums of communication, have meant that respect for foreign methods of governance have meant that such methods have managed to survive.  At the same time, the “liberal interventionism” which succeeded in Sierra Leone and the Balkans, has largely been shunned, especially after the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan.  

But this is not purely due to hard work on behalf of the Chinese people. I do not deny, however, that they do work hard, for they work harder than anyone west of the Urals. However, it is also due to, not in spite of, a largely competent and pragmatic government in a post-ideological global society. Thus, it is possible to subsidise those who continue to work on farms or casual labours through a robust welfare system, funded by an urban middle-class. Hunger for political change is much the same as those who are physically starved, and each can be replaced. The French Revolution has proved this, whereby a people who previously respected the aristocracy, upon food shortages and conspicuous consumption, changed the political landscape of France and then of Europe, leading to mass executions and discontent. Marshall Aid succeeded at preventing revolution by funding the rebuilding of Western Europe, contrary to the Soviet sphere of influence and the uprisings of 1956 and 1968. China has learnt the lesson from previous western regimes, and for good reason; a revolution in China by starved peasants would be a disaster for each of its 1 billion inhabitants, just as the 1970s have proved a factor for the disaster that was the decline of British industry. Stability has to occur both on a governmental level and on the ground. A stable society must have a people who feel as if they belong not only by being fed, sheltered and clothed, but feel as if they play a role. Indeed, the Scandinavian social democracies largely fulfil that role, not least in comparison to the United States.

To conclude this first half, “stability”, in a more cosmopolitan world, is taking more importance over a wish for “advancement”. I view neither states as good nor bad; it is a case of a lesser of two evils. Advancement has benefitted a small part of humanity.

A discussion about privilege.

What a funny word it is, “privilege”, bandied around by the fawners and detractors of those with a certain background, or who have a certain viewpoint. The word remains split between its old meaning and its reverse-snobbish, sneering, derisory counterpart, which is exactly why it remains such an interesting word to use. The heir to the Duchy of some far-flung county, complete with a medieval manor and a townhouse in Mayfair, may be considered “privileged”.  People may get special “privileges” as part of a responsibility or a title, both of which to be either admired or respected. Those who believe in radical views whilst not taking into account the complexities of society may have a “privilege”, one that ought to be ridiculed. Indeed, it begs the question, how privileged are we?

The root of the word explains the development of its meaning. I may be demonstrating my privilege of knowledge in Latin by saying that “privilege” comes from the word privilegium, from the words privus meaning “private” and lex/legis, meaning “law”, via Middle French. It was a legal term meaning that certain people, whether by birth or by favour, were granted certain legal immunity often for a limited period of time, and was opposed to a right which was granted from birth and lasted for a lifetime. In practice, a privilege was often granted to prestigious institutions or individuals, often by being high up on the social ladder.

It is easy to see where the definition of “privilege” being one of high social status comes from. Indeed, the idea of prestige limited to the few is seen as a sign of “privilege”. Someone who attended Eton and then Oxford like his forefathers, before becoming a director of an investment bank before the age of 40 would be described as someone from a “privileged” background, as would the majority of the characters from Made in Chelsea, many of them heirs to significant fortunes. In more recent years, what with the rise in reverse snobbery – not that they themselves haven’t moved up the class scale – the term has become derogatory. “Privilege” in a meritocracy, in the modern, positive sense of the word, has no place. People should earn their positions and work hard. Paradoxically, in a godless country, suffering is seen as honourable.

 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
                                                                                                                                                                    Matthew 5:10

Thus, when someone from high says that poor are poor because they do not work hard enough, because they are lazy and feckless, we call out in anger about how his “privilege” has distorted his view. Indeed, people who have a view on a certain aspect on society but who meet criticism from the subjects of such discussion, they too criticise his “privilege”. "Privilege" is now attached to being out of touch and condescending. 

But how far do you go in this modern usage? It would be accurate to say that we, inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere, where all power bases have been situated, from Ancient Greece and Rome, the Mongol Empire and the Chinese dynasties, to the heydays of European empire, to the American sphere of influence. The wealth taken up by those in this half of the world is huge so that we can live in nice houses and have access to very cheap food. We are the beneficiaries of a “privilegium”, which stretches across North America and Western Europe, from the struggle to feed oneself.  And yet, we in this hemisphere enjoy lecturing and perhaps patronising our poorer cousins in the southern half. We intervene in their struggles; we excavate large amounts of their resources and sell them in London, New York and Tokyo, leaving pittance to the natives. We have no understanding of local customs and acceptable living standards, of a life that once suited someone well, yet we force on them western values which may have little resonance, western values which have produced some awful tyrants such as Idi Amin, who went to Sandhurst; Robert Mugabe, an almnus of University College London; Pol Pot, who discovered Marxism in Paris as a student, only to enforce it to run his country into the ground. And as some people fly out, with all good intentions, to alien places to meet people who see us as alien to their culture, it is questionable to see how our “privilege” is better than the “privilege” of the former European nobility and of the upper middle-class, which evolves into rights to become head of some sort of demagoguery among those lower down.

I do not know exactly why I have written this little blog post, but through writing this, the use of “privilege” has demonstrated three things.

1.       The evolution of an unbridled language such as English.

2.       The complexity of human thought and rationality.

3.       That we’re not equal but privileged, but some are more privileged than others, therefore clarifying George Orwell’s famous quote from Animal Farm.

Perhaps I have failed at all three, but after all, when you speak from on high, your privilege becomes like genitalia; appearing from out of your trouser zip, enlarging when passionate.

The paradox of fringe parties and European homogenisation

This week I voted for my first time, and I hope that I will be afforded the chance next time to once again participate in the democratic process of this country. Although the candidate that I voted for did not win, we must recognise the wishes of the majority, no matter what the result, and no matter what the consequences. Yet I feel that it is necessary to point out the performance of the UK Independence Party this weekend, which saw it win 25% of the vote, stinging the Conservatives where it hurt in, proving that their centrist, slightly Heathite policies aren’t very popular, and thus led to a fractioning of the right-wing share in the Tory heartlands, where the majority of seats up for election were situated.

The UK Independence Party, for all you hermits out there, is that party which campaigns for a British exit from the European Union, which, they say, would allow the United Kingdom to be more flexible in terms of European relations, advocating a trade partnership and restrictions on EU migrants. Of course, I could write about why all their policies are built on rhetoric and populist diatribes, why the economy wasn’t wrecked by immigrants but by bad lending, why we need the EU as a trading partner, how loutish British expats in Spain are as guilty or more so as Polish migrants here, why Polish workers would not want to leave Poland which one of the only European countries in economic growth, why a British exit would leave us completely isolated on the world stage, and how the EU would make sure that our economy was truly buggered if Britain were to leave. But I have no time for such waffle. Instead, UKIP is in fact nothing new, both in the practice of voting for a foreign party, but also how UKIP is merely part of a characteristic that happens when homogenisation and globalisation itself takes place.

Firstly, we are in a deep recession, people are angry because immigrants do the jobs that the rest of us wouldn’t dream of doing nowadays - such as working in Starbucks on minimum wage, in London, where renting a bedsit for less than £500 per month is a dream too good to be true – and the British people feel they are entitled to slave away in the same way as those poor migrants looking to improve their English and have a better life, whilst serving you a crappy cappuccino. People always like to vent their anger against the ‘establishment’ when times are tough. Having looked at the election figures in West Sussex, UKIP did well in the poorest areas of the South East, just in the same way that the British National Party earned seats in similar circumstances in the North in 2009. Indeed, we can be a bit more precise: in tough economic climates, when a government on a particular side of the spectrum is not being as radical as people expect, people vote for any party that seems more radical, either to protest against the system or in a genuine sign of desperation. The correlation between UKIP and the Conservatives, and between the BNP and Labour, is unmistakeable. And this was especially the case in the heartlands.

Secondly, what has happened with UKIP is actually a reaction to something that is inevitable: globalisation and its inevitable homogenisation. Here is a comparable situation: in Scotland, there is also a slight correlation between the tradition and nationalism; the middle-class areas of Edinburgh and the eastern coast of Scotland are fiercely SNP, especially since the Scottish Conservatives lost all but one of their seats in the 1997 general election, not to have been won back since. And this has been when the culture of the United Kingdom has been more and more homogenous; we shop at the same places, we eat a similar array of food, we drive similar cars, our jobs are concentrated more and more in one sector of industry. Edinburgh has been known to be called ‘England in tartan’, while the GDP per capita of Scotland is 99% of the average GDP capita of the United Kingdom. But the loss of individual culture within the country this cannot, and will not, be stopped any time soon. But the story is similar in regards of the popularity of UKIP, as the United Kingdom is becoming more and more culturally European among many factors such as the ones comparing Scotland to the United Kingdom. What seems to be the case is a reversal of the motto of the European Union: ‘United in Diversity.’ Instead we are being, at least in the short-term, ‘Divided in Uniformity.’ Even the growth of radical parties is not unique to this country; France has the Front National and the Front du Gauche; the Netherlands has the Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders; some Greeks even support the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. The growth of fringe parties, and the resulting coalitions, is European in itself as those other European nations lack the bipartisan system that traditionally dominated Westminster politics. Such is the paradox of politics these days.

What the results of this election today mean is that there is a change going on in the West that is being strongly felt in this country. We may feel that this is unique to the United Kingdom as we embrace the 19^th century nation-state complex, and this is perhaps the plan of UKIP. However, the on-going shift to create at least equilibrium with the Far East means that this country, if it means maintaining any sort of voice, will have to become part of Europe, not just politically and commercially, but culturally. The election of UKIP, in the European social context, is just that.